Improving the Health of Your Rental Business

In a previous post, I examined the priorities of health, family, and work, and made a brief mention about paying attention to your company’s health. If you examine the many ways your rental business’ health influences overall performance, you will find lots of low-hanging fruit where you can improve and speed up critical areas of your operation. 

Two critical questions you need to ask yourself for the coming year (any year, really) are:

How well does your technology support your people and customers? 

And

How aligned are your people to work as a team and perform at peak efficiency?

Getting Rid of What’s Slowing You Down

In his book, “The Fifth Discipline,” Dr. Peter Singe notes that the best way to speed up a task is to get rid of what is slowing it down. Think of all the places where this could apply to your rental business – equipment turnaround, equipment repairs, service, deliveries, and pickups. In almost every instance, the absence of contemporary automation, timely information, and internal misalignment will slow you down. 

Replacing Antiquated Systems

For most companies, antiquated or disconnected systems slow down virtually every task. To compete in today’s economy, and to attract the best talent, you will need to get rid of those anchors (old systems and processes) in order to sail smoothly. Replacing your automated systems (plural) with a modern, integrated, web-enabled rental software (singular) is the first step to getting everyone on the same page, including your customers, vendors, and lenders. 

This is, admittedly, a challenging step. But if you are running systems built in the 1980s, you cannot possibly stay competitive in the 2020s. Remember, those systems were built before the internet. With the Internet-of-Things (IoT), so much more is possible in a connected world. That requires systems be engineered to truly connect, not just interface. It is probably time to get rid of a system that is truly slowing you down.

Aligning Your People and Teams

The second area of focus is alignment of your people and teams. For your work “family” to be healthy and at peak efficiency, everyone must be on the same page, at the same time, and supporting each other’s efforts. And, today, your family includes your customers, vendors, and lenders. Everyone must work in harmony, supporting each other, at internet speed.

This requires having a clear mission and making sure that everyone shares the same values.  If you don’t do that, your company will devolve into conflicting missions and values, with individuals or teams working against each other rather than supporting each other. 

My favorite analogy is having eight people in a boat, each energetically rowing madly, believing that their hard work is all that is needed. If the boat is a round raft, you get a lot of splashing, but not much progress. 

But if you align everyone into an eight-person racing shell — each with their job to do, each respecting everyone else’s job (shared values), all pointed in the same direction (same Mission), and all armed with the best technology (systems) — everyone will quickly achieve their stated and shared goals. Every day. Every task. Work becomes fun for your people, and doing business with you becomes enjoyable for your customers.

Conclusion

As you set your sights on what you want to achieve in 2024, look at what is keeping you from performing at peak efficiency. Get rid of the things that are slowing down your business and your teams. Get everyone aligned.  

The effort will be time and money well spent.

Joe Lewis
CEO
Fame Rental

Fame Rental improves rental businesses and the lives of their employees and customers. We do this because we care more deeply, listen more intently, and act more methodically than anyone in the rental industry would ever expect from a software company.

Contact us at sales@fameintel.com to schedule a demo.