When you ask a rental software company for references, don’t necessarily limit your list to clones of your own operation. For example, if you own a $3 million tool rental company in California, speaking to other $3 million tool rental companies in California may not give you as much insight as speaking to rental companies who serve the same type of customers you do, or share your growth plans. On the flip side of the coin, if your rental operation is multi-regional, for example, it can be valuable to speak to a reference with multi-regional locations.
Here are some more tips that will help you purchase the right rental software:
Get the right people from your company involved in the evaluation process. Key employees who see the flow of business every day can often have insights as valuable as the owner’s.
Plan on putting in the time. The silver lining to a slow economy is that it gives rental companies a chance to fine-tune their operations, train their people and embed new technologies with minimal disruption to customers.
Place a value on the flexibility you�ll need in the future. Rental software is mission critical. It’s not an office machine; it’s the heartbeat of your business. And like a heart, it needs to be able to grow and change as your body of operations evolves. For example, can you move from a SaaS model to on-premise systems, or vice versa? How much growth will the system accommodate in terms of additional locations and/or heavy increases in transaction levels? Even if you start small, think big.
Seek out best practices. A vertical software vendor like Solutions that has a long track record of commitment to the rental industry has had the opportunity to see the good, bad and ugly of rental operations. As a result, our applications incorporate hundreds of best practices that optimize the rental process flows, control costs and ramp up the earning power of rental assets.
