How to use Sycor.Rental to Navigate Three Common Challenges in the Equipment Rental Industry
Part 2 of 3

June 13, 2024

Part 2: Detailed Tracking of Equipment Maintenance Costs

Detailed Tracking of Equipment Maintenance Records and their Related Time and Material Cost

In addition to the rental market’s competitiveness and fragmentation, the equipment rental industry is inherently defined by its capital-intensive nature. Rental companies routinely need to undertake significant financial investments to rejuvenate and re-compose their rental fleet based on changes in market demand, financial considerations, environmental regulations, and other factors. This capital-intensive nature makes minimizing downtime and maximizing lifespan of rental equipment an ongoing challenge that is crucial for maximizing dollar productivity, maintaining high customer satisfaction, and obtaining a strong operating result.

Especially as rental equipment ages, and if not replaced within a certain period, required maintenance and repairs tend to considerably increase. More maintenance and repairs equal higher costs that need to be borne by rental companies to keep their rental fleet in good working condition. Beyond that, frequent repair-related downtime negatively impacts utilization. To identify unfavorable trends and analyze the impact maintenance and repair activities have on total cost of ownership and expected resale value, it is vital for equipment rental companies to document and monitor the maintenance history of their assets. A detailed maintenance history also allows for periodic comparisons with original equipment manufacturer guidelines, which can help rental operators establish effective preventive maintenance plans and anticipate component failures. Rental businesses can further leverage detailed maintenance, repair, and service data to identify areas for improvement, ensure the safety of their equipment, and calculate the optimum time to dispose of an asset.

To be able to create a strong maintenance and repair data pool that allows for derivation of actionable insights, rental companies should target technology that offers the following three capabilities: (i) automatic tracking of maintenance transactions and their related costs, (ii) consolidation of maintenance and repair data in one location for ease of access, and (iii) flexible reporting capabilities to allow for company-specific data analyses.

With Sycor.Rental, equipment rental companies get all the above. For one thing, the solution supports the automation of important maintenance-related process steps, such as the automated creation of inspection or repair workshop orders for assets that are returned from rent, or the time- and usage-based automated scheduling of preventive maintenance appointments. Secondly, all workshop and service orders along with their related time and material expenses are automatically tracked against the equipment that these activities are performed on. This tracking works centrally, even if the same equipment is used across different subsidiary companies. Finally, since all service, maintenance, and repair data records are consolidated in one place, reporting is made easy. Rental companies can either use the out-of-the-box maintenance history report or create custom PowerBI reports that leverage maintenance data in conjunction with other readily available data, such as depreciation expenses and equipment age, for example.

Supported by these capabilities, equipment rental companies are empowered to leverage their equipment maintenance data to its full extent, whether it’s to proactively respond to trends of increased maintenance and repair requirements or to support decision-making processes related to the disposal of an asset. As a result, rental businesses will be able to provide their customers with equipment that is more consistently well-maintained, and thereby, more productive, and dependable all while having better control over their overall maintenance costs