Corona is not fun of course, for anyone nor for our industry of pest management. PestScan observes several developments in the pest control industry. For example, our customers are feeling the impact of corona on their work. Where many companies are dealing with reduction of work, we see that companies working in hygiene have become enormously busier.
Reduction of 30
First of all, we heard that during the first Lock down in March 2020 pest controllers could no longer enter many businesses. For example, the hospitality industry was closed and it was also difficult to gain access at many institutions. As a result, we saw the use of PestScan decrease by 30%. This meant that the amount of data entered was suddenly 30% lower. Of course, these percentages were very different from company to company because pest controllers who come primarily to hospitality establishments were hit much harder than PestScan customers who work more in other industries. We see that these figures are the same for each of the 20-plus countries where we have customers. Because many pest management companies work with contracts, the impact is not felt as much in the wallet. Although their clients were also trying to save money by having contracts frozen, cancelled or asking for deferred payments.
More complex work
The impact of corona on the work in pest control is also that the work has become more complex. For example, in addition to their regular work, the pest controller also suddenly had to approach all their customers to ask if they could come by and if and when someone would be there to open the door. And even though they needed someone to come in, they were not allowed to have any contact because of the risk of contamination. Also, signing off on the visit and hygiene measures during the visit made the pest manager’s job more complex and, more importantly, time consuming.
The impact of corona on confidence
What we see is that the arrival of corona has put a big dent in national confidence. As a result, the future no longer feels so certain. Of course, this is quite understandable, especially in times of new measures where nobody knows how the economy will recover. And of course, there will be companies that will go bankrupt and these could also be customers of yours. Still, we at PestScan believe that the market will recover completely and that these are times of opportunity for those who are open to them.
The influence of corona on PestScan
The influence of corona on PestScan is not very significant. As PestScan, we only have to deal with one company that asked to temporarily stop using PestScan, with the request to come back later. By the way, this was also a customer who had just started using PestScan. Furthermore, we see that the growth of PestScan continues unabated. We keep track of our growth in a graph and the growth line has become steeper rather than weaker. Although of course we will never know what our growth would have been like in normal times, as we see that the pest management world is rapidly digitizing. What we do notice as PestScan is that at times when new measures become known the growth suddenly stops. At those moments it seems that the uncertainty of the market makes it harder to make choices. However, at other times we see that this standstill is overtaken again.
Investing in your future
As a company, you can invest in automation right now, so that you can do your work even easier and better in the future. You may lose a customer due to bankruptcy, but gain one because your work has become noticeably more professional. With PestScan’s digital logbook, you get rid of the increasing complexity, by streamlining your business processes, administration and information supply.
In short, we can conclude that corona has had a major impact on pest control. In addition, we see that corona also offers opportunities, such as starting with a digital logbook from PestScan.
We are happy to tell you more about this. Do you get in touch with us?