Taking Equipment Hire Paperless

EFFICIENCY EXPERTS WORLDWIDE. ENVIRONMENTALISTS. HIRE INDUSTRY LEADERS FROM THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. EVEN CONSUMERS. IT OFTEN FEELS LIKE EVERYONE IS TRYING TO CONVINCE YOU: GO PAPERLESS!

But why should rental firms go paperless and what steps can they take to get there?

1. It’ll save money over time. Obvious costs of doing business using paper include not only the paper itself, but ink or toner, printer maintenance, time figuring out why the printer isn’t connecting or fighting out a workaround when the printer isn’t working at all. Ancillary costs exceed even those costs over time: Lost paperwork makes it difficult or impossible to locate lost items or to enforce contracts. Attempting to read poor handwriting can screw up reporting and billing. But savings as the main reason to go paperless.

2. It’ll help you generate money over time.

Condition photos, which are time- and geo-stamped and attached to contracts, make it easy to record item conditions when they’re delivered or collected.

When there’s a dispute over damages, it becomes a lot easier to resolve any dispute when you have all the evidence on your side.

Digital contracts allow you to have paperwork completely filled out and signed before a customer gets to your store; your counter staff isn’t worrying about printing and filing while trying to provide customer service. It saves customers time, too, which makes them more inclined to return.

If you’re able to take your dispatching, routes, and stops paperless, you’re able to route with maximum efficiency and even take on additional routes at the drop of a hat — you can see where your drivers are in realtime, know what they have on their truck, and route them to take on an extra job.

3. It’ll make your employees happier. The single biggest frustration employees have is poor communication. Paperbased processes limit your ability to communicate; they can’t communicate realtime updates immediately. Only one person can see information at a time. Digitising your processes gives everyone in your organization access to the same information so they’re making better decisions.

4. It’ll make you happier. Having access to the company’s data allows owners to make more informed decisions when determining the future of the business. With the ability to adjust contracts easily, amendments can be sent to the appropriate departments to get quantities changed.

It’s easier to train employees because digital tools frequently have guardrails put in place to notice questionable entries or to ensure that only people with sufficient authority can complete certain tasks. And finally, critical information is more secure: Physical documents are easy to lose, steal, or damage. Digital documents are easy to back up, encrypt, and score securely. This can help prevent sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands safeguarding members from lawsuits or breaches.

How to go “paperless”.

Within the hire industry, there are various software solutions designed to help members go paperless. Point of Rental have spent 40+ years helping custometrs digitise their processes and constantly pushing the envelope to give users more tools than any other hire software company.

If you want to take the paper out of your office, your warehouse, your yard, maintenance bays, trucks, etc., we can help you — visit pointofrental.com/au/ connect or call (03) 8593 8901