The health care industry is an inspiring example of advancement in science and technology. The strides made here to improve quality of life, treat diseases and increase life expectancies are wonderful testaments to medicine and science.
Of course health care is just one area where the advances in technology have taken us to new heights. Even our phones, cars and TVs are getting smarter. Have you ever wondered if your tool for rental and inventory management has kept up? Does your existing platform offer the best in the business for managing your operations? If you're managing these core components of your business with an outdated system, such as spreadsheets or white boards, or with an accounting system that's great for accounting, but not designed for inventory management, it's time to consider a more advanced solution. Ignoring the costs of manual processes, or using multiple platforms for different jobs, will only continue to limit business profits and efficiency. By streamlining your processes with a powerful software solution, you will cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction and your bottom line.
As a player in the medical industry, a durable medical equipment (DME) provider handles unique products and services. It's important to understand what features are necessary for this type of business while considering what provides a competitive advantage. What follows are the features that we frequently hear business owners in the industry requesting as they consider a rental and inventory management package.
Powerful Reporting
With powerful reporting, business managers have the insight necessary to make informed buying decisions and increase profits. Some important reports to look for are, "Return on Investment," "Item Availability" and "Missed Rentals." It goes without saying that tracking real-time item availability and any instances of overbooking are important in running a rental operation, but discovering lost rental opportunities is an often overlooked benefit of rental management software.
It's also essential to identify your most successful inventory stock and how to meet the demands of your customers, while at the same time not overfilling your shelves with underutilized assets. For example, if you see that your CPAP machines are rarely leaving the store, with the "Return on Investment" report you have the data necessary to make informed decisions on reselling this stock.
Flexibility in Contracts
Flexibility in pricing is critical. You want to find software that will allow you to price the way you do business and make it easy at the same time. Find software that will automatically scale your prices based on length of rental so you don't need to manually compute charges. Some also support weekend prices, daily discounts or surcharges. Often medical needs change, and it's important to quickly add or remove items from an order with just a simple click of the mouse. Or perhaps you'd like to thank a returning customer for their business by providing a discount to their order. Dynamically updating contracts means that businesses can quickly receive and check out new serialized items.
Inventory Control for Growth
As your business grows so will your products and partnerships. Your inventory-management program should have the capability to easily add new inventory items via uploading a spreadsheet. Additionally ensure that your program comes equipped to share your inventory and availability with all of your current locations, while also being able to handle new locations in the future.
Online Store
In our Internet age, customers have come to expect the ability to reserve and pay for equipment online—many of your competitors have probably already made this function available through their websites. Ensure that your rental and inventory solution includes this feature so that you can make money even when your physical store is closed. Not to mention it will save your counter staff time and energy while driving more business. Look for a platform that will update your inventory automatically online as reservations are made and accept payment before the customer walks in your door.
If you already have a strong website, you'll want a web store that integrates easily with your existing platform. Point-of-Rental's CLOUD customer storefront, for example, is flexible enough to stand alone as your entire web presence, or be integrated with your existing website using a plugin or simple script.
Item and Customer Records
Rather than keeping hundreds of files detailing item records, rental-management software provides this information and more with just a click of a button. Not only do item records show detailed specs, manuals and photos of inventory, but they also integrate with service and maintenance reports to show the full history on specific items. Additionally, customer information is stored securely with their contact information, specific reservations and order history, which allows you to provide the best customer experience. Another feature to look for is the ability to scan driver's licenses. With a quick scan, customer records are automatically filled helping cut down on wait time.
Capability to Handle Sales and Rentals
Often we find that DME providers require the flexibility in their software package to handle both sales and rentals. As you consider a platform, be sure that it comes equipped to easily manage both of these functions.
Built-in Credit Card Processing
Streamline your tools by looking for a rental- and inventory-management package that has the capability to process and capture credit card information securely. The best solutions can then re-charge that card later for reoccurring billing, overages or damage fees, thus eliminating the liability for you to store the credit card information at your store.
Accounting Integration
Streamline your accounting records by ensuring that your rental and inventory management package can easily be exported to Quickbooks and other accounting packages.
Hardware Integrations
By choosing software with the capability to quickly scan inventory as it's added to a contract, your records and contracts are updated in real time with an item's physical location. Scanning serialized items also adds to a business's efficiency in the event of asset replacement due to substitutions or malfunctioning equipment. Find software that will allow you to scan general barcodes for an item when you don't want to select which specific serialized unit is going out yet. This feature is also useful if you sometimes wait until the day of rental to assign the specific item.
It's easy to see the cost and timesaving benefits of a robust DME rental- and inventory-management software solution. While these are just a few suggested features, your business needs will dictate which are most important for you.
