For rental companies that have large amounts of inventory to track, store, and maintain, optimal equipment management is a core business requirement. This is especially the case for the construction rental industry because they deal with high ticket items.
Regardless of inventory type, all rental companies need total inventory visibility. However, a lot of companies are still struggling with manual methods to manage their inventory across multiple warehouses. Manual methods such as spreadsheets are tedious to use, labor-intensive, static, and most problematically, highly prone to human errors.
All this inertia leads to serious consequences such as equipment loss, misplaced inventory, and, ultimately, dissatisfied customers.
Bottom line: Manual methods will drain your efficiency and cost you a ton of money. For this reason, you need to invest in a cloud warehouse management system. Moving towards cloud warehouse management will help you simplify complex rental operations, improve inventory and shipment accuracy, and help you gain complete inventory visibility.
These are just some of the benefits. Let’s dive deeper and learn more about how you can save time and money with cloud warehouse management.
1. Real-Time inventory control
Easy and efficient stock control is one of the most important benefits of cloud based warehouse management. You no longer have to go through piles of reports to find what you’re looking for because the cloud software lets you view up -o-date data on inventory levels, maintenance schedules, all active orders, pending payments, and so much more.
You don’t have to rely on special, manual stock-takes that require extra labor and could interrupt your operations. Most cloud warehouse management systems include features to help with that, such as QR code tracking that enables you to actively measure inventory levels, thereby helping you save time and money that you can better utilize elsewhere.
2. Upgradeable and scalable
Manual inventory management becomes a major hindrance as you scale your business. A dedicated rental software can grow with you as you scale your business across different locations and expand your inventory.
Cloud platforms are great for such growth because they’re easy to set up so you don’t need any extra IT investment to help add new equipment or new employees onto the system. You can easily operate the software from any computer, without needing any time-consuming hardware setup. This makes the software is easy to deploy to any additional warehouses as well to support growth and expansion.
As you scale your business, you will increasingly require advanced features to manage growing operations and inventory. Cloud warehouse management provides a simple solution – upgrade as you go. This means you can easily go from a basic package to an advanced one that offers more features better suited to meet your growing needs. You can choose any package depending on your warehouse, team size, and inventory items. Simply select, upgrade with a few clicks, and you are all set.
3. Access from anywhere
What happens to your rental business if you need to hit the road and aren’t in the warehouse to keep track of everything? Maybe you shut the business down for a few days. Even if you do keep your business open, operations can suffer because you aren’t there to ensure they’re running smoothly.
That is exactly where cloud computing can help. As long as you have an internet connection, you can work from anywhere, monitoring all your rental orders, returns due or overdue, check payments, and more. Your business no longer has to slow down just because you aren’t physically present. Most rental warehouse management softwares offer powerful mobile apps, so you aren’t restricted to your laptop.
COVID-19 has further pushed us to keep in mind that any new software should enable work from anywhere, be it at home or on the road. Cloud warehouse management offers this important anytime and anywhere access, enabling you and your employees to work remotely and keep the business up and running safely.
Read More: Keep Your Rental Information Safe – Plan Ahead for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
4. Form a digital supply chain
Moving to the cloud also lets you transform your supply chain into a digital network, one that mirrors the real world but cuts down on inefficiencies. You can fill in purchase orders and request new stock from your vendors, communicate with customers, and track where your rentals are, all from the virtual world.
While meeting with vendors and customers is important in terms of maintaining a human connection, a digital supply chain is necessary for automating operations and also for even unprecedented situations such as an emergency or a pandemic.
The digitized supply chain enables businesses to operate at high speed amidst dynamic business environments.
5. Reduce labor costs
Human beings are prone to error, whether it’s misplacing a piece of equipment in the warehouse or entering the wrong return date in the order spreadsheet. You end up wasting precious time realizing the mistake and trying to fix it, time that could have been better spent elsewhere. Also, you’re paying employees for all the time they spend figuring out and fixing the mistakes.
Given the fact that the average American worker makes around 118 mistakes per year at work, that amounts to a lot of time and money spent simply cleaning up errors and inaccuracies. Companies can save a great deal of time and energy if they simply retire their manual management processes.
Using an online warehouse management system will enable your company to function much more efficiently. Not only does it enable fast and accurate decisions through work efficiency, but it also speeds up the process of managing equipment.
Time to look for a cloud warehouse management system
Save time and money by moving to the cloud. It will make all your rental business operations smoother and more efficient, reduce the chances of human error, and overall help you gain control over your inventory.
EZRentOut, a cloud-based equipment rental software, can help. EZRentOut offers companies in numerous industries seamless rental management along with a host of other features. These include asset tracking, maintenance management, customized webstore, and much more.
