Case Study

Company: Quadrant Visual Solutions
Web: www.quadrantsolutions.com
Country: United Kingdom
Industry: Audio visual equipment hire
Products:
• Core MCS-rm
• Contract Management
• Invoicing
• Assets & Stock
• Availability Planner
• Purchase Ordering
• Workshop & Maintenance
• Deal Pricing

With four depots providing a UK-wide hire service to the audio visual and staging markets, Quadrant Visual Solutions is one of the UK’s leading audio visual hire and staging companies. Quadrant’s hire portfolio includes audio visual equipment, video and projection equipment, professional sound systems, a comprehensive range of lighting, stage and set design and rental and video production equipment all supported by a fully trained team of technical and event staff.

The Challenge
Since its inception, Quadrant has managed its hire operations using manual booking and administration procedures while all the company’s financial transactions were managed in an accountancy application called IRIS Exchequer.

Quadrant took the decision to implement a hire management system that would not only provide better control and co-ordination of its entire AV equipment hire operation, but also one that would leverage the company’s investment in Exchequer.

“We had a legacy commitment to Exchequer, which has served the company well over the years,” explained Hire Director and Chairman, David Carter. “Any further software investments had to leverage the huge data resource this represented.”

The Solution
After looking at several market offerings, David and his team chose MCS-rm, the comprehensive hire management software solution from MCS. This Windows-based solution delivers fast, powerful information for improved asset utilisation, faster throughput, greater accuracy and increased customer satisfaction.

“We chose MCS-rm because of its successful integration path with Exchequer and its ability to manage and control our hire operation,” continued David. “We wanted to formalise and centralise our hire processes, from initial quotation through to generating the contract, shipping the equipment and then final invoicing.”

Quadrant worked with the technical team at MCS to install the core functionality of MCS-rm and integrate it with Exchequer. This involved all the key functionality that would enable Quadrant to aggregate its hire processes such as asset management, stock control and purchase order processing into one, easy-to-operate system.

The Benefits
With MCS-rm fully integrated with Exchequer, Quadrant could automate and control its entire AV hire operation from the one central system.

“With MCS-rm up and running with integration to our Accountancy system Exchequer, we began enjoying efficiency and productivity benefits of the new system,” David confirmed. “It is particularly good at handling our ‘wet hire’ processes where whole sound and video systems, for instance, are hired out with an operator. The MCS solution manages and co-ordinates all the details to make the process much simpler and more accurate.”

With over 3000 items of inventory in its portfolio, Quadrant averages 300-350 hire contracts across approximately 12-15 events a month. This huge workload obviously creates logistical and financial challenges for Quadrant as each contract has to be negotiated, possible deals struck and rapid stock movement monitored. MCS-rm ensures all this activity is controlled and managed simply for each user within the organisation. At any time, anyone can see the status of each piece of equipment, whether it is on-hire or off-hire and whether it needs servicing or moving to another location for storage.

“We can generate quotations very fast and efficiently,” David enthused. “We typically allocate a pre-determined price grid against each venue based on previous agreements with the customer and then generate instant quotations and contracts using these parameters. Coming from a manual system, this is quite revolutionary for us.”

The Future
The next step for Quadrant is to benefit from the deal pricing and availability planner functions within MCS-rm. This will give David and his colleagues an idea of the usage and profitability of any particular piece of equipment.

“Some items get discounted more than others,” David explained, “so it would be helpful and more profitable to understand the return on our investment for each individual piece of equipment.”

With MCS-rm on hand to automate, manage and control every aspect of their operation, Quadrant are in the best position to go from strength to strength and capitalise on every opportunity that comes their way.

To find out how MCS-rm could help your business, call us on +44 (0)1628 828000 or use our enquiry form.

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