Running a sound company can be cash-intensive and highly competitive. And keeping track of thousands of pieces of gear in your inventory complicates the situation, especially when you need to bid on a gig right away and knowing the availability of your staff and gear is critical before you can quote a job. Fortunately, technologies such as optical — or RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) scanning can offer accurate asset tracking, while cloud-based software provides secure, immediate access to the data you need from anywhere, via phone, tablet or laptop. And all are subscription-based, with pricing from less than $100/month.
We sought comments from four companies (there are many more) who specialize in scalable, versatile cloud-based rental management software for the event production industry, asking about their offerings and views of the market.
IntelliEvent – Don Romeka, CEO:
“IntelliEvent’s Lightning is cloud-based rental business management software that helps rental companies, venues, and AV and production pros manage every aspect of their dynamic business.
“After college, I was involved in vertically focused software companies and I got involved with IntelliEvent out of Washington D.C. Back then, it was a homegrown, Windows-based software system for an audiovisual and rental staging company. Within a year I bought them out, which was over 25 years ago.
“With technology, we had to reinvent ourselves from the old-school, non-cloud based approach. Now we offer the latest, using cloud technologies with various modules for inventory, labor, logistics, job costing, quoting, billing and an open-source API where people use it to integrate with other third-party tools, whether it’s customer relationship, marketing or management tools, ERP systems, accounting software, freight companies, tax companies — you name it. We’re excited about this phase and we’re super-focused on the event and production industry.
“We have a plethora of event-focused companies, like Nationwide Video, Stanford University, who is running 8,000 events on campus, and sound companies, lighting companies, venues — essentially anyone in the event industry who is moving things around and is trying to maximize the efficiency of the people who run these organizations.
“A company could start off small, doing basic CRM and quoting with descriptions of their gear. Then later, they start organizing their inventory, tracking their gear and start tracking subrentals with an integrated P.O. module and then invoice out of it, integrating with their accounting software. There’s no need to do everything overnight — just baby steps to get to a better place, and we support that with user training, conferences and industry tradeshows, such as InfoComm, LDI and NAMM. This not only provides training, but gives us feedback to make the software better. We’re always reinventing the technology to make it better, faster, more scalable and more integratable.”
More info: www.intellievent.com
Flex Rental Solutions – Jason Rzutkiewicz, Marketing:
“Flex Rental Solutions is certainly known as the operational backbone of lot of our clients’ businesses, supporting the process from the front-end, with sales and quoting. Then once that quote is confirmed, it moves into the warehouse mode, prepping that order when the time is ready, and the inventory management that goes behind managing that warehouse — meaning where is our inventory at all times, with scanning items in and out using scanners or RFID capabilities. It’s packing an order, getting it on a truck, checking it into a location, putting it together, hosting the event and then reversing the process, deconstructing it, scanning it on the truck, making sure everything is accounted for, then scanning it back into the warehouse and getting it into its correct locations.
“Then there are also downsteam financial aspects — whether something is missing, invoicing, payments, the entire gamut of the business. This is overlaid with reporting and efficiency tools — what inventory you might need more of, what inventory you’re under-leveraging or not using and might want to think about selling.
“That’s the full spectrum of the offering, although there are also components of labor — getting people to do the construct and de-construct, and assigning labor roles to those quotes and jobs, making sure those roles are filled. That’s another important component of our flagship Flex Rental Solutions platform. We also have two other smaller subsets of that — Gear Tracking Solutions (GTS) is basically the same but without the sales or financial components, for in-house departments within a company, where they don’t need quotes or invoices.
“Flex Rental Solutions has some businesses with more than 100 users. We also offer a Flex Lite version for companies with much of the same functionality, but for three or less users.”
More info: www.flexrentalsolutions.com
Rental Point – Timothy Grafton, Founder:
“Rental Point was originally developed in late 80’s and early 90’s for lighting and sound production companies. Our first customer was Sydney, Australia’s Graftons Sound and Lighting, which was owned by my brother. And even today, I still maintain the company’s focus on audio, lighting and AV companies.
“A constant annoyance of software is when it’s overly complex. I try to keep it simple. There was one system on the market that had the nickname of being ‘a program for programmers,’ and some software still suffers from overly complex designs. For example, they might refer to roadcases as ‘virtual packages.’ We refer to roadcases as ‘roadcases’ and racks as ‘racks.’
“We keep things simple to use and intuitive and have a very loyal client base — all production companies. We don’t do catering companies or construction or general hire; we refer to RentalPoint as being for event technology rental and production, which encompasses audio, visual and lighting. Up until last year, RentalPoint was Windows-based; our latest version — RentalPoint3 — is browser-based, so clients can access their data and inventory from a smartphone or any device that connects with the Internet.
“We’re also doing a lot with crew and crew planning. We have three different views where you can plot your equipment and look ahead and see what’s happening. It does touch on payrolls, as it has a separate technician portal, where a technician — staff or freelance — can log on and punch their time on and off. And if they are independent contractors, they can click on upcoming jobs and accept or decline them. Some of the other features in RentalPoint3 include an electronic pick list, three calendar displays for equipment scheduling, fully integrated purchase orders and a companion app for easy, fast iPhone-based barcode tracking.”
More info: www.rentp.com
IIG AcuRental – Alec Baghdasaryan, CEO:
“Information Integration Group’s AcuRental package can be developed in one of two ways. Some companies just want a package to handle the rentals and can upload and download their invoices through QuickBooks or something like that. We have a rental solution that can be added in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software for order processing and we add rental functionality to that. AcuRental provides everything you need from field service to point of sale to fixed assets to accounting, and inventory management — all in one solution.
“AcuRental also includes costing of the project, how much you are paying for labor — both your own staff and any necessary subcontractors — so you will know if you are making profit on the project. Within what we call ‘Revenue and Cost Budgeting,’ you can budget all your project costs, and know whether you are going to make the money you want to make before you start the project, including commissions, audio and video rentals, venue costs, crewing, expendables and so on.
“The program keeps track of the serial number on every piece of component you define. Plus, on something like a mixer, it keeps track of the software version and any maintenance, such as the date one of the display panels may have been replaced, along with any repairs to the internal electronics. So all of those component-level repairs can be tracked, and you can depreciate the asset or set up scheduled maintenance services.
“In terms of when a company should consider getting rental software, there comes a time when your company is large enough to want to see the profitability by project, and do time-based availability and fixed asset depreciation. So if the company has two or three persons, there may be some benefits, but typically when a company has five or ten people or $2-3 million a year, that’s when an integrated system makes sense. More and more companies are seeing the value of being efficient.”
More info: www.iigservices.com
