To read his article – click here

Kevin Appleton
IRN May – June 2012

Kevin Appleton now has a regular column in the IRN Magazine

Some people swear that Apps are the future of the world and will become the major source of information including interaction with businesses and business systems. Others swear that browser based activity offers more options and a better environment for most businesses and that Apps are a passing fashion.

Does this debate really matter? It used to be said that customers “vote with their feet”. Voting is now something that happens with your fingers, whilst sitting in a nice comfy chair, with a Starbucks in one hand on your laptop / Tablet / Smartphone etc in the other.  And voting with your fingers is much much quicker than voting with your feet.

The reality is that different types of process, different types of content have to get to your customers and your employees in different ways. A quick App is great for checking on equipment availability in a rental business for example, but when it comes to actually placing an order for the same equipment, maybe you’d rather do it on a bigger screen – on your laptop or your tablet.

Browsers are seen as having advantages over apps in that you are designing for a more generic platform.  Certainly you can launch a standard browser application on a smart device, but to make it really work for the customer you need a mobile version of the browser application whether that’s your website, your e-commerce site or just a customer portal that lets them check what they’ve got on rent!

Apps are far sexier than browsers, and have far more hype surrounding them.  Launching an App is almost a tech “coming of age” for a business, but its far from simple.  Despite the early promise of various ‘cross-platform’ development platforms, the reality is that you have to develop multiple times for the different operating systems.

Whether you put all your tech future on one platform or try and keep it open you need to know what your customers are looking for, and what will genuinely make it easier for your own employees to do their jobs more efficiently. For the first time in tech history, the demand for technology, the demand for options is coming not from the IT Department but from users. Ignore them at your peril!

Helen Sowerby
Sr VP Business Development
Result Group

Often, during regional disasters, power is disrupted for a prolonged period of time, resulting in eventual communications failures as cell towers go offline, and phone service is unavailable.  Clearly tribal knowledge is no longer enough to ensure a smooth transition to full operations once the immediate disaster has passed.

rentalresult offers a degree of insurance against disasters.  Being as it’s based on servers in multiple secure datacenters, you won’t have to worry about being able to coordinate, dispatch, and provide service to the customer with rentalresult cloud based solution.

Below are some topics to consider when developing your disaster recovery plan:

Written disaster recovery plan with continual updating

Designated hot site or cold site (unnecessary with rentalresult cloud solution)

Ability to recover data and systems (unnecessary with rentalresult cloud solution)

Processes for frequent backup of systems and data (unnecessary with rentalresult cloud solution)

Tests and drills of disaster procedures

Data and system backups stored offsite (unnecessary with rentalresult cloud solution)

Appointed disaster recovery committee and chairperson

Visibly listed emergency telephone numbers

Insurance

Procedures allowing effective communication

Updated system and operation documentation confirmation

Emergency procedures

Backup of key personnel positions

Hardware and software vendor list

Contractual agreements with external agencies/companies

To be effective the plan must be written, must be understandable, and must be accessible to those who need it when they need it. Because of the constant changes that occur in the modern business environment, a plan should be updated frequently to deal with new and existing threats as they develop.

In other words, this needs to be a living and breathing program, so to speak, that is audited and updated on a regular basis as changes are identified that could affect the personnel and/or area that has been devastated.

Patrick Stephens
Rental Industry Consultant

To read the first part of the report report, please click here

To read the second part of the report, please click here

Murray Pollok
IRN March – April 2012
IRN May – June 2012

The European Rental Association (ERA) has published a guide called ‘Discover Rental’ – the guide is aimed at providing information on construction equipment rental to any person interested in getting more familiar with the benefits of rental.

To achieve this goal, the guide, developed by the the ERA Promotions Committee, focuses on a number of issues such as:

• The cost benefits of rental
• What construction equipment can typically be rented and by which industries
• How to choose a rental company
• Rental as a sustainable option
• Fact and figures about Europe’s rental industry

The Discover Rental Guide is available to download by clicking here

ERA Promotions Committee
May 2011

rentalresult can show you, when investing in our software, how you may achieve significant returns on your investment. Here are some examples;

• Using the Asset Controller to maximize assets and inventory utilization
• Empower your staff by using our CRM / Customer Service modules
• Automate your Rental , Sales and Operational processes with the new Rules Engine
• Improve customer retention by staying ahead with state of the art information software
• Reduce the number of account queries by issuing accurate invoices
• Make more informed decisions with integrated real time reporting
• E-commerce capabilities simplifying Customer rental, purchases and account co-ordination
• Implementation methodologies to reap the benefits of your investment quickly.

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We’re talking about saving real money here.

What are you waiting for?

Invest in rentalresult

Your business, your rules, your results

Paul Looker
Result Group, Inc.

Loss from operations for the first quarter of 2011 was $2.9 million, or 2.1 percent of revenues, compared with loss from operations of $11.9 million, or 10.4 percent of revenues, a year ago. Net loss was $6.5 million for the quarter compared to a net loss of $12.1 million in the first quarter of 2010.

Gross margins were 26.0 percent as compared to 20.8 percent a year ago. Rental gross margins increased to 35.4 percent compared to 21.7 percent a year ago. Average time utilization (based on units available for rent) increased to 61.0 percent compared to 49.7 percent last year. Average time utilization (based on original equipment cost) increased to 64.9 percent compared to 51.2 percent a year ago.
Average rental rates turned positive in March on a year-over-year basis. Dollar utilization was 27.9 percent in the first quarter compared to 22.0 percent a year ago.

Average rental fleet age at March 31, 2011, was 43.2 months compared to an industry average of about 53 months, according to H&E.

“We are extremely pleased with our first quarter results and the ongoing improvements in our business,” said John Engquist, H&E Equipment Services’ president and CEO. “Despite normal seasonality that was compounded by historically inclement weather in many of our end markets, our business delivered solid year-over-year improvements in revenue, gross profit and EBITDA. The trends in our rental business remain particularly strong as revenue increased 33.0 percent, gross profit increased 116.7 percent and gross margins increased from 21.7 percent to 35.4 percent despite a slight decline in rental rates from a year ago,” Enquist said. “We were pleased to see rates turn positive on a year-over-year basis in the month of March. Furthermore, the second quarter has started on a positive note with solid year-over-year gains in April rental rates. Visibility in our distribution business remains limited. While new earthmoving equipment sales were strong, the lack of large crawler crane sales negatively impacted new equipment sales compared to the fourth quarter,” he said.

“Our outlook for the second quarter is positive as we expect the improvement in industrial construction markets to accelerate. However, we do not expect a broad recovery in non-residential construction markets to occur until 2012. In spite of this, we expect our losses to moderate for the remainder of 2011,” Engquist said. “The activity in our industrial markets remains strong, especially in our Gulf Coast and Intermountain regions as a result of rising oil and commodity prices. Demand for early cycle earthmoving equipment continues to increase and we are beginning to see improved rental rates. With a solid capital structure and excellent liquidity, we believe we have positioned our business very well to take advantage of any improvements in market conditions.”

Rental Pulse 8th May 2011

A portion of the episode explores how industry leaders are turning to rental equipment for a guarantee of safety and reliability.

“Safety and the reliability of equipment is a priority here at LGH,” said Thomas Beasley, business support manager at Lifting Gear Hire. “To ensure we are providing the highest quality of equipment to our rental customers, each piece of equipment is tested and certified to ANSI standards before it is taken out by a customer.”

Today in America stars former pro football star Terry Bradshaw and airs on various cable channels.

Founded in 1990, Lifting Gear Hire Corp. provides lifting and hoisting, pulling, jacking, rigging, material handling and safety equipment for sale and rent. Based in Bridgeview, Ill., LGHC is No. 55 on the RER 100.

RER March 2012

Click here to read this article

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