Meade rental fleet coordinators needed a new system for ordering and entering the more than 1,600+ equipment rental requests received on average each year. Netrix created a Rental Log backed by Microsoft 365 and Nintex Forms, Workflow & Document Generation that now serves as the clearinghouse for all requests, whether received by phone, email, or other digital forms, and is giving fleet coordinators, project managers, and superintendents back thousands of hours of new productivity – and saving tens of thousands of dollars in wasted time and fleet rental costs.
Fleet rental orders used to be a sore subject for Caitlin Kuhn, a fleet coordinator at Meade, a utilities construction firm based in Chicago.
Incoming fleet rental requests were difficult and time-consuming to process and track, frequently causing them to be misplaced and delayed. Paper forms and manual inputs caused confusion and frustration.
“We used lots of paper, phone calls, and an outdated database to manage it,” Kuhn said. “It took us 30 minutes to process a single request and generate a purchase order, and then we would have monthly equipment meetings that took two hours to reconcile everything for accounting. It required a lot of time and manual work to keep it all straight.”
Brian Curry is director of fleet operations at Meade and contacted the Meade IT Department to build a centralized fleet rental log that would be easy to implement and use.
“We were pleased on how Netrix assisted in revamping our estimating process a few weeks before,” said Eric Stenstrom the Director of IT at Meade. “Netrix solved our workflow questions using SharePoint and suggested Nintex Forms Workflow and Document Generation for our custom purchase orders.”
Enabling A Culture of Process Excellence
Netrix designed a digital rental request form that automatically generates purchase orders as PDFs that are instantly emailed to project leaders for review and approval.
“With the new Rental Log, we can create a rental request and PO in just a few minutes instead of 30,” Kuhn said. “And we get it right the first time with all the details in one place and visible to anyone who needs them.”
Kuhn and three others in the fleet department receive about 30 rental requests on average per week or about 1,600 per year. The time saved from faster rental requests and reduced internal meeting time adds up to about 1,000 hours of new productivity that can be used for more important things like service, support, and fleet maintenance.
“This Rental Log makes our monthly reporting and reconciliation a much shorter and more manageable process,” Kuhn said. “Monthly equipment meetings are now one hour, individuals pop in and out using Teams, and changes are made in the Rental Log in real-time. No more 30-page paper reports full of old data.”
Another key driver of cost and profitability is “rental waste,” or renting equipment longer than necessary due to incorrect end dates. The Rental Log not only helps Meade manage its own fleet but also tracks the equipment and expenses it rents from third parties.
“Overall, the Microsoft 365 Rental Log has made monitoring and maintaining rentals a breeze,” Kuhn said. “We’ve got more intelligence about our fleet, more control over our costs, and we’re delivering better service to our divisions and departments so they can deliver the best service to Meade clients.”
Pains
Gains
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