In this month’s update:
Rental businesses: a look at Shepherd’s Rental Planner is one for you. And, whether you have a rental business or not, there’s also information about how to promote your company to your customers. Find out more in the second half below.
Time thieves and costly processes banished
Shepherd’s all-new Rental Planner brings all the aspects of your rental operation into one interactive hub: assets, equipment, service orders, contracts, and more. Customisable according to your priorities and practices. And all NetSuite native, naturally.
Indeed, the new Rental Planner is an interactive window that lets you see your rental operations as a broad panorama, or with pinpoint focus. And it’s already in your system just waiting for you to flip the switch.
Read on if you truly need more reasons why. Otherwise, do the smart thing—give future-you a reason to be grateful— and get your administrator to activate it today. You’ll be glad you did.
Read on, or check out these introductory slides:
Manage Rental Contracts
The Rental Planner is a one-stop shop for all your contract requirements. There, you can consult the rental contracts themselves, the records of which equipment and accessories are covered by that contract, at which rates, and for which duration. All that from one interface.
Use your rental contracts to configure the system so regular equipment usage can be set up automatically through the repeat contract function, and invoices can be populated with sums pulled straight from the agreed rates of that contract.
Maybe you have a customer with different contracts at different rates. No problem: whichever contract the service order is linked to is the one that sets the rates they are billed at. All done automatically. And if the contract exists, active or concluded, the record is there and is accessible.
Tracking Rental Equipment and Accessories
Doesn’t matter if you have a fleet of two or two thousand. Every machine, whether it’s classed as equipment or accessory, will have a record in NetSuite, and thanks to Shepherd, you can access each and every one through the tiles on the Rental Planner.
That record will tell you the cost of the unit, what it has made you in billings, and what it has cost in maintenance.
How you classify your assets lets you decide how they will be billed. And whatever happens to your inventory, be it a five-minute job or a complete rebuild, will be saved in its history.
Consult your equipment records to see what use your assets are getting, and if you make use of the IoT, you can monitor asset performance in the field, diagnose issues, advise on best practice, and send out technicians, all from your computer.
All this information, one click away from the same screen where you can raise invoices, assign replacement machines, and send out technicians.
Top-tier Business Intelligence
Profitability should not be a guessing game. The numbers should be there: down to the cent, whether it’s an oil field bore-drill or a USB cable. And the same goes for your customers: reports have never been easier, helping you see who your best customers, and customer types, are, so that you can hone and steer your business towards the most profitable and rewarding partnerships.
Consider that for the moment. Here’s a tool that can give you information so detailed and so accurate that it could influence your core business strategies. That’s worth an email to your Shepherd admin, surely.
Adapt to changes with ease, not frustration
It happens. A contract gets signed, and before long, you or the customer realise things need tweaking. Not a problem: the Rental Planner lets you assign equipment directly, making admin tasks that would have seen half a dozen tabs open, a one-click or drag-and-drop operation.
The same goes for changes to the rental period. A customer’s duties may go better or worse than planned. They may return your equipment sooner, or need it for far longer. That too is now so straightforward, it’s child’s play. You guessed it: all from the Rental Planner.
Planning ahead made easy
You can see what Service Order an asset is associated with and vice versa. That means what is where, with whom, and for how long. The result is you can easily plan for what comes next. One contract can end, the asset’s servicing can be scheduled, and its delivery to the next in line can be booked.
You know where things have been, where they are, and where they are needed. More importantly, so do your customers, helping make your department their best friend for planning their own operations and keeping their own customers happy.
No matter what rates you offer, if your company solves and avoids problems for your customer, you have the difference between good service and stellar service, and your CLV will prove it.
Activate today
We think you’ll agree that you’d have to be pretty creative to find a reason not to activate the Rental Planner. So, why wait?
This one interface, customisable to your preferences, and a gateway to all your operations records, commitments, and successes, is waiting to be discovered. Call your administrator. Make it the very next thing you do to ensure admin-heavy, complicated rental tracking, scheduling, and billing become a thing of the past that you can forget ever existed.
One for Everyone: Become a Shepherd Case Study
Shepherd has been publishing real-life case studies of its solution in action for some years now. And now it is your chance to be the focus.
What’s in it for you?
A case study is your chance to showcase what you’re most proud of in your company; to talk about what sets your firm apart from the competition; how you came to be, and where you plan to go.
It’s basically free publicity, published on an independent source: Shepherd’s website.
Sure, Shepherd’s place in your operations is part of it, but not all of it. Plus you retain control. You say what goes in, and what doesn’t: we won’t edit or adapt your story without your approval of the final draft.
You can share the result with your own contact lists, use it for social media posts, or other media.
Quick and easy
Curious to see what a Shepherd Case Study looks like? Want to imagine your company’s name front and center on the Shepherd website?
Just click here, select “Case Studies” in the navigation bar, and take your pick. If you want to be one of them, it’s dead easy, and it doesn’t take long: an interview, a draft to review, fixes and edits to approve, and it’s done.
Simply write to newsletter@shepherdcmms.com with your company name and a contact we can speak to, and we’ll go from there.
