Europlatform gives insights into new age rental and safety
More than 120 access rental professionals attended the 10th Europlatform conference held on 22 September 2016 in Vienna, Austria. With a theme of ‘New Generation Rental’, attendees explored the future of the powered access rental industry at the event organised by the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF)
In his opening presentation on “Toolbox to shoebox”, Andy Studdert, who is chairman & CEO of US-based NES Rentals, showed how rental companies can continually use technology to meet customers’ needs, but also challenged them to use it effectively.
“Technology is easy, but stay focused on what it is doing to the transactional, tactical and strategic elements of your business,” he said. “Introducing technology brings a natural effort to move to efficiency instead of service and content. But ask yourselves, ‘Who owns the customer?’”
Repeatable processes are fundamental to the rental business, Mr Studdert noted, and companies have tools from barcodes to iPads to help manage inventory, rentals and fleet maintenance. His advice was: “Keep ownership of data as close as you can. Give this up and you give up control. Information and visibility into your pricing should never be given up. Keep control of pricing and inventory.”
