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John Butler
Automation Plus,
Rolla, Mo.
Setting up an e-commerce site is far more complicated and costly than setting up a simple Web site for the dissemination of information. The latter is a one-way link, not interactive as is e-commerce. Therein lies the big obstacle. Amazon.com is the best example of an interactive e-commerce site and it has yet to show a profit.
For the rental industry, which does not possess the critical mass to sustain e-commerce sites (profitably), I do not see it going very far.
For purchasing equipment from vendors, it’s priceless. For a reality check on the viability of e-commerce sites, go to <dotcomfailures.com> and read about the companies that are going under.
E-commerce is an open portal to the cyberworld and fraught with security gotchas. As a management
tool, I believe it offers more headaches than it’s worth. Any rental company considering e-commerce should probably operate the site as a totally separate profit center and track its costs meticulously. That way, if it fails, you can pull the plug without having to restructure the company. In the [small, independent rental company] arena, I can see no cost-effective advantage.
Will end-users (renters) be able to book reservations over the Internet? This is entirely possible today. All the rental store has to do is develop a simple Web site with pages to display its equipment and rate tables with a feedback system for customers to book the product. Then they have to advertise this site to attract customers. The drawback here is that the renter will not have immediate confirmation of the reservation and will have to depend on the rental company to either call or send them a confirming e-mail.
For a rental company, the important thing to remember is that people need to know where to find them on the Web. Therefore, for local advertising, I’d suggest that a rental store install a neon or illuminated sign at the store that would simply display their Web address, e.g., <therentalcorner.com>. Have it blink all night long for passersby to see. They should also advertise it in every piece of literature and in flyers, and signs they may have in their neighborhood.
The best way for the smaller rental company to compete [with the large company] — assuming they’re in the same marketplace — would be to keep on top of the rates charged by the consolidated companies by logging onto their Web sites for rate information. One beautiful thing about the Internet is that you can print the pages you view, unless it is restricted by the Web site operator. Other than that, I see very few “combative” benefits for the smaller company.
[As for Internet technology,] for simple Web sites, the rental store manager with some knowledge and a little help can mount an effective presence on the Web, but for e-commerce, it’s a whole other world and infinitely more complex. Decision-makers in rental companies had better learn all they can before considering e-commerce as a way to expand business. They should attend seminars on the subject and totally immerse themselves in what it is all about. Try <compumaster.net>, a training and seminar company offering classes and conferences on this subject or call (800) 867-4340 to inquire. Or log on and use a search engine to find conferences and training classes on e-commerce. After you get your feet wet, then contact a consultant and take it to the next level.
There are some very inexpensive e-commerce software packages available and/or the services of an e-commerce service provider (ASP) who can provide an e-commerce presence for the average rental store — so long as profits can sustain the cost.
Training has become a big thing on the Internet and there are many sites that offer online courses in all manners of subjects, some even free. The rental store should develop a training program that takes advantage of already existing courses in this technology, then personalize it by relating it to how their company will operate. A company operations manual is highly recommended.
Our products in the near future will offer the link to the Internet from within the program, so that the rental company can dispatch information, provide order confirmation, place purchase orders, confirm quotations, book reservations and get feedback from their customers.
Further down the line, we will offer online usage of the software on a rental basis, such as an ASP offers today in other venues.
The market is developing too quickly to foresee what is coming, say, five years out, so our philosophy is to tread lightly until we see a solid foundation upon which to base further development.
John Balogh
Cloud City Computing
Leadville, Colo.
The Internet and particularly e-commerce are changing the marketplace at an astonishing rate. Soon, computers and Internet access will be as common as the telephone and people will look to the Web for information on many things including renting their equipment.
Although e-commerce is growing at such an alarming pace, the rental industry in general has yet to embrace this new technology.
There are many benefits that can be gained by using the Internet, many of which are not real obvious.
Some of the more obvious benefits may be:
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Increased visibility. In the future, the Internet will be used more and more for finding businesses, kind of like the phone book. How would people find you if you didn’t have an entry in your phone book?
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Product
availability. The Web gives you a place to show off your products. Try showing pictures and sales brochures for all of your equipment in the Yellow Pages!
In addition to the obvious benefits, many people do not realize the potential cost reductions that can be gained from the Internet.
Most rental companies are using computers these days and many computer systems require dedicated, private-network lines to connect the stores together. These lines are generally very expensive, especially if going a long distance. By using local Internet connections for each store and the public Internet system to carry the long distance, you can go far is reducing your network communications bill every month.
With all the big corporate takeovers and consolidations, it is getting more and more difficult for the smaller companies to survive. By partnering with other small companies over the Web, you will be able to carry less stock but have access to the combined stock of all the stores you have arrangements with.
Although this is done today to a small degree, the process of re-renting usually requires lots of phone calls and billing headaches. As rental software to handle this type of situation improves, re-renting will become more and more common.
Consider the rental transaction of the future. Joe Homeowner is digging a trench out in the yard and decides there has got to be a better way. He goes out on the Web (remember the Yellow Pages) and finds your business. He is not really sure what he needs, so he looks at the sales brochures for eight different sizes of backhoes you have available and decides he needs a particular one. He enters his name, the dates he will need it and a credit card number to hold the reservation.
You get the reservation via the Internet, but there is a problem. You have only one backhoe and it isn’t the one he wants. Why is it on your Web site? Because another rental company in your area does have this backhoe and you have an agreement to re-rent from them — at a discount, of course. Do you pick up the phone and start trying to find it? No, the computer has already found the backhoe and has printed a delivery ticket at the other store in the coop.
What happens next? When the customer created the reservation, he/she already created the invoice and delivery ticket. Your partner store makes the delivery at the scheduled time, but you collect on the credit card. At the end of the month, the system automatically calculates the re-rents and prints checks to each of the partner stores as needed.
Technically speaking, you could actually run a nationwide — or worldwide — rental shop without owning a single piece of equipment or even having a single storefront. Note, in this example, the consumer never even comes into your store. Your counter folks were not even involved in the sale.
Sound impossible? Not really. Our software can already use the Internet to eliminate private networks. Our next major version (3.x) will include enhanced re-rent capabilities with many of the coop features described above. We are also working on a Web interface that can display product information directly from your rental database and will allow customers to make reservations online. I am sure other rental software manufacturers are heading a similar direction as well.
I am sure there are many ways the Internet can be exploited by the rental industry, many of which we haven’t even thought of yet. It is only a matter of time.
E-commerce
is the future.
Ray Bonestroo
Genisys Software
Minneapolis
The ability to make reservations online will happen sooner than you think, and will be available two ways: through e-commerce sites that are hosted by the individual rental companies, and also through services like
RentOnThe Dot.com, which will allow consumers to search multiple rental stores for availability and pricing, and ultimately make reservations from their home or business.
The Internet can help rental businesses in several ways: by having their own Web site that is devoted to letting people know what inventory they carry and what the rental rates are for that inventory; by using the Web to sell used inventory to people they never would have had access to otherwise and, again, by using services like
RentOnTheDot.com to drive people to their store.
I think that the average rental company manager is better off by having a local ISP (Internet Service Provider) talk to them about what they are trying to accomplish, and then letting them provide the level of service that is needed to satisfy them. Things are changing so fast, it doesn’t make sense for the average rental store to try to do this in-house.
We are working on a variety of features to Web-enable our software so the end-user will be assured of secure access. Our feature set — as it is defined today — will include availability and pricing for rental, resale and used equipment; checking accounts-receivables balances, open invoices and how payments were applied; and online reservations, assuming the customer has either a valid credit card or an open account in good standing.
I think the biggest thing employees should be trained to do is to provide good customer service. E-commerce won’t eliminate the need to have employees trained properly in this area, but will if anything require additional training on getting people through the process of using their Web site to do business with the rental company. Prompt answering of e-mail (or lack of) is the No. 1 complaint of most people today.
Bill Veneris
Interactive Management Systems (Alert)
Colorado Springs, Colo.
E-commerce doesn’t just mean selling over the Internet. It means doing business digitally, which encompasses selling to customers, ordering from vendors, managing your money and even marketing your business. In other words, rental businesses today should be “users” of e-commerce just as much as they should be getting ready to become “providers” in the new Internet economy.
For instance, companies of all sizes are using the Internet to lower their costs of doing business by researching the best vendors for products, ordering their inventory electronically and checking the delivery status of orders.
Other common business management processes are being streamlined by the Web, including online banking, bill payment, financial services and more. Being a “provider” means selling your goods and services over the Internet. This aspect of e-commerce is evolving rapidly. Many rental operations who have started with a simple Web page are now booking reservations over the Internet using simple Web forms. Real-time reservation booking is just around the corner.
Before diving headlong into building a Web site, you must plan your Internet strategy. Just like traditional advertising efforts, a poorly defined site or a site that looks unprofessional will hurt your business more than help it.
Make your objectives clear. Then get a Web professional to design,
develop, and maintain your site.
Defining how you will respond to the challenge to Internet-enable your business will fall primarily on the shoulders of owners and management.
The best training to be ready to do business on the Internet is to use the Internet yourself. Get online and buy a book, a tape or a computer. Check out successful sites and learn how the e-commerce model is working today. Talk to your Web-savvy rental friends. Become familiar with the new medium.
The Internet has revolutionized the way businesses with multiple locations communicate with one another. Older computer systems rely on expensive wide-area network (WAN) connections to enable stores to run the same software programs and access customer and financial data. Alert-IMS is using the Internet today to connect employees across the country using a VPN (virtual private network) over the Internet. This connection is reliable, fast and free. We are completing a test of this new technology and will be rolling out Internet-based WAN solutions to our clients who have digital subscriber line (DSL) access in the next few months.
Some rental operations are taking reservations over the Internet using a Web form that a customer fills out to request an item to rent. However, this initial step in taking orders over the Web doesn’t invoke the real power of Web-based commerce — that is, providing customers a purchasing experience with less friction than a typical off-line purchase.
By “friction,” I mean that it is usually more convenient — and often cheaper — to buy online, because there’s no need to physically go to a store or even pick up the phone to place an order.
On the other hand, an online Web-based booking system allows your customers to view the current status of your rental inventory and request a booking in real-time, just as you do at your rental counter. This type of customer interaction via the Web requires advanced security measures such as firewall technology and proxy servers to protect your financial information from hackers.
Some of the larger consolidators are providing real-time reservation bookings on the Web today; smaller independent rental stores can partner
with an Internet company that specializes in e-commerce.
Computers can be powerful tools for allowing smaller companies to compete with larger companies. If you think of the Web as an extension of existing computer technologies, many of the same principles apply. The Web is a great equalizer in terms of allowing smaller companies to “look” like larger companies. And smaller companies can leverage Internet technologies to improve customer service, just like larger operations.
However, the primary concern in trying to make money on the Internet is getting users to visit your site. Consolidators will always have larger marketing budgets and so will be able to get customers to visit their sites more effectively than smaller independents. One solution for smaller companies is to use a Web “portal” — a Web site that acts as a gateway for customers. A portal’s responsibility is to attract business [to] individual companies’ Web sites [that are] linked to that portal. Portals can also provide the infrastructure for deploying e-commerce, allowing smaller rental stores to have a viable commercial Web presence without needing to invest in developing their own e-commerce site.
One of the rules of the new economy is to find your niche — what you do particularly well —
and outsource everything else. Rental companies shouldn’t waste their time trying to learn all the ins and outs of Web
technologies. Find outside experts who can answer your questions and
implement appropriate Web technologies for your business. Alert-IMS has signed an agreement with
RentOnTheDot.com to provide its clients access to
RentOnTheDot.com’s portal-based, real-time rental reservation service. This service will provide Alert clients exposure to a national market of rental customers who will have instant access to rental equipment availability and rates via the
RentOnTheDot.com portal. By spring of next year, Alert-IMS will introduce additional e-commerce options for its customers.
Larry Weeman
Party Track
(Event Rental Systems)
Kennebunk, Maine
Over the past few years, the Internet has evolved to become a tool we routinely use. As consumers, we use the Internet primarily for communication with each other via e-mail and to find things. As owners of rental companies, you want to be found by consumers when they search the Internet for rental equipment. This is done by creating a Web site that provides information about your business including contact and product information. Most rental companies have already established Web sites and use
e-mail in their day-to-day business activities.
Having achieved these basics, rental companies must decide if they want to expand on these basic uses to provide more communication/connectivity and enhanced features from their Web site. Additional communications/connectivity features might include connecting remote offices over the Internet via virtual private networks (VPNs), or the use of a hand-held PC to run applications that access your order and inventory data via a wireless connection over the Internet. Enhanced Web site features might include the ability to check product availability, place orders and pay for those orders.
Just as managing rental inventory is not as easy as handling retail inventory, the use of the Internet for rental businesses will not be as easy as it will be for retail businesses. Providing enhanced features from your Web site will likely require
the services of a Web developer and the vendor of your order entry and inventory software.
Event Rental Systems provides an order entry and inventory management product — Party Track —
to the special event equipment-rental business. Party Track is built with client/server development tools and databases that fit well in the Internet world. Our product has always had a focus on making operations — taking orders and managing inventory — more efficient. As we enhance our product
to use the Internet, we will provide for a customer to check the status of an order, modify orders, add new orders and make payment on those orders. Controls will be built in to prevent orders from being added or modified after the picking process has started and inventory availability will be
confirmed via e-mail to the customer.
We plan to deliver these enhancements to our product in the fourth quarter of 2001. The advantages to the rental company will be great. By providing your customers with the means to manage their orders, your staff will have more time to take orders from other customers. Your customers will also appreciate being able to manage their orders 24/7.
Bob Shaffer
Point-of-Rental Systems
Grand Prairie, Texas
E-commerce could be a two-way street where customers make reservations and request items to be delivered to a job site, in addition to being able to download information about a store. How to best use the Web is in the experimental stage. All the rental consolidators have Web sites.
Some of these have nice pictures of equipment that can be rented and some display rates, but none have “real-time” access to rental inventory and allow you to actually enter an order like you can buy an airplane ticket on
Travelocity.com.
But the consolidators are not alone on the Web. Many relatively small stores — some with even just one location — have nice Web sites that provide nearly as many features as that of the best of the big operations.
At least one company,
RentOnTheDot.com, is trying to convince rental stores that the Web is the place where new customers will be making rental reservations in the future. Whether this concept is economically viable should be determined in the next couple of years with the rollout of their system in the latter half of this year.
One big advantage of a Web site is that it can be accessed by current and potential customers 24/7. A rental store can display rental policies, operating hours, emergency phone numbers and directions to their location(s), including a map.
Used rental equipment that is for sale can be marketed. Open account applications can made available for the public to fill in the blanks and then downloaded. Or, if you’re picky about getting signatures, the application form could be downloaded to the customer’s printer. After filling it in, the new customer could then fax it back to the store.
Our company is currently testing Web-hosting software that we have developed for our Point-of-Rental software users. In addition to displaying inventory, we’ve designed these sites so that our users will be able to access their own sites and make changes to them. For example, there is a button on the main Web page taking you to pages listing used rental equipment that is currently for sale. Another button displays employment positions currently available. Because information on these pages could literally change daily, we wanted our software users to have the ability to easily make the changes themselves.
Another area of experimentation will be using the Web to enable multi-location store computer systems to communicate with each other using the Web instead of expensive leased lines and frame relay. This has the potential to save companies thousands of dollars in communications costs, especially for multi-location operations that cover large areas. These companies currently have to pay outrageous rates to telephone companies to keep their computer systems connected to each other.
Only time will tell whether the Internet is an efficient method for rental stores to increase income and to increase their customer base.
Jack Shea
Solutions by Computer
Springfield, Mass.
I’ve spoken with many rental business owners who report that their Web sites have generated business for them. Potential customers like the ability to review product pictures, descriptions and specifications, as well as pricing, as they’re contemplating a project or event. This capability will only increase in importance over time.
Rental business owners must use the internet to promote their businesses, services and products. Web pages provide new and interesting ways to do this. Businesses that do this best will profit.
Customers can enter their rental equipment needs over the Internet now. We announced this capability [for Solutions by Computer systems] at the A.R.A. convention in February. It’s being rolled out now.
Independent rental operators will need to offer Internet services at least equal to the large chains. Fortunately, this is an area where the independent can maintain equal footing with the chains. Rental system vendors need to make these capabilities available to their independent customers. That means going beyond just entering rental reservations. Established customers will want to access their open rental contracts, review their open accounts, call equipment off rent, etc.
[Regarding direct technological involvement,]
I don’t think the rental owner ever should have tried to do all this by him/herself. It has and does require significant technical knowledge. It doesn’t seem to me a fruitful use of a rental owner’s abilities to master and maintain such technical abilities. The owner should concentrate on the content of his/her Web site, keeping it interesting, informative and imaginative. Rely on people whose expertise it is to make it happen.
For some time now, our customers have been using the Internet to communicate between branch locations.
As for e-commerce, we have announced and are deploying e-commerce capabilities for our system, which allows renters to enter their reservations, receive their specific pricing, view their outstanding accounts and rental contracts, calculate the charges to a date they enter, as well as report problems with equipment, view specifications, operating instructions, etc.
[I would recommend that you] consult with potential Web site creators to get their ideas on how to present your business’ services and products best. Discuss the key features of your business that will tell the renter what they will like about doing business with you. Make sure your rental-management system provider is providing the tools you need to conduct business over the Internet.
Today, use of the Internet by rental businesses should be universal. Product manufacturers’ sites provide information and capabilities needed by rental businesses.
And renters should have access to similar information and capabilities when doing business with you. Increasingly, they’ll expect it and will gravitate to rental businesses that provide it. |
