inspHire: rental software experts

Bradshaw Electric Vehicles

Background

Bradshaw Electric Vehicles provide a low cost, clean and quiet solution to moving goods and people around facilities and for the more unusual loads their in house development team can design vehicles to meet customer needs.

In addition there are events that require electric / petrol vehicles, where purchasing would not be cost–effective.
Many businesses, for various reasons, avoid making capital purchases. Bradshaw's Rental division provides solutions to both these situations.

Bradshaw vehicles are available for rent on a short-term and nothing is too small or too large. Valued customers for this type of rental ranges from such events as the Paris Air Show, to the British Open Golf Tournament.

For some companies, long-term rental can be the most effective way to manage their electric vehicle fleets. It removes capital expenditure requirements, and can offer both flexibility and tax advantages. Rental contracts can be timed to run from a weekend to several years, and can include scheduled maintenance.

The Issue

Bradshaw Electric Vehicles had been using spreadsheets on a day to day basis to track their vehicles.

The correlation of issued quotations and the day to day vehicle planning heavily relied on manual processes. During the peak vehicle hire times the paper system just about coped with the day to day operations. It was felt a disaster could happen and a new software system was needed to organise and correlate the various elements of the rental process.

To evaluate the various software companies Bradshaw's wrote a brief that covered the company rental activities and asked each company to show them a demonstration based on the brief. Those that did not cover the requirements of the brief were rejected. In the second stage Bradshaw provided the finalists with some of its data and asked for a ‘proof of concept’ to be prepared. This would mimic their day to day rental activity. This demonstration allowed them to see the software working with their own scenarios, and their own data. In the final selection clearly the amount of support they would receive was considered as was their assessment of the company’s appreciation and understanding of the Bradshaw business. The final selection also took into account the degree to which Bradshaw's could ‘expand’ into the software i.e. features outside their core requirements that they could develop once the system was operational. Bradshaw's account package is Access Dimensions and the chosen solution would have to integrate with this.

The Solution

At both stages of demonstration inspHire looked like it would fulfil all Bradshaw's core requirements and offer other features which would enhance their business.

Bradshaw selected inspHire Office Edition.

"inspHire was chosen because the sales team understood our requirements and the software could be configured to meet our requirements".

"The software was installed and configured very quickly with no problems. We have also taken a limited amount of training but this was presented in an easy to understand manner. The software is quite intuitive to follow once a few basic processes are understood".

"Bradshaw has used the software through the busiest vehicle rental season they have seen for a number of years and inspHire has performed exceptionally well".

"We have been delighted with the product and the support we have received over the last year. The technical team have answered all our questions quickly and have found solutions to all the questions we have asked of them".

Mike Bradshaw, Managing Director, Bradshaw Electric Vehicles.