Equipment Management Solution for Rental Services

Dynamics AX customization case study

Company

The сustomer is a construction equipment rental and leasing services provider with 40 workshops and 200 employees.

Business situation

The Company focuses on renting the heavy machinery: excavators, forklifts, cranes, trucks, and other equipment. It has a large fleet and provides services in 10 European countries. The Company needs a Dynamics AX rental solution to manage all stages of the equipment lifecycle and help evaluate the usage of each asset.

Challenges

The Company decided to implement Dynamics AX and customize its functionality to support the industry-specific needs:

• Track the use of each piece of equipment in the fleet, from purchase to sale or utility waste
• Support warranty, maintenance, and repair services
• Provide timely invoicing with automated calculating of rental and leasing costs
• Be able to locate any piece of equipment at anytime

Solution

Axiopea built an Equipment Lifecycle Management solution on top of Dynamics AX 2009. It is seamlessly integrated with the system and provides a new functionality to automate business processes for the Rental & Leasing Services companies.

The solution features

1. Managing rented and leased objects

• Each object, whether it is rented, leased, or sold is stored in a data base. It is saved under the unique number allowing to keep a record of every piece of equipment at any stage of its lifecycle.
• Each item has multiple parameters which enables to save the whole financial and operational history regarding this item: ownership, maintenance schedule, current location, usage, billing, and so on.
• Information on each piece of equipment, including its current geographical location, utilization rate, and other important properties, is available and can be analyzed at any point of time
• Each object can be configured to suit the customer requirements
• The object can be modified-the Company is able to add new items (equipment, spare parts, etc.) and services to the rental/leasing orders. The system tracks all changes made to a certain machine.

2. Managing services

• Scheduled Maintenance. Maintenance tasks are created automatically depending on each item’s configuration, location, rental/leasing period, operating hours, maintenance frequency, etc.
• Service Planning. The system tracks the availability of spare parts and human resources. As a result, the service tasks can be planned for the closest mechanic to fulfill them, with the right resources.
• Reporting and BI. The Company always gets a real-time picture of the services provided, e.g., maintenance history, repair costs, and can easily track the equipment utilization.
• Service task templates. Maintenance and repair tasks have pre-defined templates to make sure the quality service is provided by the 3d party or the on-staff mechanics.

3. Rental and leasing costs calculator

Sales managers can easily process customer enquiries with a help of the quotation form. They can locate the available equipment and estimate its price with a minimum amount of time.

When the rental or leasing contract is signed, the manager can specify the important details of the agreement: rental period, leasing type, payments due date, installment frequency, charging methods, etc. Automatic invoicing takes into account all of the abovementioned details and ensures that the customers are invoiced and billed in a timely and accurate manner.

The equipment’s depreciation is calculated automatically which allows to offer a correct price in case of its sale.

4. Real-time data on machinery

The system is integrated with the industry-specific applications, such as the fleet telematics systems. It enables to collect the valuable information about the equipment used:

• The real-time location of the machine to ensure safety and compliance with the contract terms
• Active hours of the equipment usage to plan the convenient time for maintenance
• Idle time monitoring to calculate productivity
• Fuel consumption control

Other functionality includes:

• Spare parts inventory management
• Graphical and non-graphical equipment availability overview
• Service and workshop management
• Warranty management
• Maintenance history

Results

Axiopea built a comprehensive equipment lifecycle management solution, offering an ability to view and analyze all financial and operational history of every machine in the fleet.

The Company is now able to

• Manage rental and leasing contracts
• Reduce downtime and increase efficiency
• Provide maintenance services
• Invoice customers periodically
• Manage the equipment fleet in multiple geographical locations
• View ownership and service history for each vehicle
• Complete 90% of all repairs on the same day
• Make 94% of the spare parts available within 24 hours

The solution provides the needed tools for understanding and controlling the equipment cost and revenue.

Need to develop Dynamics AX equipment and rental management solution? Contact us!