ISS Austria employs around 7,000 people and runs roughly as many machines, from small handheld equipment to large ride-on scrubbers. At the Reinigungstag cleaning-industry conference in December 2025, Bernd Steinreiber, then Head of Operations Performance at ISS Austria and now Global Head of Cleaning at ISS, and Alexander Manafi, co-founder and CEO of ToolSense, showed how Excel, paper and WhatsApp became one digital process for the whole machine fleet. And what it is worth: 20% lower investment costs for new machines.

The talk was given in German. Quotes below are translated.

Many owners, many versions, no real time

Anyone at ISS Austria who needed to know something about a machine had to ask several people. Finance knew the leasing costs, purchasing knew the maintenance costs, operations knew whether a machine was broken, and the leasing bank knew how long a lease still had to run. Every one of those routes took time, and at the end of the day that cost resources.

Then there was the manual work. ISS Austria had a perfectly reasonable machine list in Excel, kept on the intranet, with around 400 data points per machine: cost centre, site, lease start. But often four people worked on it at once, saved copies to their desktops and uploaded them again. Nobody could be sure which version was right. Finance kept its own structures, every branch its own list. Formulas got deleted, files got moved, and before every quarterly review with finance the reconciliation started again.

The biggest gap, though, was real time. According to the list, a machine should be at a given site. Whether it actually was, and whether anyone was using it, nobody knew. When a contract ended and a new site started up, machines simply went missing between stocktakes.

We shouldn't be talking about labour hours and timekeeping, but about quality and KPIs. That is what customers want to talk about. But for that I need control over my machines.

Bernd Steinreiber · Global Head of Cleaning, ISS

A QR code on every machine

The solution starts at the machine. Every piece of equipment, from small devices to ride-on scrubbers, carries a QR code. Cleaning staff scan it with their own phone: no company phone, no app, no login. If the phone is set to Turkish or Arabic, the form appears in that language. The fault report goes straight to the service manager and from there to the right supplier, Kärcher for cleaning, for example, and an entirely different set of partners for food services. The whole chain runs in one system, and downtime has dropped sharply.

Inspections work the same way. Electrical tests, ladders, personal protective equipment: what used to live in Excel lists and paper forms now sits in one app, with direct communication to the suppliers. When a check falls due, the site manager gets a reminder in time, and when the labour inspector arrives, everything is documented.

Suppliers work in the same system

For Bernd Steinreiber the decisive difference is that all of ISS Austria's suppliers work directly in ToolSense. When a new machine is delivered, the supplier creates it: cost centre, delivery site, who signed for it. That spares internal resources, and for the first time everyone looks at the same data.

Every maintenance cost and quote per machine sits centrally in ToolSense and is managed by purchasing. The service manager sees which costs are coming next month, a battery replacement falling due, for instance, and can decide whether a repair is worth it or a replacement makes more sense. Maintenance appointments are agreed with suppliers directly through the system.

When someone reports a fault by QR code, the supplier sees in real time which machine it is and brings a replacement straight away. With its main suppliers, ISS Austria has agreed that a replacement is on site within 24 hours: reported at 3 p.m. today, back on site by 3 p.m. tomorrow at the latest. Because every step is recorded, it is clear when a report was passed on, how fast the supplier responded and when the repair was done. Partners can be compared, instead of hearing "I'll come tomorrow" for a week.

Connected across every brand

Younger machines without built-in IoT were retrofitted with IoT modules, and newer generations from the main supplier arrive connected. Instead of logging into three manufacturer portals because there are seven machines of one brand, three of another and eight of a third, the team works in one system with every machine. Cleaning robots such as Gausium and Pudu are connected too, so nobody needs ten apps.

The business case: 20% lower investment costs

ISS Austria spends a high six-figure sum on new machines every year. At the same time, the data shows how unevenly machines are used. Bernd Steinreiber gives an example: at one site there are eight machines. Five run far too much, three far too little. The overworked machines drive up maintenance costs, and because ToolSense also shows charging cycles, it becomes visible whether batteries are charged properly. The battery is the largest single cost on a machine; charge it badly and a two-year-old machine is quickly a write-off. So the team is trained, usage is spread out, and within days the data shows whether it worked.

The biggest lever sits before purchasing. When a site needs a machine, purchasing checks in ToolSense whether a machine of that type is available somewhere and looks at its usage. If a well-maintained, under-used machine is standing elsewhere, it is moved instead of a new one being bought. That is how ISS Austria cut its investment costs for machines by 20%. It frees money for staff training and equipment, and it helps sustainability too: every machine not bought is one less battery to dispose of.

Before, the site manager didn't know that there was a machine standing just over there that could actually do the job.

Bernd Steinreiber · Global Head of Cleaning, ISS

Quality becomes measurable as well. If a machine's usage suddenly drops, after a change of staff, for example, the site manager is alerted before the customer calls and can retrain the team. Each site manager sees only their own machines, with runtime, location, usage and charging cycles in one consistent format.

Lessons from the rollout

ToolSense is now in use in many other ISS countries as well. For companies that are serious about introducing a system like this, Bernd Steinreiber has clear advice:

  • Start with operations. Before the rollout, explain what the system does for the people on site. Simply ordering it triggers debates, and debates drag out every rollout.
  • Get everyone to the table. Finance, external accountants, purchasing, site management and suppliers, so that from day one everybody knows what to do.
  • Simplify processes first. Write down on sticky notes what happens today. Ten steps often become four.
  • Clean the data before it goes in. Stocktake and consistent formats first, then the import.
  • Fit IoT at delivery. A €7,000 machine costs €7,200 with an IoT module. Over a three-to-five-year lifecycle it pays for itself.
  • Hold suppliers to it. The process applies to everyone. A supplier who won't take part no longer has a seat at the table.
  • Define the goal. Seeing utilisation, cutting investment, finding machines again after a site closes: decide up front what the system should deliver.

If I feed bad data into the system, I end up with bad data in one system. Before I build something new, I first have to fix the old.

Bernd Steinreiber · Global Head of Cleaning, ISS

More time for customers and staff

For Bernd Steinreiber, facility management has two levers: the cleaning staff, and the site manager who makes sure the customer is satisfied and the contract is delivered. The system takes phone calls, chasing and supplier e-mails off the site manager's desk. Even if that is only half an hour a day, it is half an hour more for customers and staff. Cleaning staff helped develop the QR process and have taken to it, because a report no longer gets lost in a WhatsApp chat.

From digitising to automating

The next step, says Alexander Manafi, leads from digitising to automating. Today ToolSense shows the data and people decide. Next, an AI agent takes over the routine work, what ToolSense now calls the AI Fleet Assistant. It combines cost, service and IoT data, spots that a machine is barely used at one site and needed at another, and only asks the buyer whether to go ahead. One click, and the ticket to the supplier is created.