In fact over 55% of new hire and rental leads now come from the web

Major Business Issue

The business issue though is ensuring that the virtual (web presence) and the physical (actual shop or store) are aligned! Such that whether a customer “walks in” or “clicks in” that get the same up to date accurate information.

This may sound simple but as most rental and hire companies know it is not!

Why!

Because the data for each item (description, category, images etc) is maintained both in the rental or hire business management system and separately in the web database.

Cost

This imposes a real cost on Rental and Hire companies.

As each time they update their inventory, either adding a new item, or new images, or even new descriptions – they have to pay a web developer to make the changes.

One client stated that this cost was running in to thousands of dollars per annum

A cost imposition just to simply update basic information!

Eliminate the Cost and Take Control

Eliminate this cost, make the change once and have it update the web automatically with one click!

You can with HireEzy 2.1!

Go Beyond!

Why not also update your specials, your promotions etc – in fact why not take control of your web content yourself.

Hire and Rental companies can now manage their web content, including hire items, images, pricing and promotions through the one single application. Even update your own terms and conditions with one click.

On-line Requests Let customers browse, select and place an order request on line – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year!!!!!

You can with HireEzy 2.1 and our web option.

We make the web an integral part of your business as it should be in this day and age.

Read more about the benefits of the integrated SMS and how it can reduce booking cancellations or no shows by 25%.  Link to article

HireEzy 2.1 also includes an inbuilt range of web 2.0 productivity tools, Social Media integration and digital marketing tools (such as mass email, SMS, high graphic catalogues etc).  All easy to use by YOU!

No wonder HireEzy is the world’s most innovative Hire Software and Rental Software .

About Us

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. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

Not just in managing bookings, but in marketing, sales it even has on inbuilt online store!

HireEzy made by Making Life Ezy is World’s most innovative leader!

As one client in recently put it, “we have been looking for twelve months to replace our old system, your software is years ahead of anything else on the market”

So why is HireEzy so far ahead of the rest!
Companies now have three domains that the need to manage the:

Physical site – managing rental and hire sales on site including point of sales;
Web site – managing rental and hire on line leads and bookings; and
Mobile

sites- albeit sales staff operating off site or people working from home or remote offices.

HireEzy provides one fully integrated solution to enable this to happen!

This is the reason why we are growing so fast globally. Businesses want a fully flexible solution that meets there real business needs. HireEzy does that! It is not just about the flexibility but the true cost saving, by eliminating mulitple systems and replacing it with one.

Many customers cite savings in excess of 30% of related operating costs. Plus because of the inbuilt digital marketing and sales tools, many claim to have substantially increased sales.

So even if you are on older platforms, dont worry we regularly migrate customers off older systems to ours so that their historical records are transferred across in to your new HireEzy system.

Here is a short overview of some of the functionality included in HireEzy.

Marketing- Customer relationship management
- Customer transaction history, including damages
- Customer contact records
- SMS marketing and reminders
- High Graphic brochure production
- Integrated web content management option
- Integrated online catalogue option
- Product Marketing brochure production
- Product Combination brochure production
- Inbuilt email for brochures
- Lead Source identification and analysis
- Management Marketing Reports

Sales and Bookings- Equipment Sales
- Equipment Hire
- Equipment Availability
- Calendar view of equipment bookings
- Sales lead management
- Process credit card payments
- POS integrates to most hardware
- Professional high quality quotes
- Licence Scanning to customer record
- Quote to Invoice conversion
- Deposits and Bond management
- Damages and waivers processing
- Long term hire and Cross hire
- Hire Item Packages suggests and manages sub component hire items
- Existing Customer discounts
- Management Sales Reports
Inventory- Bookings generate warehouse pick slips
- Stock purchasing
- Service and Maintenance scheduling
- Service and Maintenance history
- Inventory levels by product
- Bill of Materials for combination hire items
- Management Stock Reports

Delivery and Collections- Bookings generate delivery requests where delivery requested
- Delivery schedule planning
- Complete integration with Google Maps for delivery planning
- Integrated collections planning with delivery
- On-site servicing or inspections requirements can be integrated in to route planning
- Deposits and Bond management
- Damages and waivers processing

Finance and Accounting- Bookings create accounting transaction records
- Payroll option
- General Ledger
- Profit and Loss Statements
- Long term hire monthly/ period payment processing
- Links to Ezidebit for 3rd party collection of period payments
- Financial Management Reports

Technical- Operating systems Windows XP, Vista and Mac
- Minimum requirements Pentium III 500Mhz
- Network up to 250 users

About Us

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. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

HireEzy is the innovation leader for the global rental and hire industry!

The structural changes relate to the decline of traditional advertising stalwarts, the yellow pages, print media and television advertising.

Firstly the Print Media

The print media has long been the main source of news, and hence advertising. However, good journalism, even bad comes at a price. The print media’s classified and advertising revenues have long funded their journalists and distribution costs. But that is no longer the case.

NEWSPAPER REVENUES FALL 29%

Internet news is cutting deep in to the traditional print media. Many companies have tried to build business models that are Internet friendly? Albeit that they are extensions of the old business models, such as subscription services. Such models have generally failed, for a variety of reasons, but one in particular dominates all. There is a perception amongst Internet users that information on the net is free or should be free. With so many other sources of information to choose from, browsers simply err away from subscription services to other free sources of information.

Journalists are having debates over the fact if you want good information you need to pay for it. That may be true, but at this stage of the Internets maturity, people appear to be less discerning in the quality of information they receive.

The Canadian Company Dialect has published a list of newspapers around the world that have been closed down,

Secondly Television Advertising

I read recently, unfortunately I can not remember the source, that over half the world’s television advertising spend is in the USA. Audience fragmentation is a main issue, people have choice now in their visual home entertainment, from free to air television, cable tv, Internet programs, even video games and dvd’s etc. This choice range acts to fragment the audience, and even the audience with in a household. Consider the old images from the 1950′s and 60′s probably even the 70′s of families all sitting around one TV watching the hit shows of the day. Now days, it is more likely that mom is watching on one TV, Dad on another, the kids in their rooms either on MSN messenger or playing video games.

Here are some statistics, in the UK there forecasts indicate that advertising revenue is expected to fall by nearly $0.7 Bn US in three years.  The USA television bureau is forecasting another 7% decline in advertising across the sector.

Finally Yellow Pages

Increasing research in the US and Australia has found that the use of the traditional yellow pages is declining.

People are increasingly turning to the Internet to find information, even local information. Some figures suggest that this the use of on-line search can be as high as 80% of all information searches.

Even Wall Street acknowledges that the days of printed directories like Yellow pages are numbered. The Wall Street Journal reported that advertising in US print directories is expected to fall 39% over the next four years.  In there words as people migrate en masse  to the web.

Dr Lynella Grant is the author of Yellow Page Smarts, she makes the point that relying on just yellow pages is now longer safe. She makes the points that over half of all customers now go to the internet first to find information even for local products.  This is not too say you should not have Yellow Pages advertising, rather you should not be singularly reliant on it.

As an example, speaking to one of our customers recently, he said.  When Dad run the business we use to spend up to $15-$20k a year on yellow pages advertising, we now spend $2k.  The reason is that our leads for our small print business are increasingly coming from both business and private customers finding us on the web – even the locals!

So what is going up

Well not surprising internet advertising is growing at around 10% per annum. Again this is not surprising either when you go back to fundamentals. The media companies whether TV or print provide information and entertainment. But so does the internet!

The yellow pages provided information that was traditional inaccessible – a list of all service providers in a category. But again so does the Internet, but it does so with the user being able to source information of their choice.

So what to do

Firstly, your advertising mix still needs to contain elements of each of the media services. Obviously depending on your target market and budget. Most companies are well versed and educated in advertising in these traditional forms, so there is not much point discussing them further.

Although it is worth mentioning that for small business it may be worth looking at TV advertising as the costs may be more palatable now, relative to the results.

What we would contend is that companies need to have a well considered marketing mix. The element needed though is to create a digital marketing foundation. An subject discussed in the next blog post.

About Us

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. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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

About Us

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. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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 [intlink id="how-to-use-alexa-to-improve-your-search-rankings" type="post"]previous article[/intlink]

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 this really good free ebook that can help.

Fully functional business management software for Hire and Rental businesses PLUS full integration to the Web and Social Media Marketing.

Given the increasing global interest in HireEzy.  Making Life Ezy, the developers of HireEzy are now seeking expressions of interest from companies interested in becoming the Sales and Marketing agent within their country or province/state.

The partner program adopted by HireEzy ensures that partners are well rewarded and supported for their efforts.  The partner model emphasizes collaboration and openess of communication to achieve the best results for both HireEzy, the partner and the customer.

To find out more please contact sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

Reduce Operating Costs by 30% – we have clients who have reduced operating costs and in some
cases doubled revenue by using HireEzy.

Option for a Fully Integrated Web Site – in which you can update and control the web content from
HireEzy with two simple clicks.

Protect your Cash by renting HireEzy – a small installation fee is charged to install HireEzy on your
premises.

The SMALLEST to LARGEST companies use HireEzy because of its affordability and scalability.
WHY CAN WE DELIVER SUCH PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS!

Natural Business Flow that cuts costs: HireEzy is a complete hire business management solution, designed to follow the natural flow of your business.

The natural flow starts with creating and managing market leads and ends with banking the cash. This is an extremely important difference and one that makes us the emerging market leader. Why have separate un-related systems and processes for marketing, for your web site and for brochure production, for hire operations, for servicing, for delivery and for accounting, when HireEzy provides one complete solution. Even the simple things save time and dollars like one click conversion of quotes to invoices that also updates the accounts with a new Account Receivable transaction.

Marketing- Lead Generation

Differentiate yourself as a leading professional company with the most incredible in-built Entertainment
Agents and/ Entertainment Manager marketing tools.  Full range of in-built easy to use digital marketing tools.

• Control your web content yourself, updating news, events etc (option)
• Inbuilt SMS functions
• Promotion Cataloguing system for products
• Produce High Quality Marketing Documents
• Produce your own full color Product Catalogues and full color marketing PDF’s
• Produce your own Fliers and E-mailers

Full Agent Marketing Relationship Management System

A specially adapted customer relationship management system for the Hire and Rental
Companies.

• Contact Details, Contact history,
• Standing Pricing Agreements/ Discounts/ Financial and Contract history

Event or Project Planning

Plan and manage events for your clients with the inbuilt event and project planning tools.

• Project manage events professionally.
• Reduce project risk.
• Full visual graphic reporting.
• Even includes sub-contractor management.

Bookings/ Inquiries and Availability

Manage Bookings professionally with the World’s most powerful booking management system. Respond quickly and easily to sales inquiries with accurate and timely information:

• Email or print off quickly tailored high graphic quality product information and pricing specific to their inquiry.
• Check availabilities, reserve bookings by status and confirm bookings.
• Track Bookings with Daily, Monthly, Weekly views.  Bookings are color coded depending on their status.
• One click conversion of quotes to invoices.
• Send reminder SMS to clients, a method shown to reduce no shows by as much as 25%.

Inventory and Logistics Management

Manage your inventory and logistics with a completely integrated business solution.

• Schedule and record stock maintenance.
• Improve inventory utilization.
• Produce pick lists for warehouse staff.
• Produce detailed delivery and collection schedules with route planning and directions through Google Maps; or tasking instructions such as set up, on-site inspections or disassembly.

Accounting and Contracts

A fully integrated accounting package that is driven by your bookings.
For example creating an invoice automatically generates an Account Receivable transaction, it also includes:

• General Ledger and Profit & Loss,
• Cash book accounting,
• Central Contracts store,
• Easily manage and calculate complex financial payments/ splits/ commissions

Collaboration and Workflow

Clients have stated that they have been able to cut as much as 30% of their operating time and costs by the use of through the in-built workflow tools. A major fallacy is that your whole system must be web based in order to collaborate with partners. Not only is this not true it is in fact a major business risk to you. As a number of recent clients have stated when the internet went down, we could not trade, we could not access our own information – we were completely at a loss.

MLE eliminates this business risk, but also provides you with the tools to collaborate effectively with your partners.

Other

• All you data is stored on your site, we do offer back up data services.
• Eliminate the business risk of not being able to trade or conduct business when the internet is down.
• Set staff access level s to data or functions by role or by person.
• Comprehensive range of management reports

Have a problem, then click live help and we can help you!

Works on Apple Macintosh or Windows based systems

Interested?  Then book an obligation free on-line demonstration, go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au

So what is the business value of the hire and rental industry?

Well here are five good reasons why companies should hire from you.

Cash flow saving
Companies who elect to hire or rent equipment from you are able protect cash reserves. Rather than spending valuable cash on buying items up front, your clients can effectively defer cash outlays through period payments for the hire or rental items. If timed correctly by your client, their receipts from their customer payments from the project can help fund the on-going rental or hire payment (obviously for medium to long term hires). For those of you who have Corporate clients, hiring or renting is often perfect. Many corporate clients have capital budget constraints during a downturn. Therefore hiring or renting can be an ideal way for some corporate clients to get what they need, as hiring or renting is considered to be an operating budget expenditure. Operating budget expenditures are often delegated substantially down the corporate ladder.

True costing
For many clients hiring or renting actually aids their project costing, in turn aiding them in improving their profitability. Hiring or renting is a known cost. Whereas often supplying the equipment from their own internal assets does not enable them to determine the actual cost of the item. Many don’t know the actual depreciation (replacement) value to be assigned, the actual cost of servicing and storing the item. It may sound trite, but for many companies true costing is a major issue.

Risk reduction
Buying items also increases risk. How long is the item they buy going to be used for? Will it be needed again? Should we buy something that may last for the project duration or something that we can be used again? What happens if the item breaksdown? How long before the manufacturer can get a replacement, this can impact the project and hence cash flow. Hiring and renting eliminates these concerns.

Servicing costs and compliance
Related to the risk element above is the need to ensure that the item is correctly serviced and maintained. Many hire and rental companies, especially in the construction hire and rental, eliminate this concern by providing on-site servicing and service histories. If your hire system doesn’t do this then you really need our HireEzy product.

Minimizing Assets
Assets require maintenance as described above both when in use and when stored. This costs money, in fact in Logistics the average assigned value to store, maintain, insure and account for an item is usually 35% of its cost, depending on the equipment. Furthermore, many listed companies and larger companies use Return on Assets as a performance measure. The more they hold in asset value the greater the revenue they need to generate in order to meet this performance figure. Hence hiring or renting can actually aid them in achieving there performance targets as the hired or rented item is not considered an asset.

For many people these statements above will be blinding statements of the obvious. But are they so blindingly obvious to your customers? Renewing and reminding them of your value proposition is often a good activity in these times. Especially when many of your clients are going to look at the costs they spend with you on hiring and renting. Many of your clients will just see the dollar figure and not reflect on the benefits you provide.

If you are a party rental or party hire company the following article provides more specific how to information on this subject.

Making Life Ezy are the makers of HireEzy the world’s most innovative hire software and rental management software. We are committed to helping our clients grow through the provision of business value, such as the information provided in this blog.

Let’s take a simple example of a Party Rental or Hire Company.

A customer has come in to hire a Spit Roast for the weekend, value say $75.00

Items that may also be of use to the same client, could be serving platters,  carving knives, a condiment holders, an electric meat warming tray etc.

The spit roast hire price, with gas may be have been $75 for the weekend.  But offering the related items may increase the hire price well over $100, an increase of 33%, which would be nice if it could be achieved across all orders.  The 33% figure is taken from anecdotal evidence received from our customers.

So here are some suggestions on how to do it!

Start from the Customers Perspective:

Customers when they are looking to hire or rent something from you have an idea for an event, party or task that they going to have or do.   The vast majority of sales staff merely respond to the customers specific item requests.

Good practise is to aks the client what are they planning to do?

Engage them in a conversation find out what they want to do, it is just a conversation it doesnt hurt.  Once the you or your sales staff have determined what the customers event, idea or task is, then you can begin to suggest other items.

Approached in a conversational tone the customer doesnt feel threatened by a hard sell.  For example:

Sales Rep:  Oh so your having a Spit Roast  for your son’s graduation at you place on the weekend.  That is great, how many people are you expecting.

Client:  About 30 people

Sales Rep:  Wow that is a lot, have you got tables and chairs, cutlery and plates etc?

Client:  Not sure

Sales Rep:  We have a lot of clients who have Spit Roasts parties like you are having, so we put together this Spit Roast package based.  It includes all the common items people were renting from us but we have bundled it in to a specially priced package.

This approach to offer a promotional package, is actually about turning the vast range of choices a customer has into a product offer.  Whilst people talk about liking choice in truth most don’t.  Giving them a “product” that suits there needs eliminates the need for them to think and the risk to them.

In relation to risk, consider the pyschology of a client.  In the above example if the father comes in to hire a spit roast for the Son’s 21st.   His selection of what is needed is based on his planning, so if he gets it wrong they chances of being “stirred up” by his friends and family are quite high.  However if he selects your “productised offer”, then he has in reduced the risk of him being a source of jokes at the event or task.  In effect you are doing him a favour!

Creating a Promotional Package

So how to create a promotional “product”.

HireEzy (the world’s most innovative hire software and rental software)  provides both the analysis tools and in-built marketing tools to both determine what should go in a package and the production of a high graphic brochure (digital or print).

Creating these packages is incredibly easy, but the value they can provide to your business can be exceptional.

Generate Leads

If you do produce a promotional pack, then why not send it out to your previous clients.  Use the inbuilt customer data base to send out emails with the brochure attached to your clients.  Make sure you include an opt out option for them on the email.  These tools for in-built in HireEzy are exceptionally easy to use and the results some clients have obtained have been impressive.

Web Crossing Selling

Research shows that over 50 % of new leads come from the web.  But most hire and rental companies have very limited sales presence on line.  Even fewer have an ability to cross sell or up sell to on-line customers.

HireEzy includes a fully integrated on-line site that allows customers to place booking requests directly into your system.  Not only does this substantially reduce your costs it also includes in-built workflow solutions that enable you to up-sell or cross sell more to such customers.

Summary

The aim of cross selling or up selling is to increase the revenue per client.  As discussed achieving 33% increases in revenue per sale are common.

Achieving this increase requires a combination of good staff training and a supporting hire software or rental software system, such as HireEzy.  The key point is that Sales Staff up selling or cross selling can be assisted by the use of HireEzy.  The result is that you can achieve substantial improvements in sales per customer.  For more information for to www.makinglifeezy.com.au

First Generation Hire Software and Rental Management Software

The First Generation of Rental and Hire Software really began depending on who you believe in the 1980′s. Certainly there may have been earlier versions written for mainframes, but the packaged software started with the development of the affordable desktop.  The packaged software market, first generation, emerged from the development of point solutions for specific early adopting customers.

These early versions focused on the basic process of managing bookings. Providing no more than a simple process of managing inventory, bookings and client records.  However their effectiveness in bring business value should not be under-estimated.

Second Generation Hire Software and Rental Management Software

The Second Generation of Rental and Hire Software could be argued to have emerged with the growth of Windows, inparticular Win 95. This generation of rental and hire software built upon the popularity of Windows. Utilizing the look and feel of Windows, these systems began to emerge in the mid to late 90′s.

This second generation of hire software and rental software systems expanded the affordability and popularity amongst hire and rental companies.

These second generation systems grew to expand connection to useful business devices such as Point of Sales (POS), License Scanners, Bar Code Scanners and Cash Drawers etc.  Second generation companies stress connectivity to these devices as their main selling point. Whereas as you will read Third Generation systems include such connectivity to devices as standard functionality.

However a major limitation of these older second generation systems was their reliance on interfacing to other critical business systems, in particular Accounting Packages and Customer Relationship Management Systems. Not having fully integrated Accounting and Marketing meant that hire and rental company managers were unable to truly and quickly analyse the true performance of their business.

The final death knell for the second generation hire and rental software systems was the maturity of the web.  The web has grown from a novelty in the 1990′s and a ridiculous new financial business paradigm shift in the early 2000′s (dot.com boom) to a maturing business tool as we approach the end of the decade.

The web is now the primary source of leads for the best performing rental and hire companies.(most cite the web as providing over 50% of new business leads).  In effect the web has created a second shop front, a virtual store that operates 24 by 7.    This virtual store is as much a part of a hire and rental business as is the physical store.

Furthermore the web is also a primary source of incredibly useful business tools, such as Google Maps, On-line Bank reconciliation, Colloborative Event Planning, Contractor Management, Document Storage and Access, as well as communication tools like Email etc.

The old second generation hire and rental software systems were aimed at providing a solution for the physical store .  Most such systems because of their under-pinning technical architecture and technology were in the main incapable of being stretched any further to enable the web to become an instrinsic part of a Hire and Rental business.

This led to the rise of the Third Generation Hire and Rental Systems.

Third Generation Hire Software and Rental Management Software

The third generation systems are Hire and Rental software products that instinsically include the web store and access to web business tools within the software package.  This generation of software enables hire and rental businesses to trade in a physical store and a virtual store all with in the one package.

Furthermore they enable the use of high value business efficiency tools such as Google Maps, outlook email integration to with client records and on-line collaboration etc.

Finally they are an all inclusive business software system that includes critical business functionality such as Accounting, CRM and Digital Marketing.  This inclusion ensures that hire and rental businesses can finally analyse in detail their businesses.  Such things as profitability by customer or by product, forward cashflow forecasts based on actual bookings etc in near real time.

Third Generation systems reflect the business need of hire and rental companies.  Affordable, easy to use and complete business functionality, the third generation systems are growing rapidly.  One key driver of this growth is the Global Recession, as hire and rental companies seek solutions that both contribute to sales growth whilst reducing operating costs.

Second Generation systems are still available on the market and will be for some time.  However these systems are increasingly being replaced by Third Generation systems.  As this trend continues to gain pace, many hire and rental companies on older second generation systems could be left exposed, not only to business risk but the potential for declining market share.

HireEzy is the Global Leader in the Third Generation Hire and Rental Software Market.  As one recent client who converted from a Second Generation system said

its like going from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age – it is incredible!!!!!

Want more information or an on-line demonstration, then contact us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au