Conference to Include Committees Tackling Tech for Sales Growth

Scheduled for discussion at the upcoming TRSA F&B/Hospitality and Industrial/Workwear/Uniform committee meetings: presentations to aid linen, uniform and facility services operators in revenue expansion and upselling. The topic: high automation mining of customer data to reveal opportunities to vary textile products provided and their quantity and quality to different accounts in the same industries.

Katie Cosgrove, Cosgrove Partners, and Gerard van de Donk, ABS Laundry Business Solutions, will guide this conversation for the committees, which meet at the TRSA Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, the afternoon of Feb. 5. Conference registration is required for all TRSA committee meetings taking place that day, the first of the two-day conference. All TRSA member attendees are invited to attend any TRSA committee meeting.

An explanation of data mining fundamentals can be found here from Damco Solutions, a technology partner of businesses worldwide enabling them to leverage information technology as a strategic asset. The company has nurtured success in multiple technologies and verticals, developing hundreds of products and applications, redefining processes and building technology teams and systems. The image used with this article is from damcogroup.com.

Operators often instinctively recognize opportunities to vary a customer’s product mix based on behavior of other customers in the same industry. A product introduction that goes well with one restaurant, for example, indicates potential for the product with other restaurants. Or the quantity of a longstanding product provided to an automotive dealer based on the dealer’s workload suggests that a dealer with similar sales volume, workload or foot traffic would benefit from using the same quantity of the product.

Software can change this from a reactive to a proactive process. By digitally examining product use across all customers in an industry classification, quality and quantity norms can be determined for each textile product provided. Subclassifications can be created to group like customers based on a significant combination of key characteristics that drive their textile product use.

Restaurant linen services have naturally subclassified restaurants by meal cost and service level: fine dining, casual dining and fast food. Proactive data mining could add factors such as a restaurant’s number of table seats, patrons and employees, correlating these with their existing linen spend.

The Washington discussions are part of the F&B/Hospitality Committee’s effort to increase restaurateurs’ understanding of the value of restaurant linen services. The committee’s consideration of this data mining also dovetails with the work of its Facility Services Task Force to ease operators’ revenue expansion with such products.

Presented to the Industrial/Uniform/Workwear Committee at its December meeting, the concept intrigued this group considering the large number of industries that the industrial sector serves and the sector’s longstanding provision of facility services products.

The Legislative Conference, Feb. 5-6, offers members the opportunity to influence the industry’s advocacy agenda and impact TRSA initiatives. On Feb. 5, volunteer leaders gather in TRSA committees to share information regarding best-management practices, trends, innovations and issues impacting their professions, companies and customers. Preparation begins for visits the following day to Capitol Hill, where members raise awareness of the industry’s social, environmental and economic benefits and educate legislators about its need for fair and balanced regulation. Keynoters at the conference include:

• Kaplan Mobray, a Wharton graduate who started in advertising, championed diversity at Deloitte and now serves as a consultant to multinational companies. Author of the 10Ks of Personal Branding, he’s recognized as one of the nation’s top business speakers for his leadership-development workshops, which he’s staged on five continents, helping individuals globally build their brand, become better leaders and advance their careers. He will speak at the Supplier Partner Council Workshop on Feb. 4.
• John Harwood, a journalist who analyzes U.S. elections, politics and the presidency. Over his three-decade career, he’s reported for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, PBS and NPR. He’s interviewed every president from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden and received an Emmy nomination for his live CNBC town hall with President Barack Obama.

Visit www.trsa.org/legcon to register for the conference.