In the rental and production industry, you never know what you’re going to get when equipment is returned. If all goes to plan, rentals are returned on time, in one piece, and fully operational. However, reality has a way of messing with best-laid plans, and many things can wreak havoc when it comes to inventory management. But in the face of such uncertainty, a rental and production company still has to be able to schedule rentals based on real-time availability of equipment.
Information Integration Group (IIG), which has been supporting AV rental and production clients with business management solutions for 25 years, is a Sage Software Gold Development Partner and Microsoft Gold Partner. IIG specializes in enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions based on the Sage ERP MAS 90, Sage ERP MAS 200 and Sage ERP MAS 500 platforms, and its Rental Maestro also integrates with Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP products.
Rental Maestro
IIG’s Rental Maestro is designed to manage every aspect of a rental business, from sales and crewing to customer relationship management (CRM) and project accounting. It gives live entertainment production and rental companies the ability to generate quotes, offer flexible pricing and billing, view inventory availability and streamline warehouse operations, all in one program.
Along with a consistent user interface throughout the system, Rental Maestro eliminates the need to sync data between modules or the need to upload or download transactions. Everything — from sales to production, project costing and CRM — is connected.
With Rental Maestro, business managers can track costing of jobs by rolling up revenue and expenses for products sold, rentals, crews and sub-rentals. The system also lets users schedule deliveries and pickups, and they can also manage sub-rental purchase orders, from costing to tracking sub-rental inventory to the generation of vendor return documents.
A Case Study
Vision Communications, Inc., a California-based dealer offering sales and rentals of two-way radios and paging equipment, has used Rental Maestro to tame accounting challenges posed by both sales and rental inventories.
“Years ago, when we were a much smaller company, we were able to use simple Excel sheets to track our sales and rental inventories. But then, we grew, and we kept growing. It quickly became obvious that we needed a comprehensive business management software tool that could combine the sales and rental sides of our business into one,” says Vision Communications owner Bob Moayeri
“Using two programs is a waste of time and money, and with some of the same information being entered into more than one place, there’s a greater risk of something getting typed in incorrectly,” Moayeri notes. “From an inventory standpoint, it just makes sense to have everything accounted for in one place.”
Along with IIG’s Rental Maestro, Vision Communications is using IIG’s RF/Mobile Maestro, which lets users manage inventory data anytime, from anywhere. The wireless inventory management solution, available as a seamless add-on for Sage ERP MAS 90 and ERP MAS 200, is designed to improve inventory accuracy by automating warehouse receipts, inventory cycle counts and shipment data entry. With its mobile capabilities, RF/Mobile Maestro also helps sales staff in the field enter orders remotely, check real-time stock and view customer records, right from their laptops.
“When our customers rent equipment from us, they make the assumption that it will be available as promised. And if we don’t know exactly how many units we have on hand and how many are scheduled to be returned, our promise won’t mean much,” says Moayeri, who calls the RF/Mobile Maestro add-on “an essential tool” for those working in the field. And there’s no risk of having to back-pedal on assurances offered to clients. “They know with certainty that the equipment is in our warehouse and ready to go.”
Along with an intuitive new interface, the latest version of Rental Maestro incoporates the MapQuest and MapPoint enhancement for Sage ERP solutions, helping IIG customers efficiently schedule and dispatch technicians to job sites. The mapping tool displays all daily scheduled tasks in dispatch-board style on a U.S. map, letting users to pull up driving directions (fastest, shortest and optimal) from one job site to the next. The mapping tool can also help users assign tasks by viewing all technicians and their real-time availability at a glance. Users can then assign or re-assign task and destinations depending on customer requests.
Service Maestro
The new MapQuest and MapPoint enhancement is also integrated into IIG’s Service Maestro solution. Service Maestro, like Rental Maestro, is built for the Sage ERP MAS 90 and 200 and Sage ERP MAS 500 platforms. It can be used to manage customer engagements from entry of service calls and management of field technician schedules to invoicing for material and labor and costing of contracts.
The system’s optional integration with Sage ERP MAS 500 Project Accounting also makes it easy to roll up the service call information into defined projects. The system provides a drag-and-drop Dispatch Board that enables management of multiple jobs by displaying information for each service call. Technicians for new service calls can be easily scheduled using the dispatch board, with technician skills and availability matched to the specific requirements of each job.
Service Maestro streamlines billing by allowing for loading of labor and material entered when closing service tickets into ERP MAS 500 Sales Order or an invoice transaction. Users can also track profitability of contracts by analyzing billings and costs incurred for both material and services provided during the term of the contract.
