A request from the customer's sustainability lead
A group of five dental practices is one of your better accounts. Their new operations manager emails asking for a report of the waste collected from each site over the last year, split into general waste and recycling, with tonnages, for a report she is writing for the owners. She adds that she would like it quarterly from now on.
Your account manager says yes. Then he asks the office how to produce it. Nobody knows exactly. Lifts are in the in-cab system, container sizes in the billing system, tip weights on a spreadsheet by vehicle. Someone spends two days building it in Excel, making assumptions they do not write down. Next quarter, someone else does it differently.
Why reports are a manual job
Commercial customers increasingly want data on their waste, often for their own reporting to owners, landlords or clients. The data exists in your business, but it was never organised per customer.
- Lifts are recorded per stop, but not converted into weights per customer.
- Weights are recorded per load at the tip, shared across many customers.
- Container sizes and streams are in billing, separate from lift data.
- The method for estimating a customer's tonnage is not written down, so reports vary.
- Each request is a new piece of spreadsheet work.
What hand-built reports cost
Each report costs office time, and the more customers ask, the more time. Inconsistent methods mean the same customer can get different figures for the same period, which undermines trust in everything else you tell them.
There is a sales cost too. Larger customers and groups increasingly compare providers on the information they give. Being slow or vague about waste data makes you look less capable than competitors who send a report without being asked.
How we produce reports from your data
What we build brings lifts, containers and tip weights together and produces reports per customer and site automatically.
- Lift records from your in-cab system or driver app are combined with container size and stream from billing.
- Weights are estimated using a method you choose and state on the report: either an average weight per container type and stream, or the tipped weight of each load shared across the lifts on it.
- Where you weigh individual containers, for example with on-board weighing, those weights are used directly.
- Reports are produced per customer, per site and per period, showing lifts, estimated weight by stream and the share of recycling, in your branding.
- Reports are emailed on a schedule, or available in a simple customer portal where multi-site customers can pick sites and dates.
- The method used is written on every report, so customers understand what the numbers are and are not.
| Data source | Used for |
|---|---|
| Lift records | Number of collections per container and date |
| Billing records | Container size, stream, site and customer |
| Tip tickets | Load weights for shared allocation |
| On-board weighing, if fitted | Per-lift weights |
What a customer does with the report, and whether it is suitable for their own reporting, is for them and their advisers. We make sure the data and method are clear.
The next time a customer asks
The dental group's operations manager asks for her report. Your account manager opens the portal, selects the five sites and the past year, and downloads a report that shows each site's lifts, estimated weights by stream and the method used. He sends it the same afternoon and sets it to go quarterly.
Other customers start receiving the same report automatically each quarter. When a prospect asks what information you provide, the sales manager shows a sample.
Do customer waste reports take days?
- Customers ask for tonnage or recycling reports and they are built in Excel.
- Different people produce reports using different assumptions.
- Multi-site customers want per-site data you cannot easily produce.
- You have lost or nearly lost accounts over reporting.
- Nobody can explain how the last report's figures were calculated.