Nature’s Dream Landscape Increases Win Rate to 90%, Grows without Additional Office Staff, Confirms Crew Hours with GPS Tracking

At a Glance

The Customer

• Provider of a full suite of landscaping services for commercial and residential properties in the greater Miami area since 2002

The Challenge

• Difficulties with Service Autopilot: creating design estimates, including materials and subs in job costing, scheduling jobs, and generating reports

The Results

• Win rate increased from 65% to 90%
• Company grew 25% without the need for additional office staff
• FleetSharp tracking uncovered discrepancies between truck GPS times and crew punch-in
• Improved AR and cashflow due to billing immediately rather than waiting until end of month

The Customer

Nature’s Dream Landscape provides a full suite of landscaping services for commercial and residential properties, including high-end residential, corporate environments, HOA, retail/industrial, and public spaces. Based in the greater Miami area, Nature’s Dream combines expert craftsmanship, creative design, and use of top-quality materials and plants. The company’s experienced landscapers have been setting the standard in landscape design, installation, tree service, irrigation, garden lighting, and more since 2002. Nature’s Dream takes pride in turning average spaces into outstanding spaces.

The Challenge

Nature’s Dream was using Service Autopilot business software and encountered numerous difficulties. Ray Rueda Co-Founder, Nature’s Dream, explained, “Estimating was not appropriate for design builds. It was really cumbersome to get an estimate done. For job costing, Autopilot works well with labor costs, but it was really hard to include materials and subs. We had to pull data out of Autopilot and QuickBooks to integrate and try to get proper job costing.

“When scheduling jobs, it was difficult to see how many man hours were needed for each job to balance the workloads. Finally, reports were a nightmare. You needed to know programming and database structures in order to pull a report.”

The Solution

Ray attended a tech expo and visited different software vendors with specific questions. After looking at LMN, Real Green, and Aspire, he found SingleOps to be the best fit.

The Results

Fast Implementation, Great Support

Nature’s Dream was up and running with SingleOps in about four weeks. “The SingleOps crew was amazing. The people are great, starting with my salesperson. During implementation, they responded really fast. SingleOps has a learning curve, yes, as any other software does, but they make it easy. The support staff is really nice and very thorough. I’m impressed. If I have an issue, it’s not like I get a generic response; they go dig in,” said Ray.

Improved Client Communications

“The sync with QuickBooks is very good, and the integrated email and text messaging are awesome. It’s really nice to have emails to clients within the job template. We email them when service is scheduled and can keep track of conversations with a log, which includes texts. The mobile app is also much better than other solutions and allows us to get a lot more data.”

Creating Estimates

SingleOps enables users to build kits: pre-populated pricing for materials and labor for a specific project such as a fire pit, as well as templates: larger projects that may contain many kits.

Ray explained, “We created many estimate templates and kits, which is also very nice. Our design team goes to new prospective clients and takes photos, then prepares an estimate with templates and preestablished items. One really important feature for us is the ability to pinpoint location on the map by dropping a pin. We can also attach pictures to any line item, such as a tree service with pruning. It’s very powerful.

“The look is really nice. We can customize and it’s so easy, in a couple minutes you’re able to email a proposal. We can also attach several PDFs to each proposal: our terms & conditions, a ‘Why Hire Us,’ and maintenance guidelines for landscaping.”

Saving Time, a Day and Night Difference

SingleOps saves time for Nature’s Dream, from proposals through scheduling and client communications, to invoicing and reporting, although it’s hard to calculate just how much time.

“Previously, we were doing proposals in Excel, which was a big issue, particularly with data handling. The salesperson would have to update the price of each item. Now, creating proposals is a totally different story and there’s also a big difference in saving time. It’s day to night. Reps don’t need to take time to update the price of each item. It’s a great investment because now any new salesperson can punch in the item code and it’s standardized. It’s made a huge difference to maintaining profit margin.”

Increased Win Rate, Improved Reporting

“For our design services, we previously closed around 65% of our proposals, and now we’re closing 90%.

“SingleOps has critical reports already created, so we can easily view KPIs. I have a lot of control regarding efficiency and profitability, especially for recurring jobs. It’s easy to pull reports, and there are many we use all the time, such as sales commission,” explained Ray.

Additionally, Nature’s Dream didn’t previously have purchasing, but now with SingleOps, they can generate POs based on job orders, which is a big savings.

Supporting Workflow and Job Costing

With SingleOps, Nature’s Dream can enable clients to accept proposals and pay a deposit online. Once a job is approved, SingleOps supports the workflow by enabling Nature’s Dream to use the same work order to schedule the job and assign a crew. Crews can then see the load list of materials, which is a new capability for the company.

Crews are also able to start time tracking as they load trucks. After a job is completed and approved, the office can send the invoice to the client. By capturing this information in SingleOps, Nature’s Dream can also keep track of job costing in a very straightforward way.

Accelerated Invoicing, Improved Cashflow

Ray described how AR has improved significantly with SingleOps. Nature’s Dream uses ProPay links for credit cards and ACH. They’re also able to charge credit cards in batches, saving a lot of time.

Clients are billed for maintenance services on a monthly basis, whereas others were previously billed at the end of the month. With SingleOps, Nature’s Dream now bills clients immediately after a job is approved, rather than waiting until the end of the month. This has had a very positive impact on cashflow, enabling Nature’s Dream to start receiving funds right away.

SingleOps is Like Another Person, Supporting Growth

Nature’s Dream began using SingleOps in August 2021 and grew 25% the following year. The company employs only one part-time office manager and has not needed to increase office staff, even with continuing substantial growth. Ray estimates that without SingleOps, the company would need at least one additional person in the office.

GPS Integration Ensures Safety, Reconciles Timesheets

Nature’s Dream is also using live fleet and equipment tracking, a SingleOps feature powered by FleetSharp, which Ray describes as, “another beauty. Our trucks have cameras recording both inside and out in case of an event such as a broken window. For safety, it’s awesome. Even when trucks are parked at night at our warehouse, if anything happens, they record.

“When we’re approving timesheets, SingleOps tells us if there are discrepancies between GPS times and the times the crew punched in. The first week we had FleetSharp, we found that a driver was doing something inappropriate. We alerted everybody, so they’re aware the system is tracking their location.”