COMPANY

Name: Route

Legal Name: RozaRoute, LLC 

Location: Chicago, IL

Founded: 2017

Founder(s): Ricardo Regalado, Joe Grotto, Mitesh Shah

Website: https://getroute.com/

Social Media: 35 subscribers on YouTube, 77 followers on LinkedIn, 311 followers on Instagram, 6 followers on Twitter, 65 likes on Facebook

Industry: US Building Maintenance Service Market

Projection: $465B by 2024 (Source: United States Facility Management Market Report 2019)

Introduction

Route offers data-led insights in real time to enable building services management companies to keep track of and streamline their technicians’ work. It also delivers guidance and training for the workforce, while helping transform the servicing contractor’s company culture.

Maintenance teams and managers are empowered via the Route platform’s job scheduling, timekeeping, and geofencing features – at every step of the workflow. 

The Product

This business management platform, for the building services industry, features a Walkthrough Builder that schedules, assigns, and builds detailed tours of the client’s scope of work. Such walkthroughs can then be harnessed to build bespoke proposals and invoices from customized templates on Route.

The Workflow Management feature lets you track the time taken to complete a task, while the team is on the field, along with other operation-related data. It even shares requisite information, such as access codes and special customer requests, with the technician. 

How it works is, the staff member checks in at the client’s location using a smart device and Route tells them exactly what they need to do. Once the job is complete, the next task and location are clearly mapped out for the technician to follow, and data is collected at every step of the way. 

“The main pain point for us is when clients come to me asking whether the bathrooms got cleaned, or how long the cleaners were at the location for,” Route founder Ricky Regolado said to Built in Chicago. “Every client has different expectations, and it’s really hard to respond to that when all you can say is that you’ll check with the team.”

Data, thus gathered, can help the building services in-charge understand the average time needed to complete each task. Such insight is key to better managing client expectations and improving efficiency.

The data analysis also helps create detailed task lists and route optimization to improve technician’s productivity.

“Annual turnover in our industry is over 100 percent, but some companies are better at retention because they care about their employees,” he added. “… a community portal and a profile builder that gives every team member a profile image and a description of their specialty — something that gives them a title and makes the job feel more purposeful.”

Route even has a Community Portal for technicians, which offers features such as gamified reporting and achievement tracking and rewards outstanding performance, to incentivize their efforts and build loyalty towards the contracting company. Moreover, Technician Profiles on the app ensure that employees are not faceless workers. 

Route’s Starter package is priced at $49 per month and features unlimited walkthroughs and five proposals that can be accessed by three users. On the other hand, the Growth package, at $129 per month, allows for unlimited access to all of Route’s features for unlimited users.

Origin and Founding Team

It all started in 2012, as serial entrepreneur Regolado described on the AH29 podcast. It was the year he bought a cleaning franchise from his cousin. In the next six odd months, once he got the hang of the cleaning business, he sold all client accounts and set-up Rozalado, a commercial cleaning company.  

Soon, he decided that there was a need to track servicing crew, and get more data about how they perform their jobs, in order to improve efficiency and accountability. And he knew that disruptive technology was the way to do it. 

“There’s such a lack of data and technology in the cleaning industry,” he said to Built in Chicago. “There’s nothing available for real-time tracking when cleaners are in the field.”

According to a press release, the idea for the Route app came to Regolado while working on a Pitch Contest hosted by Chicago’s 1871, the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the National Minority Supplier Development Council, and Capital One. He ended up winning the contest and in October 2018 launched the beta version of the Route app. 

Soon after, they successfully tested Route on Rozalado and 10 other Chicago and Midwest-based cleaning companies.

And today, Route positions itself as a full-service provider for building service contractors.