American Technologies, Inc. (ATI), is an IT and equipment distribution company that has been operating in the Philippines for over 30 years. They offer customized solutions that meet a wide range of requirements for various industries such as consumer goods, business process outsourcing (BPO), e-commerce, and transportation, to name a few. Well-recognized as a quality provider of highly engineered solutions, they run several business units that distribute hardware and equipment to businesses of all sizes.
One of the business units is their rental division which was founded in 1999. This unit focuses on providing computer hardware, PC panels, and customized IT equipment packages for enterprises. These primarily include laptops, desktops, and other peripherals.
Empowering ATI’s Rental Division with EZRentOut
ATI uses an ERP and internally developed software to manage the day-to-day business activities of their distribution business units. This software is used for procurement, orders, finances, and other processes. While it is a centralized system for all their business units, it is not specialized enough to deal with the unique needs of their rental operations.
To fill this gap, they used spreadsheets, which led to problems such as the double-entry of equipment serial numbers in customer orders and made it challenging to keep track of over 5000 rental units. This is when they decided to hire a consultant to analyze ATI’s rental business needs and suggest a solution that could meet these requirements. She started to look for and compare equipment rental software online.
After comparing multiple products and their capabilities, along with customer reviews, she found that EZRentOut offered the most powerful and comprehensive solution.
End-to-end inventory management across multiple storage locations
ATI’s rental division has over 5000 Assets and 16000 Asset stocks which are spread across three storage areas. They needed a complete solution that could help manage and accurately track this rapidly increasing inventory.
A great starting point for them was that EZRentOut enabled them to track each item individually with a distinct serial number. The Rental Division business head found the ability to scan the manufacturer’s barcodes and detect duplicate serial numbers highly beneficial.
Another crucial requirement was the ability to keep track of the profitability of each rental unit.
EZRentOut became their go-to solution. Since the purchase cost and rent collected for each rental item are easily tracked by EZRentOut, it is easy to see the return on investment of a particular rental unit.
Ability to clone large orders efficiently and track related orders
ATI rents out to medium to large businesses, with approximately 200-300 items per order. This is a typical workflow: ATI adds items to order by scanning the items’ barcodes, saving time instead of manual lookup for items. Once items are added and the order is confirmed by the customer, a packing list is generated in EZRentOut, and items are sent out for delivery.
The business head explained that a challenge they face is customers who rent out an order for a specific period, such as a month, and then request an extension, replacement, or partially return items. To resolve this, ATI uses EZRentOut cloning capability to quickly generate new orders and change fields per customer requirements to accommodate minor changes.
The cloning capability allows them to flexibly accommodate these changes while still saving time by duplicating orders easily. The Related Orders feature also allows them to keep track of and trace the history of all the orders that have been extended over time.
Quick check-ins and check-outs with barcode scanning
EZRentOut has simplified the process of verification-based scanning for ATI. Scanning the item to confirm item availability and ensure correct items are added to orders before they are checked out for delivery.
Upon return, each item is scanned again. According to the business head, this is particularly beneficial because customers sometimes return only part of a large-volume order, causing rental dates to be extended or changed for the remaining items. The warehouse staff can now easily scan items, verify which order they belong to, and mark the return dates of the scanned items. ATI saves time and ensures accurate billing for customers, making it a win-win situation.
Dashboard visibility and reports analytics
The rental dashboard has been a game-changer for ATI. Their management requires monthly reports on inventory, rental collection, and payments due. The business head uses the dashboard widgets and onscreen filters to quickly generate reports for internal meetings.
On the dashboard, they’ve added a ‘top business by revenue’ widget to keep track of the items rented out and the total rental revenue from these businesses.
With the quick snapshot view on the Dashboard, she can check the real-time status of any asset at any time. Stock reports have also been added to the dashboard to keep track of how many items are present in the warehouse and how many have been delivered to customers.
She particularly finds the ability to click on a single report value and be directed to its details in seconds, extremely useful. For example, she can go to order details by clicking on the rented-out items report on the dashboard.
They are also able to easily keep track of order deliveries and pickups with the dashboard’s events calendar. Here, they can quickly see which orders are due for delivery or pullout from the customer site.
“[The] dashboard is one of the most useful tools for better accessibility and visibility’’
The future with EZRentOut
Moving forward, the ATI team is looking to utilize the maintenance features and integrate EZRentOut with their ERP to streamline their operations. The ATI business had plans to use the software to better manage orders and inventory, and increase equipment availability.
ATI is confident that the highly responsive support team will continue to provide timely and robust support as they continue to expand their use of EZRentOut.
