Briefing Your Board on a Robot Lease: A One Page Plan

How do you brief a board on a robot lease in one page?

Start with the problem the board already feels: floor care hours that stop short of the building, and a night shift nobody can reliably staff. A one page brief answers that problem in five blocks, in this order: today's floor care hours, the coverage gaps those hours leave, the lease term, what the site assessment covers, and the metrics you will read at 90 days.

Fill each block with your figures and leave the placeholders visible until you have them. A board can approve a well scoped lease, but it tends to resist one whose assumptions are buried in an appendix. Keep the whole argument on one side of paper, so the discussion stays on the decision rather than the document.

The sections below work through each block, add the market context a board will ask about, and close with the questions worth settling before the vote.

What does the market data tell the board?

According to the International Federation of Robotics, global sales of professional service robots rose 24% to almost 250,000 units in 2025, as reported in its World Robotics 2026 service robot executive summary. Transportation and logistics led by application with 117,500 units, and professional cleaning ranked third. The summary also says demand for professional cleaning robots expanded strongly.

Treat these figures as context, not proof for your site. The IFR bases its counts on a sample of 238 service robot suppliers and advises against comparing figures across different World Robotics reports, so do not stitch years into a trend line. The material we checked gives no 2025 cleaning unit count, so leave that number off the page rather than estimate it.

The labor side is just as useful. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counts about 2.45 million janitor and building cleaner jobs in 2024, projects 2% growth from 2024 to 2034, which it describes as slower than average for all occupations, and expects about 351,300 openings per year. The May 2024 median wage was $17.27 per hour, against $23.80 for all occupations. Those openings form the backdrop to every unfilled night shift on your list, and a board will ask what happens when a slot stays empty.

What do today's floor care hours actually show?

Begin with the hours you already pay for. Record the weekly floor care hours [TODAY'S WEEKLY FLOOR CARE HOURS], split by shift, and mark which ones fall overnight. Add the hours scheduled but never worked, because an empty slot still leaves the floor dirty.

Then state the gap as a number the board can check: [UNFILLED SHIFTS PER WEEK] across [ZONE COUNT] zones, covering [SQUARE FEET] of floor. A gap stated in shifts and square feet is easier to approve than one described as floors that look tired.

Do not bury the baseline in a footnote. If the board cannot see today's hours, it cannot judge what a leased unit adds tomorrow.

Where are the coverage gaps, and how wide are they?

A coverage gap is any zone or time window your crew does not clean to standard. Name each one, its size and the hours it goes uncleaned. In a large facility the list often includes a main concourse, a receiving area and a corridor that gets attention only on weekends, which is where large facility coverage problems tend to hide.

Decide how many units the gap needs before you write the number. A phased start is often easier to defend: begin with one leased unit on one zone, prove it against the metrics below, then widen. Name the zone, the start date and the review point on the page, so the board sees a decision with an exit rather than a commitment to the whole building.

How should the three year term appear on the page?

Show the term as a line item, not a footnote. Service Robot Co. leases robots on a three year term, with one fixed lease payment quoted after a site assessment. We are OEM neutral, so the same brief can compare units from more than one manufacturer before anyone signs, and we handle finance, deployment, integration, training and service in one engagement.

Terms vary across the market. As of October 2026, Tennant's T16 AMR flyer lists lease minimum terms of 36 or 60 months, with billing starting after the customer accepts the leasing company's terms and the end user license agreement. Kärcher's UK Just Add Water terms describe a 36 month installment schedule that bundles warranty, servicing and consumables, and they say a quote is not a finance offer and that financing carries additional service, administration and facility fees. Caddy and Navi both describe lease quotes of 2, 3 or up to 5 years through third-party financiers.

A three year term is therefore a common option, not an industry rule. The board's real question is what the payment includes, so list the fees, service, consumables and warranty beside the term, and ask every vendor to do the same.

What must the site assessment establish before the vote?

RobotLAB states that every Cleanfix S170 Navi deployment starts with a site assessment by an automation specialist who maps the facility and identifies operating zones. That is the baseline to expect from any vendor. The output should include a floor map, the zones and their edges, the traffic the robot will meet, the charging locations and the shift windows it will run in.

Ask to see that output before the vote, because the lease number should follow the floor you actually have. A lease quoted after the assessment carries more weight with a board than an estimate written from a floor plan nobody walked.

Which metrics go on the 90 day review?

Set the review metrics before the first unit runs, so nobody can move the goalposts later. Print the target next to each one on the page, and agree who reports the number.

• Overnight zone runs completed against scheduled runs, target [TARGET PERCENT]
• Unplanned stops and the hours each took to clear, target [TARGET HOURS]
• Unfilled shifts covered by the robot, target [TARGET SHIFTS]
• Staff hours moved from cleaning to other work, logged weekly, target [TARGET HOURS]
• Exceptions escalated to your team, by type, target [TARGET COUNT]
• Response time on each reported fault, target [TARGET HOURS]

Who answers when a unit stops?

A board will ask who fixes a unit at 2 am. Put one name and one number on the page, state whether the response is on site or remote, and ask any integrator, including us, for response times in writing for each fault class and for the spare unit arrangement.

Service Robot Co. is a full service commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network. One partner, one number: the company that leases the robot is also the one that answers the call, and that single accountable contact is often the detail that carries the vote.