November 28, 2022
Point of Rental Software
pointofrental.com
Fort Worth, Texas
972-602-9819
sales@pointofrental.com
The exact number of companies that offer equipment and event rental-specific software changes as companies enter and exit the market, but today there are more than 30 companies to choose from.
To help readers navigate through the variety of options when it comes to equipment and event rental-specific software, Rental Management is producing this Rental Software Series, which will provide profiles of software suppliers on a regular basis. This month, we profile Point of Rental, Fort Worth, Texas.
Employees: 320 worldwide
Founded: 1982
Founders: Bob Shaffer, Steve Husbands and Byron White.
Current software products: Elite, Essentials.
Other products: PartyCAD design software for event planning, Rental eSign for electronic signatures and Syrinx available only outside of North America.
Number of users: About 5,000 globally.
Target customers: Equipment and event rental companies. “We also have customers in tangential areas like construction that use our software as well as some specialty rental situations. For example, REI, a retail and outdoor recreation services company, uses our software to rent tents and equipment. Construction customers use the software internally to keep track of where their owned equipment is and reserve it for a job site and to help with job costing,” says Wayne Harris, CEO.
How can software make a rental store more efficient? “It is all about the customer workflows that go into the software. For 40 years, Point of Rental has honed workflows to the way people standardly do business. The system can tell you ahead of time if you don’t have the needed equipment available and if you need to order or sell items. You know if items are in repair or in service and when they need to be picked up or delivered because it shows up on the list. If something is broken, a service call is added to the mechanic’s list and with GPS, the mechanic can go directly to where the equipment is on the job site to save time and money. One of these things by itself might not make a difference, but when you add it all together, your rental business is a well-oiled machine and rental software keeps things running smoothly,” Harris says.
What new problems is your software able to resolve for rental companies? “During the pandemic, the use of technology and software accelerated. Before, about 80 percent of a rental store’s transactions were done face-to-face. Then it flip-flopped. Rental stores had to have an online presence, e-commerce, mobile notifications, web payments and other contactless processes in place. Consumers now expect this sort of experience. Before, you could start a rental store without those technology bells and whistles. Now, those are the table stakes to get in the game,” Harris says.
Why should a rental company choose Point of Rental as their software provider? “Buying software is hard to do. Point of Rental started in 1982 and over the past 40 years, we have become better and better in our processes. We have one of the largest development teams in the world for rental management software and no one is spending more on development than we do because we believe if you are not innovating, you are dying. We have customers who have been with us for decades, but the software they were using back in the 1980s has nowhere near the capabilities, integrations and functionality that Point of Rental has today,” Harris says.
What do you think is next for the evolution of equipment and event rental software? “Continued development with mobile capabilities, e-commerce, and the ability of a rental store’s customer to self-serve, update their own contracts, ask for service, extend contracts, change reservations, make payments and get specific reporting. When you think of software, you might only be thinking about the counter operation and writing contracts, but everything needs to be available through a mobile device so that people can do their job on the phone wherever they are,” Harris says
View the Rental Management Software Series library
Rental Management will profile a rental software company in each issue. This profile will include basic information about the company, a written article and a video. Click here to view the entire Software Series library of articles and videos as they are published. The videos are also available on Rental Management‘s YouTube channel, which you can find by clicking here.
ARA Rental Software Reviews available to ARA members
The American Rental Association (ARA) has created ARA Rental Software Reviews, an online tool available exclusively to ARA members via ARArental.org.
Members can access the tool by clicking here.
The tool is generated from an ongoing survey of ARA members, which asked members to rate their current rental software system as well as the importance of common rental-specific software features.
The tool includes survey results detailing features ARA members are using, features ranked by importance, market share according to reviews, software comparisons, software reviews and software feature comparisons.
Reports also can be filtered by industry segment and by the size of rental company.
