Balancing rental asset care with customer needs

Rental sits in a middle ground compared to other asset-based models. Some companies sell equipment. Others buy and then pay to ensure their hardware lasts. Rental outfits, by contrast, buy the equipment to sell its usage, rather than the gear itself, and that produces some challenges. The person using the equipment has less interest in the maintenance of the equipment. They just want it to work. 

It is the rental firm that is left with trying to ensure everything works, and lasts. In other words, the rental company must somehow balance preventative maintenance and other repairs, with their customers’ desire to have uninterrupted use. This blog looks at how NetSuite-native Shepherd can alleviate that conflict to make maintenance demands as easy for both parties as possible.

Keeping assets on track while in others’ hands

Although how this happens depends heavily on the rental company’s preferred systems, whichever they use, Shepherd eases the monitoring burden. Once equipment is on the company’s books, it has a Shepherd record: purchase cost, maintenance schedules, parts used, regular spares required and so on. All those data points are tracked for that asset over the passage of time. The Shepherd solution monitors the information collected and if it notes that a service is soon due, a critical spare has been allocated or used from inventory, it alerts the relevant people.

That way, it is possible to plan ahead so that preventative maintenance happens when it’s scheduled, or as close to that as possible. That means rental companies are not operating in the dark regarding what their assets are doing while in customers’ hands, and maintenance schedules remain applicable.

Scheduling servicing around, not against, the customer 

The customers themselves have their own priorities: using that rented item in a way that maximises ROI. To balance that, the ability to make servicing projections means servicing can be scheduled as close to planned downtime or periods of least activity to reduce negative customer impact, if not eliminate it. The advantage is twofold: the asset owner ensures their investment is well-looked after, and the customer drastically reduces the risks of a failure that leaves them without essential equipment.

As mentioned above, how that asset is monitored depends on the systems in place. A pump’s run-time could be submitted by the customer at regular, agreed intervals, or with a rental technician going to check. It could also be updated automatically through the Internet of Things.

Whichever the means, the result is the same: a servicing schedule based on real values, not hopeful estimates.

Where automated updates are provided, Shepherd’s system receives and assimilates the information into that asset’s record, on which the alerts and reminders all rely. If that does not exist, and meter readings, for example, are needed, an appropriate reminder from the system might not be that a service is due, but that a reading is. With that, the customer can be asked to report the runtime as of that day.

The aim is the same, to avoid missed servicing windows and deadlines, perform the required servicing when or before it is needed, and thereby extend the service life of an asset both the rental company and customer rely on for revenue. In that respect, this is a situation where smooth management has benefits for all parties concerned.

Turning proactive maintenance into a managed process

Meanwhile, the tools for meeting that servicing schedule are many. Shepherd users can choose whichever best suits their workflow, to maximise both the adoption of the process and its visibility. That way it does not become a useful tool buried under to-do lists. 

Some users might want alerts or reminders to come up on their screen when a service is due. Others might work best with an automated report, configured for frequency and content, so they know what to put in the calendar. Saved searches can be set up where all the equipment of a given type, or that is maintained by a given technician will appear together to give an overview. 

No matter how the system is set up, what is most beneficial for companies is that it favours and promotes proactivity over reactivity. That spells fewer headaches, panics, and disappointments.

While real life may not always cooperate and Murphy’s law will always be standing ready to interfere, the optimal situation is to set things up in a way where servicing falls in between rental terms, or for mobile assets, at times when the equipment can be substituted for a freshly-serviced equivalent.

So, if a rental term is coming to a close, and even if an asset is still some 100 hours away from its next service, servicing at the contract’s closure becomes the easiest and least disruptive time. And any technician will confirm that servicing early beats doing it late.

Shepherd makes the preferred process possible. Rental contracts are tracked and easily accessed in the rental planner board. Users can check it, but so can the Shepherd’s system. You can configure it to cross-reference the conclusion date of that contract, the assets the contract uses, their own records and servicing schedules, and then extrapolate when the service should be done. If an employee had to do all that, across a whole range of assets, there would doubtless be tears before end of day, as well as mistakes.

Savings are not limited to the asset in question

This also helps reduce field visits. They will still be needed, but every outing costs: technician time on the job (and away from others), travel, fuel, vehicle wear. So being able to have only as many such trips as are needed to get the results you want is surely a goal worth pursuing.

A well-maintained piece of equipment is more valuable to all concerned, whether it is service life, reliability, resale value or ROI. It also ensures you don’t fall foul of warranty small print, or disputes, whether with a customer who claims their downtime is your fault, or a manufacturer who hopes to avoid warranty obligations. And being managed through Shepherd, the paper-trail is thorough and can be configured into different formats.

Within the Shepherd system itself, preventative maintenance is not some outside tool that needs to be referred to: it sits in the rental module, and is accessible through such interfaces as the aforementioned equipment record, customer record, or simply the rental planner board. Used as intended, you can work on the projects and deadlines of tomorrow, not trying to put out the fires of yesterday or the day before. 

Complex operations and business models are not inherently hard to work with. It’s how the complexity is managed (or isn’t) that dictates if the job is a mental health hazard or a rewarding project to manage and nurture. Shepherd makes the latter far easier to achieve, and with it more profitable on the balance sheet, and in the experiences of the people working on it. If you have headaches and pitfalls you’d like to banish, order a demo and see what Shepherd can do for you.