Construction Plant News editor Lee Jones spoke to the team at Contractors Plant Hire about their experience with Point of Rental. Below is an excerpt; you can read the full article here.
Background
Whether it’s DIYers digging the footings for an extension, or main contractors on major infrastructure schemes, Contractors Plant Hire has been supplying premium-brand plant and tools across the south of England since 1997. Just four years ago, however, the company was acquired by Jonathan Stevens, an entrepreneur with aspirations to enlarge its scope of operations considerably.
Problem
When you need to grow at scale, your processes need to be able to scale with you. And that means you need software capable of handling fast growth.
Solution
Contractors Plant Hire had been using Point of Rental’s Syrinx software since 2008. As they evaluated it to determine whether it could handle their new goals, they realised it was more than capable of doing so.
Results
“I can honestly say that I love Syrinx,” declares the firm’s General Manager, Ryan Rea. “It’s a system that we know can be easily deployed into every part of the business, and there’s always someone on hand at Point of Rental to explain exactly how we can do just that. Because it’s Microsoft Windows-based, the mechanics of it are something that anyone who has used a PC will be familiar with, and our staff were able to master it very quickly as a consequence.”
The ability to work effectively while remote was a huge part of Syrinx’s appeal.
“Our ambition is to run a paperless operation, and in that respect the apps have been a revelation,” reveals Ryan. “We started with the Driver’s App and that has allowed our personnel to complete all the necessary PODs (Proof of Deliveries) and log photographic evidence in the field. The pictures can be very important in terms of identifying damage during hire, so we can also make sure that they can’t close that job until they’ve been taken. In the office, the Driver Scheduler displays the position of our drivers, deliveries and collections, and we can drop a job onto the app. If information like the contact on site has been changed on the system this then updates through the app itself and, because all the relevant staff members have it on their phone, that’s then visible to everyone.”
Similarly, the Workshop App has proven invaluable to Contractors Plant Hire in managing and assigning jobs, as Martin Livermore outlines. “Because it’s synched with Syrinx we know when an engineer is en route, and when he’s done, and all the necessary parts can be requisitioned. During lockdown, a fitter has been able to manage everything on screen, from his own station, and, because they weren’t required to go to the office or interact unnecessarily with colleagues that has helped immeasurably with social distancing. Whatever app is being used all that information is then fed back into the contract with the customer, so there’s full visibility of the history of the hire.”
“Of course, that also applies to the customer as well because they can access their own invoices through the Customer Portal, and that level of transparency does a lot to build trust. When we have customers that come to collect and return equipment to the depot themselves they’re always very impressed by the efficiency of the operation, because whoever is dealing with them has all the information they need through Syrinx and the apps.”
“What Syrinx does is pull the business together into one whole,” concludes Ryan. “We have a full inventory of assets and parts that Syrinx feeds into our accounts, and the Apps mean that we can do far more remotely through a paperless operation. It’s a system where there is always a way of finding a solution, and there is someone at Point of Rental on the end of the phone to help us through it.”