Construction companies approach rental from a different perspective…

…to traditional equipment rental companies. Even though internal rental businesses still may be working within a competitive environment forced to keep rates in line with prevailing market rates, sub-rent equipment from the market and provide all the services that an equipment rental company must provide, they must also work much more closely with the demands of their construction clients and feed data into corporate project management systems and financials which are not necessarily suited to a traditional rental business profile.

Internal projects, internal SLA agreements, the need to provide project, WBS code or task code breakdowns of all costs and charges to constructions sites add a potentially heavy burden of administration and management that external equipment rental companies can avoid. Equally, the internal rental business often has to deal with a much wider variety of equipment than a traditional rental business, often renting in not only tools and equipment, but operators, transport and fleet vehicles to meet the varying and rapidly changing demands of multiple construction sites.

Given this environment, rental software has to offer some very specific features. Often one of the most important is the ability to manage the rental not just of owned assets but of very large volumes of sub-rented assets efficiently and cleanly ensuring there is a clean transition from rental to sub-rent purchase and the comprehensive control of sub-rental invoices in the AP to ensure that costs and revenue are tracked. Equally, in an internal business the whole process of invoicing may be streamlined to the point where you simply raise GL Charges rather than generating unnecessary invoices. It must be possible to store project data at the rental contract, purchase order, sales contract, sub rental, work order and any other point where costs or revenue might be accrued to ensure you can provide accurate costing data to the project managers, surveyors and construction teams that you are supporting.

All of these features are available in the rentalresult rental and asset management software allowing you to manage your rental business profitability, whilst still providing the asset and project charges that the construction project teams require within the corporate systems. The flexibility of the application allows you to manage and support multiple types of equipment, including operated equipment such as cranes, as well as handling external customers alongside internal clients when you wish to do so.

Alongside our standard system features we have also provided a technology platform that provides construction companies with clear productivity and accuracy benefits. Our rules engine allows you to define workflow and to build product configurators to assist your internal rental team in identifying the right equipment for the job, even if they have little knowledge of the specific equipment. Our e-commerce engine allows site managers to place their own orders on line, confirm that they are happy with rates and order details, check their equipment on rent and get access to all of their contracts, invoices and history. Our comprehensive SOA platform provides the flexibility to integrate to the major corporate systems like Oracle in real-time saving any need for double entry.

Helen Sowerby
Sr VP Business Development
Result Group