DynaRent for Dynamics 365: An Honest Review of To-Increase’s Rental Solution

The equipment rental industry faces dynamic challenges with concepts like Industry 4.0, cloud-based IT, and digital transformation. Rental companies must consider investing in end-to-end, robust, and comprehensive software systems that sets them up for success.

With nearly two decades of global experience, we at STAEDEAN have assisted numerous rental and manufacturing companies in streamlining, automating, and enhancing their business operations with DynaRent, a rental software solution embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management.

In this article, we will share an unfiltered review of our rental solution's features, benefits, pricing, and limitations so you can decide whether it is a good fit for your organization.

By the end of this article, you will know:

• What is DynaRent for Dynamics 365 F&SCM?
• Features of DynaRent for D365 F&SCM
• Benefits of using our rental solution
• Pricing of DynaRent for D365 F&SCM
• Limitations of the DynaRent solution
• Who is DynaRent for D365 F&SCM a good fit for?

What is STAEDEAN’s DynaRent for Dynamics 365 F&SCM?

DynaRent is an end-to-end, cloud-based, rental-specific solution embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management. It leverages the full Microsoft technology stack and offers a single source of truth for the entire rental lifecycle from lead to cash.

As a straightforward solution, it manages your financial, operational, and administrative processes, saving costs and effort.

Here is an overview of how DynaRent seamlessly embeds within D365 F&SCM, offering a powerful combination for rental companies to work on a single, unified platform.

Key features of DynaRent for D365 F&SCM

The DynaRent solution suite offers a wide range of features, some of which are:

1. Rental and fleet management

DynaRent can manage simple tool rentals to complex project-driven rentals. It takes care of all the stages of your equipment’s lifecycle: pre-rental checks, on-rent, off-rent, workshop, and rental-ready. The solution manages multiple revenue streams, rental/sales kits, bulk items, and serialized inventory.

You can manage your fleet across several legal entities to maximize utilization, reduce downtime, and increase profitability. You have visibility and control over all sites of your equipment due to unified processes.

2. Graphical dashboard

DynaRent has a graphical dashboard with an intuitive user interface that allows relevant users to see a visual summary of each equipment work order comprehensively, resulting in efficient planning. You can see the relevant maintenance, transport tasks, and utilization for each piece of equipment for better planning and scheduling.

3. Service management

Equipment maintenance in DynaRent runs efficiently on a comprehensive, template-based work order system to carry out and manage all kinds of service tasks to reduce equipment downtime.

It offers the following maintenance plans:

i) Scheduled maintenance, such as time-based maintenance and consumption-based maintenance.
ii) Unscheduled maintenance, such as corrective, delayed, or emergency maintenance.

4. Delivery, returns, and transport management

DynaRent can accurately manage the picking and shipping of rental orders, monitor mass returns, execute quality checks, and report damages. You can also temporarily deliver and return equipment to workers on-site with the rental shop functionality.

The graphical transport planning tools ensure efficient delivery of internal and external equipment, with which you can streamline planning, logistics, and execution across depots.

What are the benefits of using our rental solution: DynaRent?

1. Leverages capabilities of D365 as an embedded solution

DynaRent is embedded within Dynamics 365 F&SCM and follows the D365 business logic. The solution is certified for Microsoft Dynamics and follows the monthly upgrade policy of Microsoft, ensuring your rental solution always runs on the latest version, reducing maintenance hassles.

If you are an existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM user or looking to implement D365 F&SCM, you can easily add greater value to your rental-specific processes with the DynaRent solution.

2. Offers a quick time to value

With a template-based approach, DynaRent offers standardized business processes to support different functions in your rental business, so you can quickly achieve operation-wide consistency. The time to value and complexity is decreased, allowing you to benefit from pre-built rental-specific processes that take care of your current and future business requirements.

3. Reduces time, effort, and costs

By gaining 360-degree visibility into all your assets and end-to-end process automation, you reduce the manual effort and time required to do the same process. It avoids the complexity of manual integrations and offers easy user adoption with uniform systems.

With simplified processes, you have guided procedures to model business processes aligned with your organization's strategy, allowing you to be operational faster and keep costs down.

4. Maximizes asset utilization

You can minimize service gaps with insights into equipment availability, status, and location to schedule rental orders and ensure on-time deliveries. The solution helps ensure your assets are always fit for hire, with timely repairs, checks, and upgrades, quickening the entire rental process and reducing downtime.

You can also monitor unauthorized usage based on the movement of your assets and invoice customers based on the equipment's actual usage, ultimately maximizing asset utilization.

5. Easily scalable with the latest innovation

We constantly aim to enhance the DynaRent solution with new features and add-ons to stay ahead of the rental market trends and customer demands. You can access various valuable add-ons to DynaRent, allowing for greater business agility and rapid expansion:

• Get analytical insights into strategic, tactical, and operational KPIs of assets with Analytics for Rental and Lease
• Access data remotely and empower field engineers with the DynaRent Mobile App
• Offer your customers information on their rented equipment and usage with the DynaRent Customer Portal
• Manage your entire lead-to-cash processes in one location with DynaRent for D365 Sales

How much does DynaRent for D365 F&SCM cost?

The final cost of DynaRent depends on the size of your business and several other variables. The DynaRent license structure is a 1:1 ratio with the Dynamics 365 F&SCM licenses. The price for the first 20 users will be $20,000 to $30,000 annually. For additional users, the price will vary depending on the user type: full users, activity users, team member users, or device users.

The price of the DynaRent software implementation is typically estimated after a high-level fit-gap analysis. To offer an estimate, the cost of implementation could begin at $500,000. However, please note that several factors influence the final price.

You can contact us to know how pricing would work for your rental business.

To know more about the cost of DynaRent in detail, click here.

Limitations of DynaRent for D365 F&SCM

1. Works with a single ERP

Since our DynaRent solution is built within and embedded in Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM, you can only use the DynaRent solution after adopting D365 F&SCM. It is not available on Business Central or any other ERP platforms. However, we can help you add DynaRent with D365 F&SCM to your existing parent ERP by integrating multiple ERP systems.

2. Predictive maintenance isn’t available

Predictive maintenance uses historical and real-time data from various parts of your equipment or machinery to detect possible defects or issues in your fleet before it fails. While DynaRent can fully support corrective and preventive maintenance plans, it currently does not have an analytical engine to calculate the maintenance predictions of your equipment. However, we plan on working towards the solution, so be on the lookout for our updates.

3. Limited capabilities to support car rental and financial leasing

DynaRent can easily manage the end-to-end lifecycle of your equipment rentals. However, the solution offers limited support for car rental and financial leasing as it cannot support the specific financial transactions around car rental and is not built for financial institutions. Nevertheless, it's possible to configure leaseback contracts (including term payments and term postings) if you have an agreement with a financial institution to pay the lease back. You can also receive business objects related to fixed assets as purchase orders.

Who is DynaRent for D365 F&SCM a good fit for?

The DynaRent solution is a good fit for any rental business that is:

• Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM
• Planning to migrate or adopt Dynamics 365 F&SCM
• Looking for a cloud-based, end-to-end solution
• Considering consolidating all their operations on a single platform

The solution supports multiple industries, some of which are construction equipment, machinery, heavy equipment, crane rentals, high-tech manufacturers, medical device OEMs, tool rentals, and manufacturers renting out through 'product-as-a-service.'

If your long-term business goal is to adopt pre-configured, single technology efficiently and seamlessly, DynaRent might be the right choice for you.

However, if you do not want to consolidate your technology with one ISV and have no plans to invest in D365 F&SCM as an ERP, the solution might not be apt for your organization.

What’s next for you?

We hope you have a better understanding of our DynaRent solution after reviewing it from all angles. You could explore more about our rental solution by downloading the DynaRent solution factsheet.

If you have any questions or are interested in learning more about DynaRent, feel free to contact our experts. We’d love to talk with you and guide you on the best approach to digitally transform your rental business with an end-to-end software solution.