How Woodley Building Maintenance Cut Onboarding Time by 50% with Integrated Tech

For commercial cleaning enterprises, longevity is a testament to resilience. Thriving for nearly six decades requires more than just good service; it requires the ability to adapt, evolve and embrace the future. Woodley Building Maintenance, a third-generation family-owned business based in Kansas City, Missouri, stands as a prime example of this adaptability.

With approximately 800 employees and a 57-year history, Woodley Building Maintenance has transitioned from a local operation to a regional powerhouse providing full-service janitorial, floor care and general maintenance solutions. However, scaling an enterprise of this size comes with significant hurdles. In a recent interview, Tiffany Woodley, Vice President and CFO, opened up about how her organization leverages technology to overcome the industry’s most persistent challenges: labor shortages and operational inefficiency.

For business leaders in the building service contractor (BSC) space, Woodley’s journey offers a roadmap for using integrated software to streamline operations, reduce costs and elevate professionalism in a competitive market.

The Perennial Challenge: Staffing and Retention

It is no secret that the commercial cleaning industry faces a constant battle with labor. High turnover rates and a shrinking talent pool make staffing the number one challenge for BSCs. For an enterprise like Woodley Building Maintenance, finding and keeping good team members is critical to maintaining the quality of service their customers expect.

“One of the largest challenges that we face in our industry is staffing,” Woodley explains. “Hiring, identifying and recruiting good team members has gone a long way in helping us to be successful, but at the same time, it still remains one of our largest challenges.”

In an environment where every hour counts, an inefficient hiring process can result in lost candidates. If a competitor can offer a job and onboard a cleaner faster, that candidate is gone. This reality forced Woodley Building Maintenance to look for a solution that could accelerate their hiring cycle without sacrificing the quality of their vetting process.

Cutting Onboarding Time in Half

To combat labor challenges, Woodley implemented Hire by WorkWave. The goal was to modernize their recruitment funnel and remove the administrative bottlenecks that often slow down the hiring process.

The results were immediate and transformative. According to Woodley, the software has been a “game changer” for their HR operations.

“It’s really helped us to decrease onboarding time by probably close to about 50%,” she says. “We’re able to decrease that window of time between an applicant entering the hire cycle, getting onboarded and that first day of work.”

For a CFO, this metric is crucial. A 50% reduction in onboarding time translates directly to operational efficiency. It means positions are filled faster, overtime costs to cover vacancies are reduced and the administrative burden on HR staff is significantly lightened. By automating the workflow from application to day one, Woodley Building Maintenance can secure top talent before they move on to other opportunities.

Mastering Margins With Job Costing

While acquiring talent is the first hurdle, managing profitability is the second. In the low-margin world of commercial cleaning, understanding exactly where money is being made or lost on a specific contract is vital. This is where WinTeam, a holistic ERP solution, became an essential tool for Woodley and her finance team.

Woodley highlights the job costing module as one of their biggest successes with the platform. “It has been very helpful in helping us to identify opportunities and areas for improvement within our business,” she notes.

Accurate job costing allows BSCs to:

• Track labor costs against the budget in real-time
• Identify “time theft” or inefficient scheduling
• Adjust pricing models for future contracts based on historical data

By having a granular view of profitability per site, Woodley Building Maintenance can make data-driven decisions rather than relying on gut feelings. This level of financial visibility is what separates stagnant companies from those that scale successfully.

Elevating Professionalism Through Technology

Beyond the internal metrics of hiring speeds and profit margins, technology plays a pivotal role in how a company is perceived by its clients. The modern facility manager is sophisticated. They expect their cleaning vendors to be on the forefront of technology, providing data, transparency and seamless communication.

Woodley emphasizes that their partnership with TEAM Software has helped elevate the company’s brand. “TEAM has added the ability for our company to bring a level of professionalism to our customers, to bring fresh new ideas to our customers and a new way of looking at things,” she says.

Using industry-specific software signals to clients that the contractor is serious about accountability and efficiency. It demonstrates that the business is not just managing mops and buckets but is managing data, security and workforce logistics with enterprise-grade tools.

Integrated End-to-End Solutions

Perhaps the most significant advantage for Woodley Building Maintenance is the integration between their hiring tool and their core ERP. Because Hire by WorkWave and WinTeam are integrated, data flows seamlessly from one system to the other.

“We don’t spend a lot of time having to reenter or manipulate data from one software system to another,” Woodley says. “So it’s really helpful that they talk to one another and they’re able to just kind of provide that cohesive resource for U.S..”

For BSCs, data silos are a productivity killer. When systems talk to each other, it eliminates double-entry errors and provides a “single source of truth” for the entire organization.

Moving Forward With Confidence

Woodley Building Maintenance’s story illustrates a clear path to success for modern BSCs: embrace technology that is built specifically for your industry. By leveraging tools designed for the unique complexities of commercial cleaning — such as distributed workforces and tight labor markets — companies can turn potential weaknesses into competitive advantages.

Whether it is cutting onboarding time by half or gaining crystal-clear visibility into job costs, the right technology partner empowers businesses to focus on what matters most: delivering exceptional service and growing the bottom line.