When the COO of a nationwide provider of roadway safety equipment grew tired of watching empty trucks coming and going from one of the company’s biggest locations, he knew it was time to make some changes.
The company was growing rapidly, and business was good, but the inefficiencies were stacking up. With an inventory of over two million rental products for road construction projects – including road and trenching plates, shoring devices, and other specialized safety and traffic control equipment – tracking equipment delivery and pick-ups was a challenge.
The Problems
- Over two million fixed assets with no way to track profit margin by asset
- Ineffective utilization tracking left thousands of products on-site past their contract end
- Needed an efficient dispatch and route coordination system to reduce unnecessary travel
- Invoicing needed to capture complex tiered pricing structure and one-time surcharges
- Manual inventory tracking made traceability of serialized parts nearly impossible
- Need for tracking of re-rental materials including cones and signage
- Did not want to overspend on pricey top-tier ERP but needed a customized solution
The Results
- Custom invoicing to handle dynamic pricing and surcharges
- Custom form to collect and integrate lien information
- Custom form to capture waiver/insurance options applied at the customer level
- Order entry form combined into one form and one screen
- Dispatch scheduling capability that enables combination of routes
- Ability to easily stop rent on items, enabling one trip pick-up and delivery to the next customer
- Re-rental capability with automated return reminders
- Real-time tracking of two million serialized assets
- Avalara integration for customized sales tax calculation
Tracking Two Million Assets Via Spreadsheet
The company’s system of keeping everything straight via spreadsheets was full of potholes but like the sturdy metal plates used for road patching, they had a stopgap: a longtime customer rep’s institutional knowledge and recall.
Eventually, of course, employee-savants move on, so the potholes become craters and craters become profit-swallowing sinkholes as rental products get lost or left behind beyond their length of contract. Drivers dispatched to retrieve, return and re-deliver overdue and manually tracked products were forced into a haphazard schedule of those empty trucks the COO watched from his office.
Between an ERP & A Hard Place
There were other complications as well, including many that any rental business owner would recognize: complex pricing tiers, lots of invoices, a variety of one-time charges, re-rental contracts, and the need to establish a lien or waiver against the risk of damaged or unreturned equipment.
The company had outgrown its spreadsheets, but with everything they needed to streamline and integrate, they didn’t see any ERP in their price range that was up to the job.
Then they found Infor, which enabled them to take advantage of mid-market pricing and flexible capabilities, while also reaping the benefit of customized software and implementation by the BBTS team.
A Customized Solution at the Right Price
SyteLine/CSI is an equipment rental ERP system that is an ideal fit when implemented by a partner that knows what rental providers need. Because no two rental companies are exactly alike, SyteLine/CSI is customizable.
After a careful study of the rental company’s processes and needs, the BBTS team was able to develop and implement the customized ERP they needed to integrate their unique business processes and achieve real-time tracking of serialized assets, including the reporting of profit margins by asset.
The result was a dramatically simplified, real-time system of tracking for improved transportation efficiency and inventory control, and an integrated system of contracts and invoices that manages one-time charges, tiered pricing, and the tracking of re-rental contracts.