Suffolk-based Portable Space provides a wide range of steel cabins, storage and shipping containers for hire and sale and delivers them to an extensive area of the South East.
The Challenge
With constant investment and innovation in its product range, Portable Space has seen its hire business steadily grow. The company recognised the need to invest in new software to further enhance its reputation for exceptional customer service.
Mark Black, Managing Director of Portable Space, explains, “Managing growth is a great ‘problem’ to have, but there comes a point when existing systems cannot cope. To ensure our growth would be profitable and sustainable, we looked for a new automated hire management system.
The Solution
Mark and his team considered a number of hire systems. However, MCS-rm’s integration with Microsoft Outlook and Sage and its customer relationship management (CRM) functionality proved a winning proposition.
Mark comments, “We identified a requirement for CRM technology to help us manage our customer base and maintain our high customer service standards.”
Mark continues, “Having met with the MCS team, we became excited by the prospect of working with an integrated package and were keen to proceed with a company that could deliver all of our requirements.”
The company purchased MCS-rm which included integrated CRM. Now hire contract handling, administration and invoicing have been consolidated into one easy-to-use automated solution. Nearly 1,000 items of hireable cabins and containers and extensive sales stocks are referenced and tracked by the system. The solution is used in sales, accounts/administration and the workshop. Users have quickly adapted to using the menu-based interface, with MCS providing full user training. Mark reports, “After overcoming their initial anxiety at having to learn a new system, all our users now perform essential tasks even more quickly than before.”
The Benefits
MCS-rm is used to manage on and off-hire contracts, as well as the company’s invoicing process. Being able to automatically raise invoices on a monthly basis from the contracts entered saves on manpower.
In addition, any member of the team can now pull up a comprehensive order history on the system, together with information on previous quotes and financial data. This shared visibility of data has improved customer service by enabling all the team to respond quickly to customer requirements. As a result, Portable Space has recorded a 30% improvement in order processing times.
Portable Space uses CRM to record enquiries and raise instant quotations, along with using mail merge for marketing and mass correspondence. The information from the quotations can be used to raise a contract. Mark notes, “We no longer have to re-key information and this brings us the benefits of reducing errors, saving time and freeing up some of our resources.”
Furthermore, when quoting for a client, the sales team can see exactly which items are in stock at any given time and when to expect returns. Using the price grid feature means that with hire rates constantly fluctuating, the hire items are quoted at their current rates.
Rehires are quite common and coordinated within MCS-rm. Mark says, “The process is transparent to the customer and the system enables us to make sure that we charge customers for the hire of items that other suppliers have provided.”
Integration between MCS-rm and Sage helps Portable Space to prepare accurate accounts figures with ease. Mark explains, “Importing transactions into our financial accounts system is very quick and ensures mistakes are virtually impossible. We can also ensure that any credit issues are spotted as early as possible, helping with cash flow.”
The ability of MCS-rm to split deliveries entered onto one contract is a very important requirement, as Mark explains, “Our clients regularly hire a number of cabins that are listed on a single quotation and, therefore, on one hire contract. However, for transportation purposes more than one delivery may be required due to lorry capacity, the MCS-rm functionality copes with these complexities.”
Also the Purchase Order Processing module is also well used. All orders are now raised on the system and this automatically updates the stock or makes additions to the hire fleet.
Mark adds, “With everybody in the organisation using the solution, we are already seeing signs of an increase in throughput and revenue.” He sums up, “We have grown our business by remaining responsive to our customers’ needs, often delivering against restricted budgets and tight deadlines. MCS-rm is enabling us to deliver excellent service while closely managing our continuing growth.”
The Future
Use of the system is expanding. Mark says, “The more familiar we become with the system, the more ideas occur to us on how we could improve our use of it and extract more information.”
Mark values the flexibility of being able to tailor the system: “We have greatly appreciated the support of the MCS consultants and have been able to use our time with them to come to fully understand the system and its capabilities. This has given us the confidence to make changes to its set-up ourselves, if required, but without feeling as if we were on our own.”
Reviewing current developments, Mark continues, “We are presently working on bringing our workshop up to date with the new system. Our expectation is that, as we do so, our ability to manage all repairs and maintenance to our hire stock will continue to improve, as well as the ability to deliver bespoke designs to end users.”
He concludes, “We look forward to continuing to work with MCS on such developments, which will continue to drive our business on to greater service excellence.”
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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