Are You Inadvertently Increasing Your Pest Risk?

Are you inadvertently increasing your pest risk?

For years pest control has been carried out by professional pest control technicians, who come and inspect sites and fill in treatment reports on paper. These reports are then filed within a site file, often within a security office or managers office. It works, right?

Many of the larger pest control companies in the UK are now using digital reporting of various standards with some simply replacing the same question sets that were previously on paper reports whilst others; like here at Contego are producing a more dynamic and advanced report, looking at situational occurrences and assigning pest risk.

When you think about pest control you don’t often think about data and data points, how that data is going to be used or at least historically that wasn’t the case for many.

At Contego data is king. Being open and transparent with clients, showing exactly where the risk is and the justification of any spend. We have smart technology integration and data sets to dynamically change site service levels. We’re not alone in going digital- some of the other larger companies in the UK such as Rentokil, Ecolab and Terminix are also using data to produce trends, trend analysis and advising customers quickly of any issues through customer portals too.

It got me thinking… Are customers, pest managers or buyers inadvertently putting their sites at risk by using a pest control company with paper reporting?

For me the answer is simple. It’s an astounding YES!…. but I know what you’re thinking, even reporting digitally everything goes back to the technician, and that’s very true. As business leaders we all need to ensure our technicians are trained, qualified and engaged. Focusing on engagement should be every managers priority, as engaged technicians are the key elements to delivering any quality service.

With that in mind, when using paper based reporting, you’re fully reliant on the mindset of the technician. Fully reliant on their ability to articulate the findings of the inspection to the suitably assigned member of client staff, who then takes action off the back of the recommendations. Now we all know what it’s like to have a bad day, it could be a bad day for the technicians or equally for one of your staff or a distraction to something else that’s happened in store, that simply takes the mind away from dealing with the recommendation and logging it onto another system.

The problem with that is we all know how quickly problems escalate, that loose drain cover that didn’t get actioned could quickly become very high risk internal rodent activity front of house. Personally, I think the new era of digital reporting and risk management within pest control, the changes and the dynamic use of data to identify risk rated recommendations, and actions allowing for them to be closed out quickly is what reduces pest risk on site and ultimately saves the clients time and money. 

Pest risk isn’t just about the risk of a mouse entering the building. Pest risk is also Brand Risk, and Brand Confidence is the most important thing within any business. 

Are you risking your brand not going digital?