[Corporate Profile] Copesan’s Caring Attitude

At the Wisconsin corporate headquarters of Copesan, the word "Care" has taken on significant meaning over the last eight years. Since the name "Copesan" is an acronym — "Coordinated Pest Management and Sanitation" — it should come as no surprise that the folks there have also adopted "care" as an acronym — "Consistency, Accountability, Responsiveness and Effectiveness."

Those four little words are the big backbone of what the 45-year-old pest management alliance has been doing successfully over the years, according to Jon Bain, the organization’s director of marketing. "Our market research and quality assurance efforts showed that those were the top four features that our clients and prospects need and look for in pest management service. Living up to these client expectations has been our primary objective and we’ve been successful in doing it."

Bain says Copesan’s "care" approach is designed to make life easier for its clients’ facility personnel. "It minimizes their concerns related to pest problems. It saves them time and money in variety of ways. And it makes their companies and facilities more competitive and profitable with a pest-free environment," he said.

BEGINNING OF CARE. Based in the Milwaukee, Wis., suburb of Brookfield, Copesan serves as a leading example of an alliance of regional pest management companies in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. In all, those partner companies have about 600 service locations in this part of the globe. According to Bain, these companies banded together to sell their services to regional, national and international commercial clients at competitive prices. The companies needed to develop strategies to compete with firms that had developed into nationwide players during the mid 1950s and such an alliance, they believed, could effectively attract business from the nation’s food processing, health care, hospitality, property management, chain restaurant and retail store industries.

"That was a correct assumption, because once Copesan was launched, it thrived," Bain said.

The group’s emphasis on care was intensified when it developed its Signature Care Program in 1995. Several years later the group introduced its Prescription Care and Culinary Care programs, as well as their Total Advantage Program, Bain said.

Signature Care is an IPM program intended to meet the unique pest management needs of the food-processing industry. Copesan implemented a mandatory, additional certification program for its own technicians that surpassed any state requirements. Bain explains that it specifically trains and certifies specialists to service the food-processing industry and takes verified training to a higher level. To become a Certified IPM Specialist in the program, service personnel must go through extensive technical training and pass a rigorous written exam. The test covers IPM as it relates to food processing, regulatory concerns and contract inspections. It also covers the standards of the Signature Care program itself. Annual education is required to keep the IPM Specialists abreast of the latest developments in pest management and the food-processing environment.

"The Signature Care Program has brought in new business consisting of several of the ‘food giants’ for Copesan over the last five years or so," Bain said. "We had gone head-to-head with other larger and competing pest control companies but were chosen because of our ‘care’ philosophy, our technical expertise and the geographic coverage of our service locations that we provide."

Prescription Care is another IPM program. Bain explains that this one is specifically for health-care facilities. It’s designed to protect the environment and reputation of these facilities by utilizing specialized and verified training of Copesan IPM technicians to ensure that critical health-care pest management needs are met.

"The health-care industry has high standards when it comes to pest management," he says.

The reasons are obvious. Health-care facilities are highly sensitive environments and require special knowledge and expertise.

"Prescription Care also incorporates several communications and documentation tools to facilitate information exchange and monitor our performance," Bain says. The program, along with Copesan’s other "care" programs, provides basic and advance training sessions for clients, a program manual, past sighting memos, service reports and quality assurance audits.

Copesan’s Culinary Care program was designed to serve the pest management needs of the foodservice industry. Prevention and management of pest infestations in foodservice establishments are critical to restaurants wishing to keep their customers. The program’s IPM emphasis incorporates inspection, evaluation, sanitation, education, mechanical control, cultural control and the use of pest management materials only when required and practical.

The group’s Total Advantage Program, for the grocery industry, is designed to "care for" their reputations, products and environments through IPM. Cope-san’s IPM approach recognizes the industry’s concerns for unadulterated products, reduced chemical exposure, long-term pest solutions and convenience. "Our goal is to effectively prevent and manage pests with the most advanced technology and with minimal disruption to the industry’s grocery operations," Bain said. "To do this, designated personnel in each facility are trained in the basic principles of pest management, pest biology and sanitation."

THE FUTURE. Copesan has recognized that the changing marketplace means adopting new initiatives and successfully positioning itself against the competition. "So, in the areas of documentation and providing information on a quicker and more timely basis, we’ve developed our own proprietary electronic data collection software and are now tweaking it and in the process of rolling it out," Bain explains. "We’re using the strength of our organization in putting together our collective resources in getting this going. It will significantly benefit our partners individually as well our corporate headquarters operation."

After 45 years in business, Copesan and its partner companies looks to the future with confidence, Bain said. "We remain strong under the leadership of Tom Moore, the company’s president, Sprague Pest Control’s Alfie Treleven, the current board chairman and our directors, representing our partner organizations."

The author is a freelance writer from Milwaukee, Wis., who has been reporting on the pest control industry for many years. He can be reached via e-mail at jfox@pctonline.com.