Rental companies have a lot on their plate: meeting customer’s needs, maintaining fleets of equipment, and making sure that the equipment performs as required are just a few of their top priorities. Staying ahead of it all has always been a challenge. That's why the best rental companies have turned to technology to alleviate inventory issues, prevent costly equipment breakdowns, and increase profits. While their competition may have updated their customer database and billing systems, the most profitable operations are increasingly putting technology, especially telematics, to good use.
1) Increasing Billable Hours
Many companies bill at 8 hours of run-time per day. However, customers often end up using the equipment longer. Without telematics in place, there's no efficient way to know for sure just how long it was used.
Equipment management solutions like Oneview allow you to have complete visibility of your assets, so you can bill for the hours the equipment was actually used. If your customer does run it for longer than the allotted time, you can adjust the price of the rental accordingly. This way you can increase your bottom line and are holding customers accountable for the time it was used. Just be sure to include a statement to this effect in your rental agreement!
2) Automating Maintenance Procedures
Having visibility into equipment run-time also allows you to be automatically notified when a piece of machinery is not running at peak efficiency or when a trouble code pops up. Now your company can take care of small issues before they become big, expensive problems. That's the difference between corrective and preventative maintenance.
Having reliable, well-maintained equipment also ensures that the customer has a great experience.
3) Easily Retrieving Equipment
Every equipment rental outfit we speak with has a horror story of how a piece of equipment was misplaced by a customer. If you've got equipment tracking in place, you'll always have access to real-time location data for your tracked inventory. You can avoid spending hours tracking down equipment and can instead direct your employees to its exact location.
It goes without saying that equipment tracking can also eliminate loss from equipment being stolen from your lot or a customer's job site.
4) Providing Superior Customer Service
When a customer needs a piece of equipment, they usually want it right now. You need to know when your equipment is coming back in so you can turn it around to the next person. If you have a robust solution like Oneview, you can also track the status and location of your service and delivery trucks.
You'll be able to provide customers the ETA of a delivery en route, or let them know when they can expect a technician to arrive.
5) Improve Service Without Adding Expense
The best rental companies don’t just work harder than other companies; they work smarter.
One of many ways they work smart is on the service side. By having the right technology solution in place, a technician no longer needs to diagnose issues on-site. Instead, he or she can be alerted to the issue ahead of time and can then bring the correct parts and tools on the first trip out.
When you can respond efficiently to problems, you can confidently take on additional business and know that you'll have the time to support more equipment being out in the field.