inspHire: rental software experts

Sydenhams Hire Centres

Background

Sydenhams is an independent company with a long tradition of supplying timber and building materials throughout Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight. Originally founded in Poole, Dorset in 1874 at Hamworthy Wharf, a site where timber is still imported today. The company is able to supply all building needs through a network of 17 branches and hire centres.

The Issue

In October 2007 The Sydenhams Group acquired a family run hire business which was already running a hire management solution. When the staff were asked in which areas they would most like to see change, the resounding answer was the computer system. The fact that Sydenhams is an ambitious company and that they wanted to grow their hire business by adding new depots,it was clear that this would be impossible without implementing a new computer system.

The legacy system used,  provided the company with limited asset tracking facilities made worse by the fact that when it was implemented it was poorly configured.

Due to these problems stocktaking was a real hassle. With a hire fleet of over 3000 unique items it would take the staff weeks to do a full stock check and even then, they couldn’t be 100% sure on the results.

Sydenhams began searching the market for an alternative rental management solution. The limitations of the legacy solution were well known, so Sydenhams had a clear idea of what they were looking for and key requirements that the hire system should meet such as; it had to be compatible with the  parent company accounts software package; it had to have live tracking of unique hire items and it had to have a facility to create an array of both financial and business reports.

The Solution

Sydenham Hire Centre selected inspHire Office Edition.

"When we approached insphire we had certain system requirements in mind. After a demonstration of the inspHire Office Edition we were certain we had found a software package that would exceed our all requirements and provide us with functionality that would help us grow our business. We knew the hardest part of implementing a new system would be to create a link between Sydenhams' account package and the hire software as this hadn't been done before. inspHire took this onboard and set about creating a linking tool to allow us to run the two systems side by side. This was one of the reasons why we choose inspHire, not many software companies would be prepared to develop their software just to match the requirements for one company.  

After that initial demonstration and the offer to develop a unique linking system tool for us we decided that inspHire was the software provider to use to help us grow our business." Luke George, Sydenhams Hire Centres.

The Sydenham Group selected inspHire Office Edition Rental Mnagement Solution.

A Project Manager was allocated to Sydenhams for the installation and implementation.

"The inspHire system was to be bespoke in some waysfor us, but any concerns that we had were quickly dismissed when we met our project manager, who had great knowledge of the inspHire software together with a very good understanding of the hire industry. I was able to work closely with him in setting the system up to match our requirements and in no time we had a system in place that we were ready to go live with."

"We were given intensive training which left us confident that the system set up would work and that we would have no problems going live. This is testament to the inspHire system and its ease of use. On the day when we went live our sales representative, joined us at opening time to make sure everything ran smoothly on the first day. This gave us extra confidence as you can't really get more first line support!" Software should be tailored to match your business, not your business tailored to match the software. inspHire have taken this onboard and this means that we now have a system which provides us with all the functionality we need.

Through the use of reports we are able to better predict how our business is going to perform in these turbulent financial times and this has given us the confidence to continue expanding. In the last 3 months we have acquired 5 new depots and are in the process of implementing our inspHire system in all of these new branches. With the old system we had we would never have had the confidence to make these acquisitions and to continue to look for more.

Luke George, The Sydenhams Group.