CAM Property Services

CAM Property Services gains control over operations and achieves record profits with Aspire 

Hindered by their software’s inability to track revenue and invoice clients efficiently,  CAM Property Services was over $800,000 behind on invoicing with millions of dollars in uncollected payments.

At a glance

With Aspire, the company has achieved the following results:

• Attained record revenue growth of 14% 
• Cut invoicing time from 45 to 15 days
• Decreased accounts receivable amount by 75% and increased cash flow

The background

CAM Property Services is based in Torrance, CA, and provides day porter, landscape maintenance, steam cleaning, janitorial, and property repair and maintenance services to the commercial real estate industry. Omnia Pacific Construction is CAM’s construction company, providing commercial build-outs, ADA consulting and remediation, and trash chute installation and repair. 

CAM used a software solution for over seven years but eventually outgrew it. In 2018, after shopping around, they landed on another software, which promised to be a single platform solution for accounting, operations, and sales.

“It seemed like a feasible solution, but it wasn't,” CAM CEO and president David A. Herrera says. “As soon as we transferred our data, it broke our business. It was double-billing people but wasn't sending invoices. You name it; it happened—to the degree that we were angering long-term clients,” he recalls. “It was a very painful 18 months before things settled down.”

Jamie Scheel, IT consultant, agrees. “Contracts were all over the place—some that weren’t renewed, some that weren’t started. It was just awful,” Scheel says. “I was finding jobs we hadn't billed for months, and nobody could use the program to determine what was wrong.”

The solution

Seeking a system that could grow with their company, Herrera heard a radio advertisement for Aspire and explored how the platform could solve their missing data, contracts, and payment collection issues.

In 2020, Aspire’s implementation team spent six weeks onboarding the CAM team, guiding them as they moved their data into the platform.

Scheel says that data import was the biggest test because the CAM team had disastrous results with their previous data import.

The results

John Salido leads CAM’s janitorial and day porter service lines, representing over a quarter of the business’s total revenue.

Salido generated one P&L statement in 18 months on the previous software.

He now has immediate insight into where his P&Ls stand at all times. He can follow trends in janitorial revenue, understand the variables he can control in operations or production, and view his bottom-line figures. Direct costs are automatically allocated to each work ticket, and Salido reviews performance daily in real time.

“If we wanted to further drill into P&L, down into individual single account reports, we have insight into every single transactional item, which is very helpful. This allows us to forecast trends and see expenditures,” Salido says.

Improve client communication with site audits

“From an operations standpoint, we’re focused on ensuring our clients know that we have a system in place that will allow us to generate reports on the cleanliness of their property or highlight any risks that need mitigating. It's a communication driver between CAM Property Services, our clients (the property manager), and their client (the landlord),” Salido explains.

Streamline client invoicing

With Aspire’s aging report, CAM can easily review overdue invoices, accounts receivable, or unused credit memos by periodic date changes. “As far as the invoicing side in Aspire, it’s so much better. If a customer wants an account statement, we can quickly run and send reports to show what they've paid,” says Jazmin Vega, accounting supervisor. 

Paying vendors has also improved since Aspire provides checks and balances to ensure vendor invoices match the services or materials supplied.

CAM can now pay suppliers on time and generate accurate P&L statements by the 10th or 12th of each month rather than 30+ days after month-close.

Record-high profit margins

The company’s total revenue for CAM Property Services and Omnia Pacific broke double-digit growth for the first time since 2007, growing 14% post-pandemic.

On the client side—CAM Property Services hadn’t collected $4 million from clients when Roger Sur, CAM’s CFO, joined the company in early 2020. 

“Our average AR is less than $1 million, and money flows,” he says. “(Issues with) compliance and sending out invoices are eliminated.

“It just made my life and everybody else’s life at the company easier,” he adds. 

Improved performance tracking

Aspire has helped CAM deliver quality cleaning and customer service to their clients, which shows in the numbers. Herrera says the company’s account retention rate is the best in eight years, and in 2022, they beat their attrition goal for the first time.

“In a meritocracy, you do the work, you get rewarded for output and results, and Aspire allows us to track that,” he says. “Transparency is a big deal for people who want to work in a culture and workplace where they’re rewarded for their efforts. With Aspire, we can showcase their performance from day one.”