Time is always short. For all the new gadgets, technologies, ever more efficient ways of working, time is still the greatest enemy of your business. Rental, in particular, is a very reactive business, many transactions aren’t planned, but are reactions to something happening on your customer’s job site. Whether a trench started to fill up with water and a pump is suddenly needed, or bad weather has put them behind schedule and left them working double time to get back on track.
Automation is something that your rental systems should be able to help you with at many different levels within your rental business. Here are 5 quick examples that you might want to consider:
1. Automated Billing:
If you still check every individual invoice by hand or manually create them, then think about total automation. If your rental contract is right up front, then bills should be generated automatically, push any human validation back to the contract stage then let the billing take care of itself.
2. Pricing and Rental Rates:
Your system should be able to hold your rental rates whether they are general, location specific, customer specific or even job-site specific. There is no reason why your sales people and reservations teams should have to remember or lookup that information manually. Make sure your rates are automated to remove the possibility of error.
3. Automate Information: Equipment:
Lots of customers ask for specification sheets or safety information if you may have a policy that requires you provide safety information with your rental paperwork. Automate it! Get your rental system to email all that paperwork directly to your client without the salesperson or the client having to remember or to ask. You’ll save printing costs as well!
4. Automate Information: Reporting:
Whether it’s your customers asking for on-rent reports, or your internal teams needing information on average rates, automate! Your reporting solutions should be capable of scheduling reports to run and information be delivered in the right format by email. There is no reason for you to have to manually generate information for your customers or your own teams.
5. Calibration & Decals:
If equipment must be recalibrated regularly, if there are essential, examination or test certificates that must be in place, valid decals that must be up to date then let your rental system keep track of all of these pieces of information for you and automatically prevent allocation of equipment which fails any of these tests. Take it a stage further and let your system automatically print the up to date calibration and decal data straight onto your dispatch paperwork so your customers can see just how efficient you are!
