Benefits STAEDEAN Rental Management Adds to D365 F&SCM as a Rental Software

It's no news that rental companies are embracing technology and software solutions to maintain the vast renting processes — from when a piece of rental equipment leaves the depot or workshop to the point it comes back to be rental-ready again.

Supporting this drive of technology, we at STAEDEAN specialize in empowering rental companies to automate their processes by providing a rental-specific functionality that’s built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform as the ERP.

While interacting with thousands of customers over 17 years, we’ve met multiple rental companies that are keen to invest in our rental solution but are first curious to understand how it adds value to the Standard Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management solution (previously known as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations).

In this article, you’ll discover the advantages you could gain from an ERP embedded rental software and the idea behind our rental solution.

Before getting into the details of the rental software’s value, let’s have a quick look at the ERP — Microsoft Dynamics 365 we’re discussing.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an ERP software application used by many companies to manage and integrate a business's finance, supply chain, operations, human resources, and so on in a unified database. It allows a company to efficiently manage and integrate different parts of their business within a single system.

Within the Dynamics 365 environment, various products are offered, some of which we at STAEDEAN leverage, are:

• Dynamics 365 Finance
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
• Microsoft Power Apps

Some of the processes with which the Standard Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (F&SCM) can support you are enhanced financial planning, process automation, quicker invoices, agile planning, efficient inventory management, and central location for information storage.

What benefits does rental software bring to Standard Dynamics 365 F&SCM?

With the plethora of capabilities the standard solution could provide, you must be wondering: "This looks great; why can't I just use the standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM solution for my rental processes?"

The answer is simple — The Standard Dynamics 365 F&SCM solution does not support rental processes.

To understand this a bit more, let’s compare a rental process to a wholesale process. The biggest difference between the rental and wholesale industry is — when you sell a product in the wholesale industry, you get the revenue, and the business process is short, as it is like a one-time transaction. However, in the rental business, you rent out a product and expect it to be returned after a certain period. This product or equipment will be rented out multiple times, and each time, it will follow a particular cycle before it's rental-ready again.

Here you can see an overview of what a typical rental process would look like, and the different stages a single piece of equipment generally follows:

While the Standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM is a great solution to be used out-of-the-box for companies in wholesale, manufacturing, finance, inventory, or project management, it cannot address the needs of a rental business.

The standard solution by itself does not support rental-specific processes such as equipment handling, rental invoicing, maintenance, spare parts forecasting, service, repair, and rental depreciation, all of which are crucial insights for anyone in the rental business.

These unique needs call for a solution that's specific to the rental business, wherein you can rent, track, return, service, repair, and efficiently maintain your rental fleet, in a unified platform — and a rental functionality built on the Dynamics 365 platform could rightly address this.

Rental businesses can benefit from such a solution by having their standard processes in place, managed by the Standard Dynamics 365 F&SCM solution, address rental needs, and further combine the functionalities available in both the solutions to improve their overall business process flow.

By deploying the same concept, we at STAEDEAN have designed a rental solution — STAEDEAN Rental Management. We utilize the existing functionalities offered within Dynamics 365 F&SCM as much as possible, such as master planning, inventory, resource planning, project management, and then add the rental solution.

With the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution, you can combine functionalities of both — the standard solution and the rental solution, to manage the entire rental lifecycle with ease.

Benefits assured from STAEDEAN Rental Management embedded in Dynamics 365 F&SCM:

Adding to what we’ve discussed before, there are some key advantages of picking a rental solution like STAEDEAN Rental Management built in the standard Dynamics 365 environment:

Targeted focus on rental processes: Since the standard solution takes care of all the financial and supply chain processes, you can focus only on a more relevant part of your entire business process — the rental-specific part. This results in a quick development process, unlike other rental ISVs who may have to evaluate all components of the software.

Continuous updates: The rental solution is continuously updated in line with Microsoft’s release schedule, ensuring customer data safety. Your software system will always be running on the latest version of the software solution.

Legislation and localization support: Standard Microsoft covers compliance for over 43 countries and supports 48 languages, making meeting any tax regulations easier. Most changes in legislation can be reused in STAEDEAN Rental Management, which means our customers don’t have to worry whether local requirements (for example, changes in VAT) can be met or not.

Easy embedding: If you are an existing user of Microsoft Dynamics 365 as an ERP (you already have a Dynamics 365 license), you can easily add STAEDEAN Rental Management to your solution with similar principles. It is fully aligned with the whole strategy of Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Swift scale-up: Customers using STAEDEAN Rental Management in combination with standard Dynamics 365 F&SCM can use other components of Dynamics 365. For example, you can use the Microsoft Power Apps to add on your rental solution, such as Mobility, or build an app of your own choice.

Utilize full cloud potential: By using STAEDEAN Rental Management, you can leverage all Azure's capabilities without any additional payments towards Azure subscriptions. This is because Dynamics 365 is a complete cloud solution hosted in Azure, and this benefit can be extended to the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution.

Coherent user experience: Since the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution is completely embedded in the Dynamics 365 software environment, there is no interface required, reducing the back and forth between the two solutions.

How STAEDEAN Rental Management seamlessly embeds in Dynamics 365 F&SCM

To be able to design and deliver a flexible and stable solution, we’ve utilized the functionalities of Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, which is ideal to hold a comprehensive solution that addresses the end-to-end processes of a rental business.

Being built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the standard ERP, STAEDEAN Rental Management leverages all the functionalities and capabilities of the standard solution.

What does that mean?

It means STAEDEAN Rental Management has the same look and feel as the standard solution, and the tools of Microsoft Dynamics 365 are used to make the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution more specific to the rental processes. This is beneficial as it avoids the hassle of constantly switching between two different software systems, saving time and effort.

To put it simply, STAEDEAN Rental Management is a solution built on top of the standard solution and just acts as another module within the Dynamics 365 software. It is fully embedded and tightly intertwined within the Dynamics 365 environment, and we take care of the entire embedding process.

Also, STAEDEAN Rental Management is written in the same code that Microsoft uses to write their base products. All of this is efficiently handled in the background to provide a seamless experience to the rental customers, that you won’t detect the difference between the standard solution and the rental application.

The STAEDEAN Rental Management solution suite is the rental-specific part, which includes asset management, rental management, service management, mobile, transport management, and business intelligence, to name a few.

Some of the functionalities that are part of the standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM solution: finance, accounts payable, accounts receivable, warehouse management, project management, manufacturing & assembly, human resource management (HRM), and fixed assets.

With STAEDEAN Rental Management, you’ll be able to experience the following, identical to the Standard Dynamics 365 F&SCM:

• User experience
• Fields
• Business processes
• User interface
• Look of the screens
• Overall layout
• Database
• Tables
• Dimensions
• Financial setup

The seamless embedding coupled with security compliance indicates transparency within the system, and all your data would reside in the same location.

Ultimately, STAEDEAN Rental Management is built by following the best practices and internal quality guidelines, tested and approved by Microsoft, making it a certified Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution.

Is STAEDEAN Rental Management the right rental solution for you?

While we firmly believe STAEDEAN Rental Management can excel as a software solution for rental businesses, you must evaluate whether it’s a right fit for you or not.

If you’re a rental company aiming to up the game with rental software that has all the capabilities of Standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM and more, then STAEDEAN Rental Management might be a choice for you.

The next step for you could be to explore the specific features the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution has to offer, so you can find out how to manage your rental operations with our solution.

You can check out the factsheet on the STAEDEAN Rental Management solution, which will provide you with useful information such as:

-      The major industries the solution can support
-      Specific solution features that can take care of your rental needs

This will enable you to make a decision today on the rental software that suits your business.