 |
|
EHN Archives home page |
|
Market Report: Software Solutions Explore the goldmine inspHire believes the software market will remain strong as more hirers install and upgrade programs for their business. Alan Guthrie reports. Hire businesses involved in markets as diverse as tools and equipment, plant, portable toilets and climate control would appear to have little in common owing to their specialist nature. However, one thing that links many of them is that they use computers running inspHire software. “We have more than 600 customers on our database,” says Managing Director Charles Branson. “These include organisations of all sizes, and while the majority are in tool hire, some serve more unusual markets such as hiring stage props, mobile phones, transportable operating theatres, trees, sewing machines and, even, weighbridges. This gives us tremendous knowledge of the ways hire companies do business, and we believe our software can meet any customer requirement. “Good hire software is essential, not only for day-to-day transactions, but also for assessing corporate performance and detecting trends. Computers handle the daily grind of paperwork, enabling staff to spend more time behind the hire desk or out seeing customers,” says Chris Branson, who wrote his first hire software program back in 1990. “In those days, a business had to have bespoke software written. Our first client was Concord Lifting Equipment of Barking (profiled in the July 2005 issue of EHN). The CHAS (Concord Hire and Sales) package was created as a front end for the company’s existing software, written in the Cobol language. “We then wanted to develop an off-the-shelf solution, having found that we could not viably adapt CHAS for a scaffold equipment hirer’s needs. To enable the necessary expansion, we founded a business named Maple Software and developed a program called Criterion Gold. Of course, in the early 1990s, few small businesses had computers. Interest really grew following the introduction of a reliable version of Microsoft Windows which, as we all know, offers drag-and-drop and multi-tasking capabilities. We knew that a Windows-based hire software package would be essential. “We launched our solution, called inspHire (to which the company later changed its name) in 1998 and within six months we had completed 40 installations throughout the country.” These initial sales were to smaller hirers, but soon regional and national companies showed interest. It was decided to develop a separate software solution for such organisations, since they often needed information at a level that would be inappropriate for smaller businesses. This gave two products, each with its separate development team: inspHire Office Edition aimed at hirers with up to 20 users, and Corporate Edition for up to 1,000 users at a large number of branches and in different countries. inspHire Express is also available as a simple start-up system for single-site businesses, which can be easily upgraded later. The inspHire software enables hirers to control aspects like stock and asset management, advanced bookings and depot transfers, and it offers global updating capabilities. Appropriate documents can be generated, such as the hire contract, off-hire receipt, purchase order, exchange note, credit note or invoice, and these can be printed and e-mailed directly. The program links with Sage and other popular accounting packages and is designed to provide easy access to customer details. More than 90 operational, financial and business reports can be run, and information can be exported into Excel and Word, as well as being e-mailed. The company’s customer base comprises companies of all sizes, including Wizard Tool Hire in Alfreton, Red Hat Hire near York, Central Presentations, an audio-visual hirer in the West Midlands, Mayday Plant Hire of Thornton Heath, EFG Europe Group, a hirer of floral decorations throughout Europe, Simply Loos serving London and the south east, Express Tool Hire in Nottingham, Facelift Access Hire of Sussex, Hember Plant Hire based in Warrington, and the Hire Or Buy group which has headquarters in St Neots. The business also reports a growing number of customers in overseas countries, including Holland, Germany, South Africa, Australia and the US. The software can be enhanced by adding various modules, such as the e-business package. This enables transactions to be done on-line 24 hours/day, with customers able to view equipment catalogues and place orders. Other modules include Workshop for controlling service, repair and maintenance; Bar-Coding; CRM (customer relationship management) to monitor client trends; and Secure Plus that utilises GPS/GSM tracking technology to monitor the location and servicing requirements of equipment. inspHire believes that this kind of additional information can enable independents to respond better and more flexibly, giving them a competitive edge, and Charles Branson contends that the software solutions market will remain strong for the foreseeable future. “Businesses are used to writing off fleet items or capital equipment after five or seven years and then improving or replacing them. Similarly, many hirers bought software in 2000 owing to fears about the ‘millennium bug’ and so a significant number of them should be considering upgrading now. They can then benefit from the greater functionality that today’s software offers. Computer systems are no longer just about invoicing and administration: with the appropriate reporting packages, hirers can analyse their performance and maximise revenue from existing and new customers. A hire company’s database is a goldmine, and the best information should be extracted from it.” • T
0870
013
0030 Executive Hire News › Archives › December 2007 › Market Report › Explore the goldmine
|
