ForConstructionPros.com

Rental operators today face a number of unique challenges as they fight to remain competitive. For operators with multiple branches and/or a diverse customer base, maximizing available assets is essential to improving productivity and customer service.

Whether delivering rented supplies for a special function or equipment to a construction site that is tied to rigid scheduling, meeting time and service commitments are a matter of survival. In order to sustain growth and improve profitability in today's competitive environment, some rental operators are turning to Web-based technology to find new ways to improve efficiency and reduce the complexity and costs associated with the scheduling, delivery and pickup of rental products.

Most operators in the rental industry must deal with fluctuating delivery cycles, narrow delivery windows, constantly changing routes and demanding customers. As a result, it is critical that deliveries and pickups — whether pre-scheduled or booked on the same day — are handled as efficiently and accurately as possible.

These and other challenges place a tremendous burden on operators, such as those that must often manually administer dispatch and schedule changes to handle last-minute delivery requests. In addition, those operators that are tied to specific delivery windows frequently have to outsource deliveries to ensure customer needs are being met. All of these have a direct impact on productivity and cost.

Surprisingly, many rental operators still rely on paper-based or rudimentary spreadsheet processes to manage their delivery schedules. This provides only limited value when coordinating routes, since they are not flexible enough to allow for last-minute changes.