Are you in the equipment rental business? If your answer is yes, then you are well-versed with the challenges this sector faces. The equipment rental industry not only faces the common challenges that all businesses face like shrinking margins, increasing competition and customer demands but they also face some industry-specific challenges. These include the dynamic nature of rental equipment demands, the need to balance their portfolio of equipment with a mix of assets, operations, service, and maintenance, logistics, as well as the need to monitor the assets for proper use.
That is why you need an equipment rental solution that can help you boost your business and grow it to the next level. Here are the six features that you need to look for:
Integrate with your ERP: While a specialistic equipment rental solution that has a great suite of features sounds like the ideal solution, you cannot reap the benefits until it integrates with your ERP seamessly. Look for a solution that offers you a host of features and can sync with your ERP to avoid siloed information, confusing updates, rework, and errors on the operational and financial side.
Lifecycle management: In a business where your equipment plays a vital role, it is crucial to be able to track the lifecycle of your assets from the business (operational) and financial (commercial) aspects at all times. This means not only keeping track of the value of the asset but also the aspects like maintenance, availability, and location.
Track demand and availablity of equipment: Unlike a conventional inventory management feature where the stocks are sold and restocked, the assets in your business are rented out, and you need to keep track of your rental availability. You need an equipment rental solution that can provide you with real-time data about the item location, rental agreements, maintenance requirements, and more to help you manage your rental assets. You can use the inputs from this feature to create rental order creation, work order release, and plan the logistics.
Pre-rental work orders: Before the delivery of an asset to a location, you will need to carry out a host of activities. These activities could include maintenance, the collection of the asset, preparation for delivery (removing certain parts, packing it, changing some parts for transportation, etc.). If your equipment rental software solution allows you to create pre-rental work orders, your teams will be able to carry out these tasks efficiently.
Monitor and report on real-time: In the equipment rental business, you need dashboards that have real-time data to help the team keep track of the rental assets, services, and other details. The team can leverage information like the orders to picked and delivered reports on utilization, item location, and availability. These dashboards and reports would need to have real-time updates and available to multiple people to enable monitoring and reporting.
Automatic credit and bill: Your rental solution should have the means to generate invoices on time as per the agreed pricing and the rental period so that that collection can happen on time. It should also allow the generation of invoices in advance or arrears. What is more, it should also have the means to credit fees if the equipment is returned ahead of time, and the customer has paid in advance.
STAEDEAN Rental Management is an equipment rental solution that offers the complete suite of features, which include lifecycle management, work order view, dashboards, graphical planboards, IoT, mobility, BI, automatic credit and bill, and seamless integration with ERP. Download the eBook below to learn more about what to look for in an equipment rental solution.
Michiel Toppers
