MILWAUKEE, Oct. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Across the
commercial landscape sector, business owners are increasingly
seeking ways to monitor both equipment and crews in order to reduce
downtime and drive more revenue.
Briggs & Stratton has developed and piloted an IoT device
and web-based platform tailored specifically for those businesses.
InfoHub for Commercial Turf, by Briggs & Stratton, launched at
GIE+EXPO, gives landscape owners and managers the intelligence they
need to be smarter about scheduling jobs, preparing bids and even
deploying crews and equipment. The data is fed from a cloud-based
platform to the InfoHub portal. Armed with this real-time data,
owners can drive more efficiency and profitability to the bottom
line and make dynamic decisions to respond to uncertainties like
weather rescheduling.
In research conducted by Briggs & Stratton, as part of the
InfoHub development process, many landscape business owners
reported dissatisfaction with current data insights solutions and
some even reported tracking information manually. Many were only
able to look at data after-the-fact, which did not help them make
decisions about crews, scheduling and equipment in real time.
"Many of the products on the market are only giving commercial
lawn cutters half of the answer. They may monitor equipment
maintenance needs or they may track crews, but the majority of
software programs can't track an entire fleet," said Carissa Gingras, director of marketing - global
support, Briggs & Stratton. "Because InfoHub can be installed
on any gas-powered engine with a spark plug and battery, commercial
cutters can now track their entire fleet regardless of engine or
mower brand."
Briggs & Stratton worked with more than two dozen cutters in
2016 and 2017 to test InfoHub and validate features and benefits.
The top two benefits pilot users found with InfoHub was their
ability to track their crew and equipment, and the ability to
understand profitability and productivity by crews and jobs. And
since the number one expense cutters have is labor, InfoHub helped
pilot users manage their labor resources more efficiently and
ultimately, grow their businesses.
"Labor is very expensive. In any lawn care maintenance company,
it's the most expensive thing that you pay every year," said
Buddy Delong of Bluegrass Lawn Care,
St. Louis. "Making sure that labor
is efficient, and on task is very important. Using a system that
tracks your equipment and your people allows you to use fewer
people. And understanding utilization of labor cost is critical
when labor can represent up to 40% of a cutter's
expenses."
Tracking equipment and helping cutters understand labor costs is
only part of the InfoHub offer. InfoHub offers route optimization
based on crew location, efficiency and availability. This permits
cutters to add customers and routes, driving more revenue into
their business. InfoHub also provides visibility to profitability
by job and by crew, so cutters can determine whether they are
making money, or losing money, on a job. "Many cutters told us they
use InfoHub to both understand the costs in their business, as well
as drive more money to the bottom line," Gingras stated. "InfoHub
is truly a unique business solution that helps cutters grow their
business by monitoring their fleet, regardless of brands, and
increasing profitability by job."
For additional information on InfoHub, visit
BriggsInfoHub.com.
About Briggs & Stratton Corporation:
Briggs & Stratton Corporation (NYSE: BGG), headquartered in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is focused
on providing power to get work done and make people's lives better.
Briggs & Stratton is the world's largest producer of gasoline
engines for outdoor power equipment, and is a leading designer,
manufacturer and marketer of power generation, pressure washers,
lawn and garden, turf care and job site products through its Briggs
& Stratton®, Simplicity®,
Snapper®, Ferris®, Vanguard™,
Allmand®, Billy Goat®, Murray®,
Branco® and Victa® brands. Briggs &
Stratton products are designed, manufactured, marketed and serviced
in over 100 countries on six continents. For additional
information, please visit www.basco.com and
www.briggsandstratton.com.
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SOURCE Briggs & Stratton Corporation