Pakar Service prides itself on the unique quality of its services in the cleaning industry, where, just like in football, everyone claims to be an expert. After all, everyone kicked a ball once and everyone once held a brush in their hand at least one time.
During 10 years of operation, Pakar Service has been very successful on the Polish market, becoming a leading, nationwide provider of comprehensive cleaning services in commercial facilities. The company currently handles 305 facilities across the country, many of which are extremely prestigious. Pakar Service's Clients are the largest international companies managing large real estate portfolios in Poland, including shopping malls, office buildings, logistics centers and production plants.
— We are developing very dynamically, systematically expanding our structures and increasing the number of employees, which currently amounts to over 1000 people. Continuous development of the company is a result of effective operational and sales management and implemented innovations — explains Andrzej Szymonek, President of Pakar Service.
As he emphasizes, the quality of services offered by the company is closely related to the attention to cost reduction on the part of customers.
One of the key values and at the same time competitive advantages of the company is also concern for ecology through innovative management processes and materials.
The first in Poland
— The result is obtaining the European Union ECO Label certificate, which was possible thanks to the partnership with EPP Property Management and with the participation of the Polish Centre for Testing and Certification for the five malls that Pakar Service handles. Thanks to the initiative of the EPP and our joint commitment, we were the first company in Poland and one of five from this field in Europe to receive this certificate — boasts Andrzej Szymonek.
And he adds that in the face of today's challenges of globalization, eco-innovations play an extremely important, double role.
— Firstly, as these are modern solutions of product, process or organizational nature, they contribute to the development of innovative business entities. Secondly, they make it possible to reduce operating costs, increase competitive advantage on the market or even enter new markets — says the head of Pakar Service.
As Andrzej Szymonek explains, the quality of the services provided has always been crucial for the company and was decisive for its success.
— In an industry where so much depends on people, building a loyal team is particularly difficult. Hence the great care for the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which results in a stable team, which is not often the case in this industry — the President of Pakar Service points out.
As he adds, as is the case in other industries, Pakar Service has to face rising costs.
— It is a difficult but feasible task, especially since thanks to an innovative approach to process management, we are able to provide our customers with an excellent product, maintaining market prices, adequate to the highest quality of the services provided, despite growing own costs — explains Andrzej Szymonek.
This is confirmed by the fact that in 2019 Pakar Service was awarded the European Medal for the quality of services provided on the Polish market. The medal (in Poland in cooperation with the Business Centre Club) is awarded by the most important institution for entrepreneurs operating at the European Commission — the European Economic and Social Committee.
Advantage through innovation
As the president of Pakar Service stresses, innovations in process management are extremely important for the development of the company.
— Today's market does not facilitate the introduction of process management due to the fact that employees are used to chaotic work, and the implemented processes allow for quick verification of the tasks assigned to each team member, which is not always received positively, because nobody likes to be strictly controlled, especially if other employers are more liberal — explains Andrzej Szymonek.
However, the lack of process control often results in an excessively large team of people in the service, which, with an increase in salary costs (the minimum national wage), results in increased customer costs. Therefore, the company implements tools making it possible to monitor employees' operational activity, including their presence in a given part of the facility, time of task execution and control the work schedule in real time and in detail.
— This enables optimization of human resources while maintaining the highest quality of service. We are systematically improving these processes, so that the automatisms developed result in very high customer ratings and constitute our competitive advantage — says Andrzej Szymonek.
The company strives to understand its customers as best as possible and is constantly looking for solutions to optimize the value of its services in order to maintain market prices and offer added value not offered by the competitors.
The Business Property Care (BPC) software, provided by Pakar Service business partner Optima Solutions, is extremely helpful in this.
— It allows for effective and transparent management of contracts, resulting in the highest quality while maintaining market costs for the customer. Importantly, the software is made available to customers free of charge as part of the services provided, which makes contract management extremely transparent. The customer has an insight through the online system into everything that is performed as part of the services, such as for example work organization, planning and execution of periodic work. The system also allows comments to be made in real time, and the response time of Pakar Service management is much faster than with traditional information exchange — emphasizes Andrzej Szymonek.
As he adds, for the comfort of work and operations of the customers served, it is essential that the cooperation between the three key services (cleaning, security, technical dept.) in a given facility is based on close and undisturbed communication. This is supported by the system used.
The software is systematically developed in close cooperation between operational managers of Pakar Service and programmers from Optima Solutions. Thanks to this cooperation, the company is ahead of the competition in many aspects.
Years ahead of our competitors
— A large international customer whom we have recently started to serve told us that they have heard a lot of different things from many companies, but the transparency of Pakar Service and the fact that if we talk about processes, we actually implement them, puts our company several years ahead of our competitors, even those from the Western European market — says Andrzej Szymonek.
The company increases efficiency by allocating most of its profits to investment purchases of state-of-the-art equipment and cleaning products, which accelerate the dynamics of its development, while improving the image of customers and work standards. This is largely facilitated by the policy of the owner, which is Retres Group, a 100% Polish investment group.
— Unlike the Polish market, where the cleaning industry is very scattered (many small, often family-run local businesses), the more mature markets are dominated by large companies. The experience from competing with some of them on the Polish market indicates that what constitutes our competitive advantage in Poland will also be decisive abroad — claims the president of Pakar Service.
Those, according to Andrzej Szymonek, include quality (the company is not afraid to compete with anyone in this area), the certificates it holds (ISO 9001 and ISO 14001), quick operation (a flat management structure and a quick decision making process are the main advantages), care for the costs and image of the customer or unique IT tools (an original contract management system made available to customers).
— Some of the competitors have similar software, but in my opinion, it is much less functional than ours — assures the president of Pakar Service.
As he says, Pakar Service also has a certificate issued by ABW confirming the security of information, which allows to serve a specific group of customers for which it is required.