17 February 2017

How construction equipment rental businesses can add dealership

construction equipment

To-Increase has an interesting trend to share with international construction equipment companies. Over the past few years, we’ve heard increasingly from customers that a key benefit of our solution DynaRent for Microsoft Dynamics is that it offers more flexibility than other rental and services software in some specific areas.

It turns out that those areas play right into the ability to make your company a direct dealer for external companies. International construction equipment companies need tailored software. So it can handle internal management of multi-country and multi-company equipment. But also rental, equipment finance, and fleet management. It’s difficult to find all these functionalities within a flexible software package. If you do, you can get more from it by turning incorporating dealership. Or direct purchasing and selling of equipment to other companies.

Here’s how it works. Construction equipment companies with diverse subsidiaries abroad often share equipment availability insights. This way they can ensure they deliver the right equipment for a project or job, at the right time. Shared insight lets them efficiently handle international equipment-share requests. But also international transport, and even the purchase of extra equipment. As a result, you need a complete view that shows you insufficient inventory.

Construction equipment company scenario with dealership potential

Let’s say that within your construction organization, you’ve created a separate Financial Equipment Company that owns all equipment. That company operates in 5 countries, with 4 depots per country. While it’s a separate asset, the Financial Equipment Company serves to unify the entire organization, including:

  • Overseeing financials for procurement through final scrap or sale of all equipment
  • Serving as a central knowledge base for all equipment availability, condition, service requirements, transport, etc.
  • Full integration with international Fleet Management for transport and demand/replenishment decisions

Your organization has an entity that enables smooth multi-country equipment sharing and effective demand forecasting, purchase, and replenishment. Because of the Financial Equipment Company and international Fleet Management, 

  • Equipment availability for bulk and serialized equipment is shared globally. So all companies and locations have views for planning purposes.
  • The Equipment Company processes requests for equipment. At the same time it makes decisions based on full insight into equipment or resource. But also transport, job type and regulations ensures optimal allocation.
  • In some cases, equipment is shared within a country only. But in others (for example, mobile cranes), planners might have views into a part or entire crane. If it’s the optimal match they have to ship them for example from Holland to Spain.
  • Fleet Management has tools for analyzing equipment requests from each country. So that it can predict upcoming demand down to the depot level. And make smart purchase and allocation decisions.
  • Fleet management also can determine if equipment needs to be purchased for replenishment. In addition it determines what equipment is to be sold or scrapped.

There is much more

So there’s much more than financials and international transport management that is handled by an equipment entity within your organization. You’ve got a multi-country symphony in progress, and all players know their parts. This is essential, it’s not just the Equipment company that can see availability. All planners within the organization are working with DynaRent and Microsoft Dynamics. And they all have dashboards that let them see what’s happening with equipment at other locations. They can reduce workload and aid strategic planning considerably by making smart equipment sharing requests. Local transport planners as well are helpful rather than a burden for Fleet Management.

And of course, all data and processes fully intergrate in Microsoft Dynamics for Finance and Operations and Microsoft Dynamics AX. The key takeaway is that you’re able to manage international equipment rental and services. Preferably at a sophisticated level internally, using the DynaRent solutions package. That includes purchase to final sale processes. Futhermore all processes and analysis that make your business profitable at local and global levels. Why not reach out to other equipment companies as a direct dealer? You can do so without costly investments in IT or complex reworking of your business model.

We invite you to learn more about how To-Increase and DynaRent are helping equipment-driven companies take on new trends across multiple industries.

Michiel Toppers
Michiel Toppers,
Michiel Toppers,
Senior Director of Product Management

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