Breer Gebäudedienste, a building-cleaning company with 125 years of history, replaced a near-empty Excel table with ToolSense and now has a top-quality data foundation, plus an app that lets managers see where every machine is from anywhere, including the home office.
Breer is one of the oldest companies of its kind in Germany, with records going back to 1897 and still owner-led by the Breer family in its fifth generation. Ralph Biedermann is managing director of the Heidelberg branch, fully independent since 1992, where he has worked since 2007. The business is a high-end cleaning service provider with long customer relationships, covering the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region around Mannheim and Heidelberg.
The starting point
For years Breer had searched for proper software to manage its machine fleet, visiting trade fairs and reviewing many options. Most were manufacturer-built: good for that brand's products, but poor or impossible for adding machines from other makers, and Breer didn't want its software to lock it to a single manufacturer. The status quo was a classic Excel table listing objects and which machine was inside, with one sub-field for whether the electrical safety inspection had been done. That was it. The table was hard to maintain and rarely current; visiting an object or clearing one out often turned into a surprise about which machines were actually there.
Why ToolSense
ToolSense arrived almost by chance, via a cold-outreach email near the start of the pandemic that, as Biedermann put it, hit the nail on the head. The deciding factor was openness: an asset management system that treats all manufacturers and all equipment equally, that he can configure to his own ideas, attaching the images and assets he wants. He praised the ease of use, the mobile app, the contact with a young, dynamic team that's always reachable, and the steady stream of new capabilities added over the prior twelve months.
It's a completely open system; all manufacturers, all equipment are treated equally. And I can build the system a bit according to my own ideas. That's something I liked very much.
Ralph Biedermann · CEO (Operations), Breer Gebäudedienste
Operational impact
The headline change is data quality: after initially starting at the wrong end and going in circles, Breer now has a top data foundation. With the app, Biedermann can open ToolSense and see where any given machine is, which matters especially for remote work and for object managers in the home office. Onboarding was made easier by Excel-based bulk upload of base data; importing all customers at the push of a button he called sensational. His advice to others rolling out maintenance and machine management: take it calmly, don't apply pressure, name a process owner to enter the data, and think upfront about how to cluster machines, which subgroups to create, and which images to attach. Asked whether he'd return to Excel for fleet management, his answer was clear: not in this context.
What's next
Biedermann expects significant change in building cleaning, not only machines moving toward robotics and autonomous work, but also the back-office systems: ERP, document management, and more, which many firms still lack. He describes cleaning as a craft trade where the work is solid but the background processes often remain very manual. With rising cost pressure in the industry, including minimum-wage dynamics, he and ToolSense see equipment management as an area that was long neglected and where digitalization can unlock efficiency and savings without it hurting.
