AI
and automation
can be
indispensable tools for lawn and landscape companies looking to do more with fewer people. While they can seem like daunting concepts to integrate into operations, many companies in the landscape industry are already reaping the benefits of being early. adopters.
WHERE AI AND AUTOMATION EXCEL When considering where your business would most benefit from automation, consider repetitive, low-skill tasks such as data entry. “When you look at automation general-
ly, how you should approach it starts with the efficiencies,” says Adam Swank, director of technology for Ground Works Land De- sign, based in Cleveland, Ohio. “Mundane tasks are the easiest thing to look at.” Swank says they have created automa- tions that take care of necessary backend work freeing up their employees to focus on more meaningful tasks. “In the past, every time we sold a
project or we got a new customer for our maintenance department someone would have to go into our GPS system and put in that customer’s address,” Swank says. “Now, as soon as we close a deal on our CRM, that address and that customer gets automatically created in our GPS system, so that record’s there. That’s taking a whole step away from our account manager or sales rep from updating a system, which ultimately is just taking an address and copying it over.” Similarly, Justin White, owner of K&D Landscaping, Inc., based in Watsonville, California, says they are mostly using auto- mation on the administrative side, allowing their accounting team to do more with the same amount of people on their team. “One of my mindsets is because we are
growing so fast, we’re growing 25-30% a year, our goal is to grow while keeping the same amount of people,” White says. “So instead of hiring that third accounting person, the idea is we’re hiring AI instead of another person that allows us to pay our existing team a little bit more to do more with really the same amount of hours.” K&D Landscaping also has a handful of subscriptions to the paid version of ChatGPT. “That allows them to basically try
to automate a lot of their complicated formulas, like plant spacing and stuff like that,” White says. “They used to have to do things manually. So they’ll use that for a lot of math. They’ll also use it for generating ideas around designs or proposals just to help kind of fine-tune a lot of our proposals and our outgoing messages.” AI and automation are also helpful in
recruiting and training employees. Dani Gowda, human resources manager with Dennis’ 7 Dees, based in Portland, Oregon, says they use various levels of automations in their applicant tracking system as Team Engine allows them to customize their
automations per position. This includes receiving an automated email/text con- firming receipt of their application and a text/email with a link if the applicant didn’t enter information like past jobs. “They receive automated reminders when interviews are scheduled and can respond No to cancel an interview, which has reduced our no shows,” Gowda says. “After a new hire has worked 30 days, they receive a text asking to provide one thing that we could do to improve the training and onboarding process.” Skyler Westergard, learning and devel- opment specialist at LandCare, LLC, based in Frederick, Maryland, says the company has started using AI to help develop em- ployee training content. “It’s pretty incredible,” Westergard says.
“Even just the free version that you can get is pretty astounding. For me, I will use ChatGPT just to help me in my day-to-day work. I like to think of it as a really smart, fast assistant, and my personal assistant that pretty much doesn’t cost me any- thing.” Westergard says he will use ChatGPT to help brainstorm or simplify information based on the data he supplies. He explains that the AI doesn’t replace him; it just helps him work more effectively.
BENEFITS OF AI AND AUTOMATION The main benefit of AI and automation is the amount of time it saves. “It frees me up as a human being able to do the thing that I can do and maybe only a human can do, like have an emotional connection with another person,” Wester- gard says.
“One of my mindsets is because we are growing so fast, we’re growing 25-30% a year, our goal is to grow while keeping the same amount of people. So instead of hiring that third accounting person, the idea is we’re hiring AI instead of another person that allows us to pay our existing team a little bit more to do more with really the same amount of hours.” - Justin White, K&D Landscaping
National Association of Landscape Professionals 23
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