USA Independent report validates need for one integrated software managment system for hire and rental companies
HireEzy has long advocated that hire and rental companies can only achieve operational cost savings by having one integrated business management system that provides a single version of the truth. An independent report from a USA consulting company has now valdiated that statement.
Extract From Constuction Hire: AN INDEPENDENT research report by Tech-Clarity has found that hire equipment owners and dealers need to have centralised, efficient software systems if they are to be competitive in the market.
Tech-Clarity’s report shows businesses that integrate service requirements into their managing software are more effective than those that don’t. read more go click here
Dr Tom McKaskill has just published a short article on where the business growth will come from?
Ok, I am an unashamed Dr Tom McKaskill Dr Tom McKaskill fan!
He is one of those unique academic entreprenuers who not only knows the theory but one who was an extremely effective businessman first.
Tom McKaskill’s Business Article Latest Article
His latest article looks at where the growth will come from?
He makes a really good point, that in a tight market such as now – companies are going to have to look at trying several initiatives to find the one that is sustainable.
Ok That’s Great But What Are Some Ideas For Business Initiatives?
One such initiative (s) should be to look at the opportunities offered by Social Media in the following business areas:
- Increasing Revenue;
- Cutting costs; and or
- Reducing Business Risk
A recently published article looks at how each of these can be applied to businesses.
You can read more articles from Tom here or view some of short videos presentations on our EzySoft YouTube Channel.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=dc7ae258-0aaa-4fd2-979f-8d3bd72cd0f9 "Where will Business Growth Come From??")
Creating a blog for your rental or hire business is an essential element in your digital marketing strategy.
Yes we make it easy with HireEzy 2.1 to manage your blog from your hire and rental management system, but you still need good images and content.
Free Image Sources
Often finding images and other multi-media can be difficult and expensive.
This list below is excellent and a great resource for you.
26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog
Posted using ShareThis
Yes make it easy with HireEzy 2.1 to manage your blog from your hire and rental management system, but you still need good images and content.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8f78ea1b-ad8e-4058-8ebe-d78f0398593e "26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog")
- Image by Alex Osterwalder via Flickr
Starting your own business, whether home based or otherwise, is a big step. Any new company, large or small, is going to take time to get off the ground and start generating any kind of substantial profits. Saying that is one thing, but if you’re one of the people embarking on the task, the obvious question is, “How do I survive while waiting to start making money?”
The fact is that unless you have a hefty amount of personal savings, which you are prepared to diminish, you are probably going to need some kind of alternative income source during this period. After all, any money you do make during the initial start up period may well need to be channelled straight back into the business in order to help it grow. The good news is that with some good advice and solid forward planning, surviving those first few months may end up being slightly less intimidating than at first thought.
The first thing to do is take a good hard look at your current personal finances and be brutally honest with yourself about your needs over the first few months of your new business. Take account of everything, from rent or mortgage payments, food and other routine household expenses. Once you have had a good look at your personal spending needs, you will know how much money you require, on average, for the first year or so of your new endeavour. You have to be honest with yourself and not be unrealistic, either about how much money you will need to survive or the level of income you expect to take during those first few months.
The way to go about preparing a realistic estimate of your business profit prospects on start up is to assess the expected sales levels and how much you expect to be paying out in costs and expenses. Take a look at the difference between the two figures; if the expenses are greater than the sales figures, which they are most likely to be during the start up phase of your enterprise, you will have a good idea of how much money you will need to find from alternative sources. This will probably mean taking out loans or selling some personal assets.
Another way of surviving financially might be to continue working for your current employer until your new business takes off. Many new business proprietors take out bank loans to get them through those first few months, but before you take on such a debt you need to be certain of all the details. Find out what would happen if you failed to make the necessary repayments and found yourself with a hefty overdraft.
Other options might be to simply find ways of reducing your business or personal costs, such as using public transport instead of your car or finding the lowest possible prices for goods that you buy. Running your new business from home if possible, rather than having to rent commercial premises would be a highly effective way of saving a considerable amount of money.
Starting up a new business can be relatively simple providing you plan ahead.
Naz Daud – CityLocal Directory
Copyright information: This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety, including live links to the following websites:
http://www.citylocal.co.uk/
http://www.citylocal.co.uk/businessfranchise/
http://www.citylocal.ie/
& this copyright statement must also be included.
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- Image by Saurabh Goswami via Flickr
Necessity is the mother of invention!
A mantra my father drove in to my head when I was a growing up, not once but repeatedly.
Recently I was reminded of this little childhood memory when reading a recent article by Michael Roth (writes great articles) on Rental Industry Makes Positive Efforts in Midst of Recession .
Michael made the point that companies will be forced to innovate, given the slow recovery. Innovate because they have to.
Great Point But Where To Start To Look For Innovation?
Keeping things basic, there are only three simple things you can ever do in a business:
- Increase revenue
- Cut Costs or
- Reduce Risks
So What Are Some Ideas for Innovation?
Well look towards Social Media and Digital Marketing as a prospective source. There is massive opportunity to be had for creative hire and rental companies in adopting Social Media and related digital marketing.
Why, because overall the industry has been incredibly slow to adopt it.
That’s great for innovators as it means there is massive untapped opportunities out there!
First Increase Revenue
Social media marketing has been shown to be a great way of increasing sales leads if done properly. A well planned and executed social media strategy ( its not hard at all) can really be effective in driving more traffic to your web site, hence your offer.
Articles
Why Social Media is a Natural Channel for Hire and Rental Companies
Second Cutting Costs
Social media can be used in to cut hire and rental operating costs. For example cutting website development fees by having self web content management embedded in your rental software or hire software. Not only does this cut operating costs it also can improve search engine rankings, through more frequent changes.
Articles
Options for Reducing Costs
Reducing Risk
Reducing business risks can be in part by considering the use of Social Media, for example using YouTube to show clients how to maintain, set up or dis-assemble equipment.
Articles:
How Hire and Rental Companies Can Use YouTube
Still Unsure
We are offering Hire and Rental Companies a free advisory service to discuss how to use Social Media in their business. No obligation etc, why because we dont sell Social Media services – we simple offer our globally recognised skills in Social Media back to the industry. See our press release for more details, click here.
What do we get out of it?
Well we believe that if you begin to use social media and digital marketing effectively, then you will appreciate the value of the integrated social media and digital marketing tools in our hire software and rental software.
For more information Email Us
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- Use Social Media To Expand Your Business (lazerpromotions.com)
- Social Media Infecting Every Aspect of Business (ducttapemarketing.com)
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Next Generation Hire Software and Rental Software for Construction Rental, Fencing Rental Hire Companies
- Image via Wikipedia
The next generation of natural business flow software for Temporary Fencing and Construction Rental and Hire businesses has been released. It now also enables you to control your own website content and catalogue.
Construction hire and rental companies, particularly temporary fencing have some unique hire and rental requirements specific to their business sector. Previously many such companies have had to rely on multiple systems to manage their businesses.
Not so any more!
HireEzy v2.1 has been released with all the specific needs of Construction hire and rental companies, particularly temporary fencing. Such companies need specific functional in addition to normal hire and rental functional requirements.
HireEzy 2.1 includes all standard hire and rental functionality PLUS
1. Estimation tools to support quotes
2. Management of services to support rental or hire solutions
3. The need for staff and contractor management
4. Issuing and tracking of safety data to meet safety requirements
5. Flexible payments and recurrent billing options.
HireEzy is a complete business solution for temporary roofing, scaffolding and fencing hire/ rental companies.
Natural Business Flow
HireEzy is a natural business flow software, part of the next generation of software solutions that are easy to use but also fully integrate with the internet. Natural business flow software follows the natural way businesses operate.
The natural flow in general terms construction rental and hire companies, specifically scaffolding, fencing and roofing rental and hire follows these broad business processes.
1. Market to create leads
2. Quotes supported by simple estimation tools and booking availability.
3. Convert quotes to invoices and confirmed bookings.
4. Manage and allocate materials and labor resources – (either internal or contractor).
5. Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect.
6. Account for the money.
7. Manage existing clients to generate new business.
HireEzy assists you to manage each of these processes with not only the tools you need, but some you may not even have thought of. Each of the processes will now be briefly discussed.
Marketing
The primary purpose of marketing is to create sales leads. HireEzy provides a full range of in-built marketing tools to enable you to produce your own high quality brochures, catalogue, e-mailers and newsletters. Most importantly it enables you to control your own marketing from one location.
Marketing – Integrated Web Option
The internet is now increasing the primary source of lead generation for most businesses. However for it to work for you it must have a high search engine ranking. That is if “scaffolding hire Melbourne” is typed by a prospect, your company web site must appear at a minimum on the first page of listings. It is worth noting, research has shown that prospects will click on a search result (organic result) over a paid ad appearing on the same page.
HireEzy’s web integration option can significantly help here. By integrating your hire or rental catalogue to the web site, any changes you make in the catalogue are published to the web site. Such changes ensure more frequent web site changes. This in turn means a higher search engine ranking, increasing the chances you will appear on the first page.
HireEzy is the only known system in the world to offer this fully integrated functionality – a critical business tool.
Quoting
HireEzy has some simple inbuilt tools to support your quotation process, such as:
1. An inbuilt length estimator,
2. Contractor resource availability,
3. Inventory availability for a given date range, and
4. Discount rate for approved clients
Such tools simplify the quotation process, meaning all information is at your finger tips. Once a quote has been produced, a simple high quality quotation with graphic images can be produced, and emailed to the client or printed and handed to them.
Invoicing
Quotes are turned to invoices with one click. Or allow quotes to be adjusted to reflect any changes in the original quote. Industry payment terms and conditions are included, such as recurring billing for long term rental or hire, part de-hiring of long term rental or hire items, even allows for adjustment of payments for stand down days.
Manage and Allocate Resources
There are primarily two resources you need to manage, your inventory and your staff/ contractors. With HireEzy you can effectively manage both of these key assets.
The inbuilt inventory management tools enable you to manage your inventory purchasing, receipt, maintenance and dispatch to a job. Accurately providing you with real time information on your stock on hand. If you have depots, no problems, HireEzy can manage your inventory at each site.
Your staff and contractors are essential to your service delivery. HireEzy provides the tools to improve your management of your most valuable asset – people.
Like an item, the availability of staff and contractors is managed in HireEzy. Both can advise of leave periods, other jobs etc and these can be added to the system to provide accurate forecasts of availability. Got a new job and want to confirm a contractor availability then just click SMS, and an SMS is sent straight to the contractor with the job details and dates.
Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect
HireEzy comes with the inbuilt transport planning tools to enable you to schedule deliveries and collections, including assigning tasks to drivers and co-drivers such as:
• Assembly/ disassembly tasks,
• Payment collection,
• On-site period inspections, and
• Collections.
It even includes full integration with Google Street maps to provide directions. On site conditions, limitations including access times etc are also included.
Accounting
Most accounting packages rely on data being transferred from business operations. HireEzy accounting package is driven by your hire transactions, saving enormously on double handling of data and the associated risk of errors. For example, creating an invoice in HireEzy immediately creates an Account Receivable record. If you still have other accounting packages then we could provide data export to those systems. HireEzy accounting module has a full range of financial reports needed to run your business. HireEzy accounting module is included with your purchase.
Manage Your Clients
The old adage is that it is 15 times harder to win a new client than to retain an existing client. HireEzy’s inbuilt management tools, such as contact management, newsletter productions and customer discounts etc, ensure that you have the tools at hand to support your on-going client retention.
HireEzy is the ideal solution for temporary roofing, scaffolding and fencing hire/ rental companies who want to grow their business whether in the USA, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom or New Zealand.
If you are interested in more information or an online demonstration then please contact us or book a demo on line at www.makinglifeezy.com.au
About Us
Making Life Ezy developers of HireEzy and AgencyEzy.
HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration.
How to Use Social Media Tools
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Marketing Problem
Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO
Creating a Digital Marketing Platform
Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics
Marketing via Twitter
How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter
Marketing via Facebook
Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930’s
Marketing via YouTube
How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media
Marketing via WordPress
Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog
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Here is a useful set of links to the main international rental and hire industry associations, in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
Such associations can often provide useful business advise to Rental and Hire businesses, especially in times like these.
New Zealand Hire and Rental Association
Australia Hire and Rental Association
United Kingdom Construction Rental
South Africa Contractor & Plant Hire Association
If you know of any more please let us know and we will add them to the list
Making Life Ezy are the makers of HireEzy – the next generation of hire and rental management software
Welcome to the Thumbs Up Edition of my review of the week in tech – each week I’m picking out the things that I liked the most that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.
This week in Thumbs Up is all about handy Windows apps, plus some interesting statistics about social media in the enterprise:
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Hey cool! This will be handy – New App Links SkyDrive to Windows Explorer http://bit.ly/ncuiT
If you haven’t heard of Windows SkyDrive, it’s basically a free online storage solution provided by Microsoft which gives you 25gb to store whatever you want on the internet so that you can access from anyway. It’s not really pushed at the moment which is why not many people know about it, but that will certainly change once Office 2010 is released, as it is heavily focused on extending the Office experience beyond the desktop and allow people create and save MS Office documents online using online browsing versions and store them in their SkyDrive using the Office Live plugin. Personally, I’ve found it really handy and I use it alot. What this application does (which was NOT created by Microsoft, by the way) is install your SkyDrive as anther hard drive on your computer in the Explorer shell, so that you can simply copy and paste to it like any other hard drive – the online difference of course is that you are storing your stuff on Microsoft’s servers. This is really great for backing up all of your critical information so that if your machine breaks down or is stolen, you can simply replace it and remap your SkyDrive to the machine using this application and voila – you have all your information back. Highly recommended.
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Very interesting – Palo Alto Networks: Twitter Usage Soars in the Enterprise http://bit.ly/TBJt1
There is another article of similar theme that I tweeted as well this week, which you can read here – http://bit.ly/1P8llM – which also touches on how social networking usage is exploding in the business and enterprise workplaces. The reason why? It is a far more effective way of engaging your audience and getting your message across. I am willing to bet my left kidney that Google will shell out somewhere in the vacinity of $2 billion to buy out Twitter and position it as it’s newest advertising medium, considering that many businesses are telling the same story as we are – Google Adwords is a WASTE OF MONEY. Our company stopped using it earlier in the year and we now exclusively advertise our products and services through Twitter (and Facebook to a lesser extent) and the result has been a 700% increase in sales leads. True story. We are so happy with the results that we will never use Google Adwords every again – which by the way supplies Google with 97% of their $16 billion a year in revenue. You do the math – Google will have to radically adjust their business model or risk becoming irrelevant and having their revenue dry up big time.
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Good article – Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough [Opinion] http://bit.ly/19flzZ
I’ve blogged about Microsoft Security Essentials before – if you haven’t yet heard of this program, it’s Microsoft’s version of a free anti-virus program – and since it’s release I have been surprised about the amount of articles likes these that are getting published which are complementary to Microsoft for this being a great release. What I would add to the fact that it is a good enough security program is the fact that it DOESN”T ANNOY YOU. I’ve been running it myself ever since it was released and not once ever has the program prompted me to interact with it in any way. At first I was a little worried that perhaps the virus definitions weren’t up to date so on the odd occasion I opened it up to check – I was wrong, the program is updating itself almost daily and it isn’t doing anything annoying on the screen to indicate that it’s working in the background. In my opinion, that is the ultimate security program, as I often forget that it is there. I have been going through the process of uninstalling AVG and other virus programs on the computers that I come across and have been installing this instead, it truly is a nice, solid release and I’d recommend it to anybody. If you’d like to try it yourself, you can download it for free at http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials.
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Awesome app – Paint.NET Releases Big Update, Still a Killer Photoshop Alternative [Downloads] http://bit.ly/2Ok9bW
Photoshopping has pretty much become a verb now, on par with Googling a search of Tweeting a message and yet Photoshop is an extremely expensive piece of software that only business professionals can afford. This application – Paint.NET – which has been around for a while, is a FREE program that gives you all the basics of image editing and some advanced options too. I’ve been recommending this to people who are uploading graphics to their website and want to do some basic image manipulation themselves and this program will do it all for them for the nice price of nothing. I’d recommend this to anybody – it’s a Windows only release, but let’s face it, the majority of Mac users probably have Windows installed as well, or will need to install it soon. Grab this and enjoy (and check out the article for more tips on how to use the program).
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Wow – Firefox Tops Vulnerability List (internetnews.com) http://bit.ly/3lqzXF
It surprises a fair few people that I talk to when I tell them that I’m a dedicated Internet Explorer user, but truth be told, Firefox is a great browser but still has a ways to go. Do you ever wonder why Google invested a whole pile of money into building their own browser even though they pony up the majority of the funds that Mozilla uses to operate whilst building free products like Firefox? It’s because sometimes in situations like these where the browser is such an important tool, it’s beneficial that it is being designed and built by people who spend all day working in computer security for a wide range of software products, not just one. This article goes on to detail how Firefox is the most vulnerable browser to hack attempts and general exploits, even above Internet Explorer. Something else that most people don’t know about Firefox is that it is a memory hog. I’ve often looked at people’s computers who have Firefox open and 3 or four tabs open and Firefox is using around 180 – 200mb of RAM from the machine just to do that. It’s pretty ridiculous. My general advice is to stick with the browser that comes with the computer – IE on Windows or Safari on a Mac, as they are both acutely fine tuned for their respective environments. What about Google Chrome you might say? Well, you can always use that browser if you don’t mind the fact that it is butt ugly.
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- After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges (news.cnet.com)
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- Browser-based Office shows its face (news.cnet.com)
- Will You Use Microsoft Office Web Apps? (lockergnome.com)
- Office Web Apps coming to Windows Live (liveside.net)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c399eac4-4add-421a-beb4-e615d4f3d274 "Thumbs Up Techo Twitter Posts week ending 15 Nov")
- Image via Wikipedia
The Audio Visual hire and rental industry appears to have weathered the recession.
The Audio Visual rental and hire industry had been experiencing solid rates of growth leading in to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
According to various reports many had been planning to increase staff and inventory prior to the GFC .
However when the GFC hit, there was some discussion and predictions of doom and gloom.
But the suddenness of the crisis was thought to have left many exposed!
Firstly there was concern that the predicted collapse of the USA $175 Bn Corporate offsite meeting market would impact the AV rental and hire companies. This figure includes all goods and services supplied to the market, of which AV rental is but one.
Discussions with our clients has indicated that whilst Corporate Off site meetings may have decreased. Demand appeared to shift to providing AV equipment for on- client site meetings.
Cash flow Impacts
Whilst many indicated that there had been a fall in demand, the biggest issue was cash-flow. In particular clients extending the payment term period.
Cash flow is the life blood for many AV hire and rental businesses given that many have large inventory debt costs to be serviced.
Many did not comment on the role of the banks in providing increased credit lines. However based on evidence from other sectors it is likely that the banks were not that forth-coming.
A common theme amongst clients was the focus on cost management. Those were able to identify, analyze and remove non value adding costs appeared to do well.
Cost management analysis must cover the entire natural business process from lead generation through bookings, service delivery, inventory to managing the accounts. This total analysis ability is critical, as without it companies can cut costs in one area, only to find that costs rise in another.
This may sound trite, but in an industry that has grew rapidly through the boom years, cost management was not in many cases of core management focus.
Downturn Passing
Now that the downturn is passing and the green shoots of recovery are appearing, those AV companies who survived will be well placed.
Whilst it is expected the cash flow may remain an issue for the foreseeable future, revenue is expected to increase.
Positioning for Growth
The focus now moves to positioning for growth, picking up new markets and clients.
Given the lagging issue of cash flow, many may not have the marketing financial resources to take advantage of the emerging opportunities.
Look to Social Media Marketing
AV companies that find themselves in that position should seriously consider using Social Media Marketing. Social Media marketing is growing rapidly, in particular by businesses of all sizes from Corporate to the Smallest.
Combining attraction tools like Twitter with content sources such as a blog can be incredibly effective. Evidence from the USA shows that web site traffic can be increased as much as 55% using such tools.
About Us
HireEzy, made by Making Life Ezy, provides Audio Visual rental and hire companies with a complete AV rental and hire business solution, managing all aspects of the business process from lead generation to cash at bank. But is goes beyond that it also includes full integration with the web site and social media marketing tools.
HireEzy is in available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA and the UK. For more information on an-line demo, email sales@makinglifeezy.com.au or go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au
AV Rental software , AV Hire Software
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0951a391-5740-4895-9540-f88702fac805 "Audio Visual Rental Hire Marketing Options (updated)")
- Image via Wikipedia
In the first article in this series we looked at the basics of SEO.
Now we will move on to getting started.
Step One: Analyse your current site.
Why because firstly it will give you a list of things you need to do to improve your SEO and secondly it will enable you to track your improvement overtime.
There are a number of great sites which help you do this, but we love Web SEO Analytics tools.
WebSEOAnalytics has excellent SEO analysis tools, best of all they are free. The first one to use is the Web SEO Analysis Tool, it will give you a comprehensive report on your current site.
Step Two: Get the SEO Tool Bar
Download the SEO tool bar for Firefox, it you have IE or another browser, you may wish to consider installing Firefox.
This tool bar gives you excellent analysis tools for every site you visit. The information it has is really useful as you go forward in undertaking the SEO yourself.
You could also consider using the Alexa toolbar as well, it has some useful tools in it as well. Alexa can help your search rankings as explained in a previous article
Step Three: Start Fixing the Issues
The Analysis Report you received from Web SEO Analytics may include some issues or errors you may not understand. Don’t stress, either go back to Web SEO Analytics web site or get really good free ebook that can help.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=fc3a7404-7917-496f-abf7-96d1e12d7fe0 "Series Two on SEO for Rental and Hire Companies")
