As CFO of a business that includes a franchise network of 8,000 sanitizing services businesses across the country, Michael Borreca has lines of sight into the sales of disinfectant and electrostatic sprayers that make him better informed than most CFOs, perhaps, when it comes to monitoring the country’s return to work.
In addition to the JAN-PRO sanitizing services franchise network, Borreca is busy advancing Intelligent Office, a virtual office offering intended to serve customers that are rethinking their office space options. Together, the two brands are part of LYNX Franchising, of Alpharetta, Georgia.
We recently asked Borreca to share some thoughts on LYNX Franchising’s response to COVID-19 and its lasting impact on the firm’s two brands.
- Lines of sight into disinfectant supply chain become strategic advantage
- Demand for disinfectant grows as workers return to office environments
- Virtual office offerings find new traction amid COVID’s business haze
Borreca: As the COVID pandemic became a firestorm across the country, we realized that our chemical providers were smaller organizations and that as demand was increasing for disinfecting services, our suppliers wouldn’t be able to keep up. Prior to March, no one really knew what an electrostatic sprayer was, but now all of the airlines are using them to fog their airplanes daily or multiple times daily.
What we found was that while we had solid suppliers (with which we have continued to work), we needed to have a secondary source because as the demand increased, this was an area of risk. We were missing out on sales opportunities because we couldn’t get the disinfecting chemicals into the marketplace fast enough. We couldn’t get the delivery mechanisms—the actual foggers and sprayers—into this market fast enough. So, over the past 8 weeks, we’ve added secondary sources. These are the types of things that come up, and you just have to be nimble to deal with them. In a finance leadership role, you’ve got to work with the operations team and the brand presidents or your COOs to try to quickly address situations because otherwise you could potentially miss out on revenue-producing opportunities.
I think that the health of the community and the health of the workplace are going to be front-of-mind for every business out there—certainly more so than in the past. We’ve got a brand known as Intelligent Office that is kind of unknown right now, but this environment is providing a big opportunity for us to increase awareness of this brand. Under Intelligent Office, we offer a service to companies that eliminates their need to hire a full-time administrative assistant or administrative resource. We can handle inbound phone calls and scheduling phone calls and intake forms. There are a lot of companies that are going to look to decrease the amount of square footage that they have on a fixed basis, so we offer an effective way to use a fractional share of real estate through a shared, coworking type of environment. These are dedicated offices that have access to conference rooms, all at a fraction of the normal cost. You’re paying for usage and you’re not having that sunk cost of just an ongoing lease that is set for 5, 7, 8 years. jb
“The organization must be nimble to avoid missing out on revenue producing opportunities.”
