Background
City Hire has been providing tool hire services for London and the South East of England since 1989. The company has recently expanded into England’s North West with the acquisition of Liver Plant as well, allowing them to speed up delivery to site across even more of the country. The company prides itself on its innovative online hire solutions which allow for delivery within four hours inside the M25 and for orders to be placed 24/7.
Problem
The team converted from paper and pen tracking to Syrinx all the way back in 2008, so what could the problem be? Well, while Syrinx handled their needs in a lot of places, they wanted to enhance their processes with realtime data analytics and paperless delivery/collections processes.
Solution
“The way we’ve used the product has changed quite a lot over the last five years,” said Caspar Douglass, City Hire’s Marketing Manager. Primarily, City Hire have implemented Syrinx’s apps, chiefly Driver App. They’ve also used the software’s APIs to integrate into Power BI for realtime data analysis.
Result
Caspar and the team at City Hire pride themselves – and market their services – based on their ability to provide frictionless, fast and accurate hire.
Using the Driver App allows City Hire to provide accurate information quickly – when a delivery is being sent out, if there are any expected delays, when a collection is expected, etc. and builds consumer confidence.
Internally, it helps increase order accuracy; City Hire aren’t printing out paper, transcribing hastily-written information, or having paperwork lost in cabs, wind, or rain.
“It makes it so much easier when you take orders, you can route them in the transport routing module, then you can deploy them to each of the drivers’ PDAs,” said Caspar. “We’ve managed to squeeze about 25% extra work – extra revenue – per employee, and part of that is down to the fact that everyone’s been able to be more productive [with the apps].”
City Hire also uses Syrinx’s API to work with Power BI for realtime reporting.
“Without live reporting, it’s like you’re playing a football game and you don’t know what the score is,” Caspar said.
The realtime reporting not only ensures leadership is getting the most accurate and up-to-date information in a way that’s easy to understand, but it helps with team motivation. Counter staff are able to compete to see who can raise the most orders in a day. Workshop staff can compete to accomplish repairs more efficiently.
Now that City Hire can run things paperlessly, everyone is on the same page moving forward.
Caspar says it just makes every aspect of running the business easier: “It helps grow the business because everyone knows what to do next.”