Background

Mark One Hire is an Essex-based tool, equipment, and powered access hire company. They have four hire centres with fully-equipped workshops and qualified mechanics, along with a fleet of delivery vehicles to ship tool hire equipment to sites in Essex, London, Kent, and most of the South East. 

Problem

Mark One’s previous hire software had some issues, but the most frustrating one was that every time there was an upgrade to the software, the system went down. It could take minutes, or even hours, to resolve. They needed a new hire software, and quickly – but this time they wanted a Windows-based system.

Solution

Mark One found their solution in Syrinx (which was later acquired by Point of Rental).

“It’s like night and day, really. There was really only one way to do [certain processes] in the old system, whereas in the new system, it’s just got so many options, the different reports you can get off it, creating a hire contract is so easy,” said owner Mark Newell.

Result

In more than a decade using their new software, Mark has been impressed by its reliability. 

“We’ve never had the system not work. It’s more when you want it to do a little bit extra, so you phone up,” he said. “As you’re having that conversation, you think, ‘Yeah, I [remember] how that works.’ But it’s never actually stopped working.”

Mark One has relied on Point of Rental’s customer service as well, when dealing with some of the small issues that can crop up when a hire business has 60 users with varying levels of experience using a system.

“If there’s a struggle, [customer service] is instant. Literally, you phone up, someone answers, and it’s dealt with,” said Mark. “If it’s not a big problem, they’ll let you know by email and things like that, but it always gets resolved within the day.”

At Point of Rental’s International Conference in 2016, Mark and his son, Calum, joined Point of Rental users from throughout the world to see what the future of their software looked like, and came away excited about the family aspect of the company, as well as the company’s interest in caring for its customers. The Newells are excited about the future with their software.

“It runs our business, it’s a really important part of our business, and if we didn’t have [Point of Rental], I’m not quite sure what we would do,” said Mark. “I know there’s other options out there, but I know they’re not as good.”