HireEzy

02 Jan

Why Rental and Hire Companies need Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)

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Many Rental and Hire companies perceive relationships as just being about customers.   The fact is this is a very limited view.

Successful Hire and Rental companies also recognize the importance of other vital relationships such as critical suppliers.

blog- relationships trigram

So what is a critical supplier?

A critical supplier is one whose loss to your business or change in business arrangements would have a significant detrimental impact on your service delivery or profitability!

Critical Suppliers can be contractors, service providers, equipment providers or even finance providers.

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Managing Critical Suppliers

If you have such critical suppliers, then the next question is how do you manage these relationships now?  And more importantly how do you manage the Supplier Performance?

Like any great relationship communication is the key – but good communication it must be founded in facts (accurate information)

Information

To effectively manage any business relationship and its related performance, you need information.  What information do you need.  Well imagine you were sitting opposite a major critical supplier trying to save the relationship or negotiate a new deal.

You would want to have at your finger tips:

Basic Contact Information: Including the names and roles, contact details for all relevant people within that supplier?  That is you would want to know who you are dealing with in the company.

Previous Communication: You would want to be able to have reviewed all previous communication between your company and the supplier.  Why, because you want to avoid the “you said” ” he said” discussions.  Being able to show actual records of conversations/ meetings, email exchanges even SMS between your staff and theirs, puts you in control of the discussions.

Relationship Value: Finally you would want to have proof of all financial transactions between the company by period.  Even down to which bookings, when and too whom the supplier services were used, including any feedback from customers. Demonstrating actual performance to any contractual performance agreements is essential in ensuring that the discussions remain objective and hence fruitful.

If you agree that this is the esential information you need, then the next question is – do you have ready access to such information now?  Or do you need to go and find all contracts, ask staff for any emails or notes they have on converstaions with the supplier etc.

If your answers to the above questions gave you cause for concern, then consider installing HireEzy.

HireEzy comes with an inbuilt Supplier Relationship Management system, that:

  • Captures all related bookings and financial transactions for that Supplier (Automatically);
  • Automatically records all emails or SMS  sent to the supplier from your staff;
  • Allows notes from meetings, conversations etc to be entered and date time stamped;
  • Enables all contracts and agreements to be store, Agreed discount terms;
  • Even only allows you to capture all contact information, inc multiple contacts; and
  • Even referrals made by Partners, then result in leads are captured.

HireEzy provides you with one place to capture, store, analyze and review all information you need to manage your supplier relationships.

So if you have critical supplier relationships and you dont have a rental software or hire software solution that assists you, then it may be time to consider HireEzy.  The world’s most innovative rental and hire management solution.

To find out more or too book a demo, go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au

HireEzy is available in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

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22 Sep

Windows Vista? Am I at a disadvantage?

Windows Vista wallpaper (by Microsoft)
Image by Stijn Vogels via Flickr

 

The Vista Conundrum

As we continue to add HireEzy customers at a rapid pace, our sales team continues to be amazed at how many people are still terrified by all of the bad press that surrounds Windows Vista and continues to this day. The most common questions asked revolve around whether their business is at a disadvantage by using Windows Vista and whether it will in turn hurt the performance of our software in comparison to using Windows XP instead. These are valid questions and below is my unbiased opinion of Windows Vista as a whole and details regarding how HireEzy deals with Vista “problems” and keeps your business running smoothly no matter what your computer network is made up of.

We understand your concern, but you’ll be alright

First of all, it goes without saying that Windows Vista will go down in history as one of the biggest disasters in Microsoft‘s product catalogue due to negative response from the public and if anything is the classic case study of the power of social media due to the amount of Twitter and blog posts put out thereslamming the product, greatly contributing to the reputation handed to the product as a slow, untrustworthy, annoying and ignorable operating system. I personally believe that Windows Vista was the final nail in the coffin to the development career of Bill Gates and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the backlash towards Vista played a big part in him deciding to leave his post as Chief Software Architect. Microsoft have learned the hard way that people abhor change and are tired of fighting with their computers.

So the question asks, is it a bad operating system? Well, the short answer is that the initial release was but the two consequent service packs released for it have actually made it a really good product. Like Apple‘s transition from Mac OS9 to OSX, a total rewrite of the underlying code of Windows was necessary to take the evolution of the computer to the next level with the introduction of new processor and hard drive technologies and the evolution of the “business computer network”, and like Mac OS this has just been something that couldn’t be done painlessly despite the efforts of all involved. It is often forgotten after six years of being in the market that the first release of Mac OSX was an absolute joke. There was no support for it, old Mac apps often didn’t work on it and you couldn’t even burn DVD’s with it at first – it was so bad that Macs were initially sold with both OS9 and OSX installed and users could switch inbetween operating systems depending on which one they wanted to have to bother with. With the time to refine the product, OSX is now a very tight, polished and respected product that has gotten better with time and you would in no way be a fool to place your trust in it.

The same is true with Vista and this is the best possible way to give you an idea of how Vista can be a dependable operating system if kept up to date. Next month, Microsoft will release Windows 7 which is the next iteration of the same concept and our feedback of it, similar to that found everywhere on the Internet, is extremely positive. We are so confident in Windows 7 that we will officially support usage of HireEzy on Windows 7 from the moment it launches.

With HireEzy, we’ve got your covered

To those of you using Vista and are looking at HireEzy, we have great features in place which will keep you confident in smooth function of your business irrespective of the amount of faith you have in Vista. Firstly, our core technology allows us to “broadcast” your database across your local network which means that you can install HireEzy on a computer elsewhere in your network and operate the software from your Vista machine without ever storing any data on it, helping you prevent data loss due to Vista’s millitant and sometimes inconsistant security policies for local data storage. Secondly, we build platform independantly which means that you can have a mix of Macs and PCs in your network all using the exact same copy of HireEzy in any way you see fit. So, if you have lost faith in Windows so much that you’re unsure of putting your data on it, you may want to try investing in Mac computer as that central database holder in the configuration I mentioned previously whilst using cheaper Vista machines as the dumb terminals that view and work with your data. Thirdly, if you are going to store HireEzy on your Vista machine, we have extensive experience in making sure HireEzy will be unaffected by the radical changes introduced with the way it works and as a complementary service we install your software for you after purchase to give you the peace of mind that you’ll be just fine. Further to that point, with HireEzy 2.1 we have introduced new backup utilities that allow you to auto backup your HireEzy database wherever you like, including devices like thumb drives, DVD RAM and external hard drives, plus for a monthly fee you can optionally use our new online backup service which will sync your HireEzy data with our secure servers over the Internet.

To summorise, we understand that Vista is a concerning product to work with, a lot of the flack that the product has copped is unjustified or simply no longer relevant but nonetheless we have taken the steps necessary to ensure that with HireEzy your information is secure and instantly accessible to you no matter how Vista is used or deployed in your computer network.

I encourage you to contact us if you have any further questions or queries regarding HireEzy on Windows Vista or for any technical deployment questions that you may have, we’re only too happy to discuss it with you!

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