Published December 2007

No Place Like (Virtual) Home

By Mary Shafer (page 102)

Pumping professionals share online home page choices and explain creative ways they harness the power of the Internet.

Though septic pumping is essentially manual labor and business management, it’s an industry increasingly driven by technology. Nowhere is that more evident than in the field, where technological advances in equipment and materials have processes evolving at an incredible pace. Yet techno-power is showing up at the office as well, where software is powering many scheduling and dispatching operations, the ability to track fleet vehicles and even unit deployments.

The latest area of the business invaded by technology involves the Internet. Use of the Internet by liquid waste haulers involves mostly marketing and promotion, but has now come to serve a primary purpose in searching out vendors and potential jobs. The search usually starts with a home page, so check out where these pumpers are starting from and why.

When their Web browser launches, Mark and Debora Campbell see their own corporate Web site, www.advan tagewaste.net, as their home page. Many companies do the same thing, just as a matter of pride or to make sure their site is properly functioning.

“We use the Web a lot to research new products and suppliers,” says Mark Campbell. “It beats running all over the place or having to spend hours with the phone book or waiting for return calls. We can make decisions pretty much instantly if the company has a decent Web site that tells us what we need to know.”

Debora Campbell explains how they actually find what they’re looking for. “We generally start with one of the big search engines like Yahoo! or Google,” she says. “For a search term, we’ll use the name of whatever we’re looking for, then add ‘Birmingham, AL,’ to narrow our search to convenient local suppliers. If we can’t find what we want there, we’ll widen the search beyond our local area.”

Sonya Gillespie also uses the Web to research suppliers, so her home page is the Yahoo! search engine. “We also use the Web to download technical reports and updates to some of our equipment manuals when we need them. It’s the difference between having to mail a request and wait a week or more, or having the information we need within minutes.” In a business whose service mix splits out at almost 90 percent construction, having such information on a timely basis can mean the difference between getting a customer serviced on time or not.

Grason Gillespie also uses the Web, but he concentrates on searching for potential new customers and projects. “I’m always on DodgeReport.com,” he says. “It’s a great place to scope out new jobs. You just enter your region and click on new or existing projects, and you can see what’s out there and where you might want to do some prospecting.”

The home page at Dynamic Industrial Services is www.cbc.ca, the Canadian Broad-casting Corp.’s “all news, all the time” Web site.

“We like to stay on top of what’s going on, because you never know how larger events can impact your business,” explains representative Jason Hodder. “It’s just a good idea to stay on top of things, and you can get the information you need right at your desk while you’re working, so you don’t have to interrupt your workflow.”

Dynamic also makes frequent trips to Google, to research vendors and competitors. “You can find out a lot about competing companies and what they’re doing just by monitoring some of the business-oriented sites,” Hodder says

The computer is a huge part of the operations at Kline’s. Their home page is their corporate Web site, www. klinesservices.com. They’ve often used the Web to research vendors, especially of larger equipment. Most recently, it was for locating a supplier of restaurant grease storage containers to use at customer locations.

Kline’s also does preliminary research on vacuum service trucks and equipment before attending trade shows, so they can compare apples to apples once they’re on the show floor. “We like to spend our time talking to representatives who have limited openings for conversation, and don’t waste precious time doing homework we could have done earlier,” Jim Guerin says.