EXECUTIVE REPORT
The Rental Expert program was developed for hirers serving the event industry.
Software from space
Texas-based Point of Rental Software offers a wide range of hire management systems and is now targeting the UK market.
Point of Rental Software has specialised in developing systems for hire businesses since 1983. Its knowledge of this market derives from the fact that, a year before the company was established, its founders had opened a hire shop in Texas, having previously worked for NASA, writing programs to control lunar module landings. Not satisfied with the functionality of existing hire software, they developed their own, and soon realised the potential demand from other hire businesses.
Rental Essentials is a purely cloud-based system.
In June 2016, the company became known in the UK, following its acquisition of Higher Concept Software, the Reading-based developer of the popular Syrinx
system, giving an entry into the European market and bringing the number of products in its portfolio to four, each targeted at operators in different sizes of hire companies serving various markets.
Rental Essentials is a cloud-based product, designed to enable any hire business, and particularly smaller ones, to set up a software management system quickly. As well as handling key day-to-day transactions, it offers functionality such as collection and delivery tracking for drivers, plus the ability to add photos of equipment damage. Point of Rental’s Director of Sales, Greg Bennett, told EHN that Essentials can be used by small-scale organisations, such as churches and charities, to manage their inventories of equipment like projectors and sound systems, so that their location and status can be monitored accurately.
Also available is Rental Expert, developed specifically for hirers in the events industry and similar markets. As well as offering fleet management, dispatch and route planning, mobile working and attributes like apps for calculating the appropriate size of marquee for a function, Expert can incorporate RFID integration to track linens and other bulky party items. Tags are sewn into the fabrics so that, when they are returned to the depot, an RFID reader scans them to identify each item in one go, updating the inventory and giving greater efficiency.
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Greg Bennett states that another of Expert’s well-liked functions is the ability to monitor items in an order by budget, which can help wedding and party organisers who have to work with fixed resources. The system can operate in a completely paperless manner, facilitating the process (and saving trees) if a succession of changes are made to the customer’s order. This can also make it easy for personnel to make alterations in the field, with the main system updating automatically.
Essentials can incorporate a Customer Rewards system, which manages the allocation and tracking of loyalty points that customers can use against future transactions. This function is also available in the company’s flagship product, Rental Elite, a customisable enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system designed for managing large and varied hire fleets, typically those belonging to multi-depot and multi-national companies. It can integrate with Microsoft Dynamics to provide business analytics and accounting functions, and can be used with other management packages. A web- based dashboard display has recently been added, with the left-hand side showing information for the task in hand, the right-hand side providing a searchable list of reports, and the central area indicating selected data that might be required throughout the working day.
Point of Rental Software has recently launched Rental eSign, an electronic signature service which, the company says, requires a small setup payment and a packaged monthly transaction fee rather than a charge per transaction. The popular Syrinx package continues to be developed, with the latest additions including a range of apps such as Driver, which is designed to enable delivery personnel to receive job details, record their completion, capture signatures and upload photos of equipment via a smartphone or tablet. Syrinx Workshop allows remote technicians to process tasks using a hand-held device, while Mobile has been developed for remote field-based employees.
A new dashboard display has been added to Rental Elite. • 0118 956 9577
www.point-of-rental.co.uk
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