If you run a rental business, one of the most powerful things you can ask AI is not “What can you do for me?” but “What should I be asking?”
That was the challenge from Milan McGraw, Head of AI and Machine Learning at AWS, during an innovations panel at the 2025 Point of Rental International Conference. His guidance was direct. Rather than treating AI as a tool that answers the questions already on your mind, use it to expose blind spots you have learned to work around for years.
“Tell AI, I have a rental company, this is my business profile,” McGraw said. “What are the top three questions I should be thinking about that I may not be thinking about?”
This simple shift in mindset sets the tone for how rental companies can benefit from AI today, not at some distant future point when every piece of equipment is talking to your system.
Use AI To Uncover Blind Spots You No Longer Notice
Most rental leaders approach AI with a traditional efficiency mindset. They want it to make it easier for customers to get to what they need, speed up admin work, or summarize a long report. Those are all valid outcomes, but they only scratch the surface.
McGraw’s point: Leaders should let AI challenge what they assume is normal.
That can start with a single prompt:
“I own a rental business. Here is my company profile: [describe fleet, customers, seasonality, locations]. What are three questions I should be asking today that I am probably not thinking about?”
This framing produces insights you would never extract from a standard report. It encourages AI to analyze your situation from multiple angles—seasonal demand, fleet mix, customer churn, pricing consistency, supply chain exposure, and more.
From there, ask follow-up questions in plain language. In many businesses, this process alone reveals issues that have been sitting in plain sight for years:
- “What data should I look at to answer these questions?”
- “Give me a weekly routine that keeps these issues on my radar.”
- “Rewrite these questions so I can use them in discussions with my team.”
Let AI Read Your Elite Reports the Way an Analyst Would
Once AI helps you identify “the questions behind the questions,” the most immediate value comes from applying it to your actual data. This is where Matt Gaffin, AI Evangelist at Point of Rental, gave some of the most practical and actionable advice on the panel.
Every rental company exports spreadsheets from Elite. Far fewer fully interrogate them.
Instead of scanning a report for line items, you can upload the file to a private or business AI model and have it explain patterns you might not have considered.
If you upload a contracts-by-month spreadsheet, you can ask:
- “Explain to me why I have more contracts closing in the summer than in the winter.”
- “Which product categories show the strongest seasonal swings?”
- “Where am I under-pricing relative to demand?”
If you upload a utilization or job costing report, ask:
- “What stands out as unusual here?”
- “Which assets look mispriced or misallocated?”
- “If I only fix one problem in this data, which one creates the biggest improvement?”
What AI does best in this scenario is surfacing questions. It points to something that warrants your attention. You still validate the conclusions, just as you would if a brand-new employee brought you an unexpected insight.
Typical Reports and Questions AI Can Answer
Here’s how common rental reports become far more actionable when AI is used to surface patterns and next steps:
| Report Type | Example Questions AI Can Answer | Value to Rental Business |
| Utilization by Asset Group | “Which assets are consistently underutilized, and why?” | Better fleet-sizing decisions |
| Contracts by Month | “Which products show hidden seasonal patterns?” | More accurate seasonal planning |
| Job Costing | “Where did margins erode on this job?” | Prevent repeat cost overruns |
| Rate vs. Achieved Rate | “Which customer segments are paying below market?” | Revenue recovery opportunities |
Use AI To Find Demand and Reach Out Before Your Competitors Do
The panelists also discussed how AI can help you identify upcoming opportunities, especially for event and general rental operations.
Gaffin shared a scenario that any rental business can apply:
“This type of analysis used to require hours of manual research or a marketing team dedicated to outbound work. With AI, a single person can accomplish it in minutes. You still review the message, refine the tone, and make the judgment call, but AI handles the research lift.”
- Ask AI to research events in your region for the next three to six months.
- Have it estimate attendance, likely equipment needs, and typical spend.
- Point it at your website so it understands what you rent.
- Ask it to create a prioritized list of events matched to your inventory.
- Have it write tailored outreach messages for each event organizer.
Treat AI Like the Most Useful Intern You Have Ever Had
A consistent thread through the panel was a simple metaphor: AI should be treated like an intern.
An intern can handle routine tasks, provide research, organize information, and point out anomalies. But you don’t hand them full decision-making authority. You guide them, correct them, and use their output to make better decisions yourself.
AI works the same way. Its value is in amplification, not replacement.
Use AI to:
- Draft, not send, customer communications
- Suggest, but not dictate, pricing or maintenance strategy
- Highlight, but not automatically act on, utilization anomalies
- Outline, but not finalize, SOPs or training documents
Be Deliberate About What Data You Share With AI Models
While the panel encouraged experimentation, they were equally clear about protecting sensitive information. Practical guidelines include:
Start with Non-Sensitive Data
Lists of machines, anonymized utilization spreadsheets, or job costing summaries are low risk. Customer names, contract details, and financial information require more care.
Use Models That Allow You to Opt Out of Model-Training
Business or enterprise plans from providers like OpenAI or Anthropic let you ensure your data is not used to retrain public models.
Consider Private or Controlled Environments for Deeper Analysis
Point of Rental uses private model architectures and AWS services to protect rental data, a practice McGraw strongly recommended for any business working with sensitive information.
Never Upload Customer Data Into a Free Public Model
McGraw, Gaffin, and Point of Rental Head of Cloud Engineering Collin Pike all emphasized that free public AI tools often use submitted data to improve their models unless you have specifically opted out under a business or enterprise plan. Pike and Gaffin explained that even when a provider claims not to train on your data, rental companies should still avoid placing any customer-identifiable information into these environments.
Pike noted that Point of Rental never uploads customer data into public AI tools for this reason, relying instead on private, controlled AWS-hosted models. Gaffin added that non-sensitive information, such as equipment lists or anonymized utilization data, is generally safe for experimentation, but anything tied to customer identity or contract details belongs in a secured environment where the data path is fully governed.
How Point of Rental Weaves AI into the Products You Use
The panel also offered a rare look inside how Point of Rental’s teams are using AI internally:
1. Faster Modernization
AI is dramatically accelerating complex product work, exemplified by Point of Rental’s job costing module. Originally slated for November 2026, a working version is being developed this year—roughly 12 months ahead of schedule. This rapid delivery came from AI-assisted development and testing, compressing years-long timelines into months.
2. Private Models Tuned for Rental Realities
Point of Rental trains AI environments using patterns from rental industry data, not general internet content. That means recommendations will reflect real rental behavior.
3. Higher Quality and Stronger QA
AI helps generate tests based on support tickets, past defects, and known edge cases. This improves reliability and reduces repeat issues.
4. Responsible AI as a Baseline
Even though there is no formal “AI standard” yet, POR applies its existing compliance frameworks to AI work, including anonymization, access controls, and strict boundaries around customer data.
All of this matters because it means AI is not only something you experiment with on your own. It is becoming part of the software you rely on every day.
5. AI Chatbot
Ask any questions you have about POR software. It’s like your own customer-support assistant.
Where a Rental Business Should Start This Week
If the entire discussion still feels big, here is a simple starting point you can take immediately:
- Ask AI to teach you how to prompt: “Give me a 40-minute crash course on prompt engineering tailored to someone who runs a rental company.”
- Upload one report from your system: Ask it to tell you the three most important patterns in the data.
- Try one outbound experiment: Have AI research upcoming events and write one targeted email.
- Encourage your team to try one task each: Make experimentation a normalized habit rather than an exception.
- Talk to your software partner: Ask what AI capabilities already exist and what is coming next.
Adopting AI from Simple Beginnings
You don’t need a multiyear AI roadmap to start. You need curiosity, a few practical prompts, and the willingness to let AI point you to questions you have not been asking.
The rental businesses that build that habit now will separate themselves from the pack, not because they replaced people with technology, but because they equipped their people to see more, act faster, and think further ahead.
