Established in 1972, Buildequip (BHS) is a family-owned general tool and equipment hire and sales company based in Bellville, South Africa. With a head office, two hire/sales outlets, a stock warehouse and a separate workshop, the company offers a wide ranging equipment inventory with several thousand stock items suitable for the professional and DIY markets.
The Challenge
Prior to 2005, Buildequip was operating a custom-designed, character-based hire management system that included a limited financial and stock control capability. Owner and Managing Director, Dick van Dijk, was looking for greater stock control, more comprehensive automated processes, multi-depot functionality and a more flexible and scalable system.
“But before I could expand my business and realise my company’s vision, we had to upgrade our hardware and software platform” Dick said, “and this meant moving to a Windows® server and a software application that could handle multi-branch operations.”
The Solution
Once the new hardware platform was in place, Buildequip reviewed the local market and discovered there was nothing available that was suitable for a Windows environment. The company looked further afield and that is when MCS came to their attention.
“We were immediately impressed with the comprehensive hire, sales and contract management functionality offered by MCS-rm, the MCS integrated hire software solution” Dick said, “and in particular its integration capabilities with Pastel Financials”.
Dick decided to duly purchase MCS-rm and, with a colleague, enrolled on a two week MCS training programme to understand the rudiments of MCS-rm and how it linked to Pastel Financials.
After completing the training, Buildequip implemented all of the core functionality of MCS-rm to become the first user of the MCS product in the country.
“Our first priority was to input all of our contract and customer data into MCS-rm and link it to Pastel,” Dick confirmed. “We wanted to get it operational as soon as possible.”
As a result, two sales counter staff began running their areas of the business, namely the Hire, Sales & Transport functions within MCS-rm.
The Benefits
MCS-rm streamlines the contract management process, including rehires, from quotation, through on-hire and off-hire, to invoicing. The advantage to counter staff is saving time and increasing accuracy due to the creation of one contract record for all operational needs.
As Managing Director and owner of Buildequip, Dick was responsible for all the financial planning for the business. Dick can now easily and effectively manage debtors, creditors, invoicing and cash flow, budgeting and the general ledger all in one environment.
“The biggest benefit for us is that all hires get automatically invoiced when they are due from contract information already generated by the system – we have complete control over invoicing so we can choose when invoices are raised using the batch invoicing facility and in what format”.
Furthermore, the hire company also benefits from the Workshop & Maintenance facility within MCS-rm. This is undertaken off-site at another location where all hire and sales equipment is regularly booked in for servicing and repair. The workshop is regarded as a separate branch by the MCS system so that stock assigned to the depot for maintenance or repair is treated as ‘inter-depot’. The Workshop Manager uses the Workshop & Maintenance automation to ensure stock is in peak condition. It also gives him better control over stock by enabling him to track the frequency and costs of repairs for every item. This reduces costly and untimely breakdowns as well as improves fleet utilisation, profitability and stock expenditure.
Parts are ordered using the purchase order processing capability and are automatically integrated onto the job card,” Dick continued. “The nice thing is having all of the inventory and contract information as well as the maintenance history on the one system. We can now look at an item’s maintenance and hire records and make better, more informed decisions regarding the profitability of each item. Our previous system couldn’t do that.”
The company also has an off-site bulk yard called ‘The Farm’ which is also treated as a separate branch by the MCS system. In this way, excess stock is also considered ‘inter-depot’ to this location for storage. This makes for much easier stock control and management.
The Future
Dick confirmed that Buildequip has had a long and friendly relationship with MCS over the years and that they have been responsible for instigating many tweaks and improvements to the system along the way. Many have subsequently been incorporated into MCS-rm. Buildequip has also upgraded as new product versions have come out.
“MCS-rm is a big improvement on the old system and we haven’t even begun to fully exploit the huge range of functionality yet,” Dick concluded. “We are looking forward to activating the advanced transport management module, ‘Transport Manager’, in the near future. An important benefit for us would be for the technology to help us run a list of all portable toilets in our inventory that require a service on any given day”.
To find out how MCS-rm could help your business, call us on +27 (0)11 083 7530 or use our enquiry form.
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