Managing a rental business is a lot of work. If you don’t keep a close watch on your rental assets, things can go downhill really quickly. This is because a rental company’s inventory is often its most valuable investment. Their entire business is organized around it and it is the primary need of its customers. Businesses tend to lose orders and become inefficient when they are not able to track their inventory and measure its financial impact. This is why utilizing a rental management software can be a huge boon for such companies.
If there is one thing rental companies can use more in their business life, it is time. It never seems to be enough. Luckily, rental management software has a number of clever features to help managers and employees save time and win more orders simultaneously.
There are a number of ways you can use an automated rental management solution to prevent the loss of orders. With this solution, you can track inventory in real-time, serve customers faster, make decisions based on robust insights, and automate tasks – all through one system. All of this leads to happier customers, improved response times, and a higher volume of places orders. This also positively affects the overall performance of the business.
So without further ado, let’s find out how an online rental software can help you receive more orders and prevent you from losing customers.
Real-Time Inventory Management
Not having a system to track your inventory in real-time can be disastrous for rental companies. It can lead to stock-outs and diminishing capital. Think of a sports rental company that thinks its sports equipment has been rented out to a sports fair when it is actually in a storehouse not earning any revenue. Such mistakes can cause huge issues for young companies.
What is worse is to write off your rental equipment because you think it’s stolen or lost when it’s actually located somewhere you didn’t think to look. Just imagine what this might mean for customers who wanted to rent that item and were told you were out of stock! It could lead to poor customer service, bad reviews, and a loss of both customers and their orders. And this could all be avoided through real-time inventory management.
Keep track of your rental inventory in real time and serve your customers well.
Rental management software is not only going to enhance inventory accuracy for you, but it will also ensure that you never let your customers down. One of the best things about using such a platform is that it can be updated as soon as an action happens. You don’t have to physically check if a customer asks about a pair of skis, for example. You could just check your database to know whether they are reserved, in for servicing, rented out, or available. In case they’re rented out, you can tell your customer when they are expected to be back. You can later attach a notification to that piece of equipment, reminding your employees to call the customer as soon as it becomes available.
Real-time management of inventory can prevent double bookings and also help you retain customers. Moreover, you can run reports to recommend complementary products that will suit your customer’s needs, and possibly upsell them. How’s that for good business?
Processes Automation
If you were to pore over sheaves of manually-generated paperwork, things would quickly get messy. Automating rental management not only saves you a massive amount of time, but also improves customer experience. You can easily create automated processes for regularly occurring actions, such as sending customers rental rates, billing details, and late fine reminders. But a solution such as this allows you to do even more!
Let’s take rental pricing as an example. If your sales team has to look up the rates for every item, you end up losing time on every single transaction. With rental software, you can automatically input your rates without any chances of human error, and ask the system to compute these rates according to different standards, such as flat rates, or hourly rates, or tiered pricing. You can even establish different rates for different customers. For example, you can input standard rates to walk-in customers but automatically apply a discounted rate for regular clients. Giving careful consideration to your customers in this way is sure to make them keep coming back for more!
Reports on Utilization Trends
Rental companies aim to maximize revenue by winning more orders, or at least maintain the average frequency of orders for specific months. This, of course, can prove to be a challenging task. Luckily, rental management software helps you track the profitability of your assets, document missed rental opportunities, and identify peak demand periods of items by generating different reports on it.
For instance, a report on missed rentals serves as an excellent tool for sales representatives and counter staff to figure out if they could have done anything differently to make that sale. It could be due to poor customer service, lack of requested rental items, or high rental rates. You can imagine that these reports are your customer’s voice, and use it to invest in high demand rental units, establish better rates, and improve customer service.
Use the reports to facilitate your customers more and win more orders.
These reports also highlight customer demands for specific items. For example, the report might show that the maximum number of excavators ever rented at one time is 45, but the company has 75 in inventory at all times. You can drill down further to figure out that excavators have high dollar utilization, while diggers are the opposite. Use these reports to learn how to gain more orders by knowing what exactly your customers need. This also helps you organize your inventory so that you are investing only in the right items and in the right quantity.
Receive and Fulfill More Orders with Rental Management Software
At the end of the day, rental companies need to know provide the best possible products and service to their customers. Being unable to do so would certainly lead to low order placements. A rental management software allows you real-time inventory management, complete access to your business, detailed inventory analysis, and a dashboard that makes sure you don’t overlook any important detail. This sets you up for efficiency and profitability. Automation is the cherry on the top of your rental cake when it comes to winning more orders and growing your business!
Learn More About EZRentOut
We’re a rental management software that’s loved by businesses all over the globe. EZRentOut helps companies manage customers, orders, and billing all from one centralized system. You can even track your rental assets, use our mobile app as a quick POS, and run reports on rental trends and opportunities.
