Is your ERP or rental management system equipped to handle your fleet operations?
Complete business continuity is vital to finding financial success in any equipment management business. However, for many equipment dealers organising business processes and supporting them with a top-quality management system is a major challenge, mainly because out-of-the-box ERP systems are not designed to meet the intricate demands of today's rental equipment service businesses.
As a business operating in the COVID-19 era, competitive readiness is not an advantage but a necessity to your business's overall success. Consequently, ensuring your business management or ERP system is able to sufficiently provide business continuity across all departments is a must.
If you're currently struggling to get a clear overview of your business and are constantly losing key asset data between departments, it could be time to re-evaluate your current systems. Outlined below are five signs that your equipment management system needs a refresh.
Sign 1: Your system can't keep up with your business demands
Regular technological developments, new regulations, shifting requirements from customers and suppliers mean the requirements you need from your business management software are in a constant state of change. A good future-proof system will change with the times. However as systems age, some become unsupported leaving the businesses that use them consequently unsupported too; lacking the required technological solutions they need to remain competitive.
If you're starting to see areas in your business that your asset management software cannot resolve, you could be running an outdated, unsupported system that could be detrimental to your business's success.
Sign 2: Your system is time consuming to use
The main draw toward a business management system is the integrated capabilities that make business continuity fast and simple, regardless of scale. From administration to sales, almost all your people can work from your system. However, if your system is slow, freezes or fails, they're likely facing daily adversities trying to get simple jobs done.
This can cost you in delays and immediate loss of profit if the system is down for too long. Not to mention the main use case for the system to begin with then becomes obsolete as employees start using disparate systems to get their jobs done, leaving you with varied data sets and limited business oversight. Upgrading is not just about new features and capabilities, but also about having a fast and reliable system you can trust.
In a nutshell, the more up to date your system is, the better it performs. If your system is starting to show signs of slowing down, it could be time for an upgrade.
Sign 3: Your employees find it difficult to use the system
A well-developed ERP system is modern and has simple user interface (UI) that makes user experience (UX) enjoyable. Signs of this are clear menus and screens and comprehensive documentation for support.
If your current ERP system feels clunky, has controls and menus that aren't intuitive by design and confusing navigation, it might be time to look for alternatives. Complex systems cause time and drain money when training or onboarding staff.
The system must be user-friendly so that your employees (especially service technicians) can work with it after a limited period of training.
If you're having trouble onboarding new staff or are finding simple tasks take longer than accounted for, take a look at your UI. Does it look like common consumer applications or does it remind you of the 1990's? If it's the latter, it's a sign your system lacks the design development needed for streamlined operations in the modern age.
Sign 4: Your system is vulnerable to security threats
An up to date cloud-based ERP system is safer and more reliable than an outdated, on-premises one. The older the software, the more vulnerable it becomes to security problems and data breaches. Security demands of the modern age require businesses to maintain solid security infrastructure to ensure vital business data about customers, potential customers, suppliers, partners, contracts, work orders, etc remains safe. This information must be reliable and accurate, but above all stored securely to prevent it from being lost or hacked.
If you haven't been receiving regular notifications from your system vendor about system security updates, you could be at risk of serious data loss, or failure or theft.
Sign 5: Your current system isn't industry-specific
Explaining your industry specific requirements to ERP vendors so they can build a custom solution your equipment management needs is a tired approach to management systems, one that’s not only time-consuming, but is expensive.
As a modern rental equipment dealer, you need a flexible ERP system that meets the ever changing demands of your customer. For example, can you easily up and downscale the number of users of your system? Add new modules or upgrade to new versions? What about interfaces with suppliers and manufacturers, this saves a huge amount of time in everyday processes such as parts ordering, equipment configuration and warranty handling.
In today's competitive asset management landscape there are a myriad of industry-specific ERP systems developed specifically to provide the applications you need without having to reinvent the wheel.
The Dysel equipment management extension for Microsoft Business Central is an example of this. With this industry-specific offering you can be sure that a large team is working on product development and has the years of industry knowledge to build the applications you need to get jobs done. Add to that a well-trained implementation partner and you will be assured system development and future business continuity.
If you are interested in learning how you can upgrade your equipment management system to better manage and maintain equipment dealer operations, get in touch with a Dysel sales specialist at Endeavour.
