Deep Roots Doubles in Size While Driving Profitability Across All Divisions
At a Glance
The Customer
- North Georgia’s premier landscaping company with 50+ employees
The Challenge
- Found RealGreen lawn care business software to be complex and clunky
The Results
- Doubled in size after implementing SingleOps and plans to double again
- All divisions in the company are profitable
- Easy at-a-glance views
- Improved customer communications
The Customer
Deep Roots Landscape, North Georgia’s premier landscaping company, offers an extensive selection of residential and commercial landscaping services to an ever-growing clientele. The family-oriented business was founded by John Baxter in 2010 and joined in 2011 by co-owner Ben Filchak. Deep Roots now has over 50 employees and achieved revenue of more than $5 million in 2022.
Deep Roots’ installation services include full landscape design, water features, retaining walls, landscape lighting, and more. Hardscape services include custom fire pits, landscape steps, patios, outdoor kitchens, and irrigation systems.
The Challenge
Deep Roots previously used RealGreen lawn care business software but found the application to be complex and clunky. They were unable to implement and effectively utilize RealGreen to manage their day-to-day operations.
The Solution
Looking for more streamlined software, Deep Roots selected SingleOps. The team liked the way SingleOps manages the flow from a new lead all the way through marking a job complete, sending an invoice, and taking payment.
The Results
Doubling Revenue
Ben Filchak, Owner, said, “Our lives have been much simpler since making the switch. One of the things I love about SingleOps is how user-friendly it is, not just for upper management, but our field crews use it every day. We’ve doubled in size to more than $5 million in revenue in the four years since we started using SingleOps, and every division is profitable. We have no doubt that we could double again and SingleOps already has the platform set up for us to be able to do that.”
Russ said, “I like how simple, but complex SingleOps is. It’s easy to grasp. We also like that with SingleOps, we have the option to change things and make it fit our business model even better, such as names and descriptions of plants.
Data-driven Decision to Increase Prices
John Baxter, Owner, stated, “At the beginning of COVID, we became increasingly busy and realized a lot of our pricing was outdated. The data we had in SingleOps allowed us to make decisions about how to increase prices in a way we felt confident about, that honored the customer, and were able to make the profit we needed.”
Ben continued, “When the accurate data is in front of you, it makes tough conversations so much easier and helps you grow the business the way you want to.”
Deep Roots continues to use SingleOps to optimize pricing and refine their ideal customer profile. Russ explained, “Going into 2023, we raised prices and refined our target market for our maintenance services. This change drove away some customers, but we’ve still grown revenue and improved profitability.”
Accelerating Cash Flow
Russ continued, “Providing digital payments has been big. Digital payments make it easy for people, such as those who live out of state and have a rental here. We have some customers who were habitually paying late. We required them to switch to digital payments and now we all don’t have to worry about it.”
As Deep Roots expands their use of SingleOps, the company is considering sending more automated texts, such as alerting customers the crew is on the way. Additionally, automated texts with an invoice sent immediately after jobs are completed can accelerate cashflow.
Easy At-a-Glance Views & Insights
Russ said, “Job costing has been really good. The newly-added dashboard gives you an overview. I pull it up daily to see trends and I’ve really enjoyed that. I like that I can see at a glance what’s completed or still open with our color codes. I can scroll and make sure completed work is billed.”
“The filters are also very beneficial. I’ve customized my SingleOps calendar to include only one-off jobs, so my view isn’t too busy. Then I can pull up a separate calendar and see what’s recurring.”
“We can pull up a whole job work order, look at job costing, labor sources and see if we’re quoting correctly or if we’re spending too much time. All the data is right there even if we have to click back in to edit the job if some data was missed on the back side. It’s all still within the flow of the work order. Then we take it into an approved job where we capture our invoices. It’s really easy to go back and forth.”
“I also look at P&L with each department head on a weekly basis and look for areas for improvement. I’ll examine revenue versus purchase to ensure we’ve taken advantage of opportunities for lower costs, such as bulk purchases, or pick up versus delivery, and ensure we’ve hit margins and jobs were bid correctly.”
Improved Customer Communications
Russ continued, “The email in SingleOps is great. Customers will email us asking for a quote and it’s easy for me to send it. Then the customer accepts the job and I schedule it – all in SingleOps. The templates have also been great. I’ve modified a bunch to suit our needs. We can now ensure customers get the right information, such as important messages regarding germination time.
Scheduling and Routing
“It’s super simple to drag and drop to move around scheduled jobs as well as change routes. The route planner is great for our recurring jobs. We’re able to see what the route looks like and move routes around. I can take a whole days’ worth of routes and move them to another day or crew,” said Russ.
Generating New Insights
SingleOps has also enabled Deep Roots to effectively track sales and win/loss rates.
“Before SingleOps, whenever we sent a maintenance contract and the customer didn’t want it, we wouldn’t put it in our system, so we never captured data on lost deals. Now we’re selling maintenance like any other job, so we’ll be able to see how many were rejected,” concluded Russ.