By Grant Harrison

Most landscapers are technicians, not techies. They’re gifted in working with their hands and creating beautiful landscapes. They’re usually not so interested in the latest gadgets and apps. (I know some still using a flip phone, for goodness sake!) But technology has provided a vast array of tools to help business owners and their staff operate faster, easier and more efficiently. I am a landscaper, not a techie. But I’ve embraced the technology available to landscape contractors because I’ve seen the difference it makes.

I’ve put together a list of programs/apps that I recommend to landscapers. I’ve divided the content into six areas: health and safety, staff, operations, communication, continuing education and miscellaneous. I’ll talk about the first three in this blog and the last three in the next blog.

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Greenius – www.gogreenius.com – Greenius is an online suite of tools for training, onboarding & performance excellence, with over 50 videos for crews and supervisors and an extensive tailgate talk library for getting your crew equipment-trained and safety-ready.

STAFF

Evernote – www.evernote.com – Evernote allows you to capture and prioritize ideas, projects, and to-do lists, so nothing falls through the cracks. It can be loaded on multiple devices and the program syncs seamlessly between the devices when connected to the internet.

OPERATIONS

App Sheet – www.appsheet.com – This app building software is easy to use and can transform your workplace by helping you turn paper documents into an app on your employee's phones (ie. circle check form, accident reporting, etc.)

Fleetio – www.fleetio.com – This all-in-one fleet management app can help track your fleet and maintenance, regardless of fleet size, all in one place.

Google Suite – www.gsuite.google.com – This cloud-based software provides e-mail, calendar, document creation, document storage, and even video chat in one program that is easy to use and very cost effective.

Microsoft 365 – www.office.com – This is Microsoft’s answer to G-Suite. It has all the programs you’re used to in a cloud-based platform that is useable on all devices.

Grammarly – www.app.grammarly.com – Grammarly is an online grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection platform. This is one of my favorite apps and should be used by anyone who sends any sort of correspondence to customers.

Tom’s Planner – www.tomsplanner.com – This free app allows you to plan out your entire landscape business. It can be used for design-build projects or planning your maintenance business for the entire season. It gives you the ability to then share it with your team.

Microsoft Planner – www.task.office.com – This program is another option when it comes to planning your business using a Gantt chart format. Share and assign tasks to your team and see the progress they are making on all your projects.

Landscape Management Network – www.golmn.com – This landscape-specific software helps with budgeting, customer relationship management, estimates, mobile time tracking and much more.