Jason Morse, Essex Equipment
Essex Junction, VT
All of the important decisions we make are based on the data in InTempo Enterprise. We’ll pull data out of the system and analyze everything from our maintenance costs, to utilization and profitability, to managing the rental lifecycles of our equipment.
Jason Morse
"We were one of the first adopters of RentalMan [now InTempo Enterprise.]”
We were just the fourteenth installation of InTempo Enterprise when my father and I bought the system in 1995. And then, ten years ago, we were one of the first adopters of the Application Service Provider model, currently known as Software as a Service or Enterprise SaaS. So two generations of Essex owners using the same system for two decades—I think we probably started on software version one at the beginning, and now we are on the latest version which is in the double digits!
We’re mostly in construction rental, with boom lifts up to 85 ft., a tractor dealership, and about a dozen mechanics on staff—a single big location with two buildings. We write tons of contracts all day long. The system is quite fast. One of the things that appealed to us about InTempo Enterprise rental software is that we’re using what the big boys in the industry are using. It’s powerful, and that gives us confidence in our decisions. You know, the old days when it was a gut feeling of ‘gotta have another one of those’—those days are long gone.
“All the accounting tools we need are built in.”
There’s no question that anytime you have to bring two software platforms together, there’s inevitably going to be issues. So we didn’t want to use one system for rentals, and some third-party package like Quicken or Peachtree for accounting, even if the software was somewhat integrated. With RentalMan, it’s all been developed together. Because we’ve been using the system for 20 years now, it’s really second nature to us.
“Half the battle is having a software supplier who stands behind you.”
A couple of months ago, some of our terminals started dropping connections. We were on the phone with InTempo, and our cable provider, and our network guy – it was just one of those things you have to keep working at until it gets resolved. Even though it ended up being a local network switch and not a software-related issue, InTempo stayed with us to work through it. Being on the SaaS model, it can make some things easier to troubleshoot. It’s funny, you hear people talking about the cloud as a new thing, and we’ve been on the cloud forever here. I swear by it. I wouldn’t do it any other way.
“We look at ROI very carefully.”
If you want the ability to utilize your data to be successful, and make the right decisions, and have that power of the data behind you—then you can’t beat InTempo Enterprise. That’s by far the main benefit of using it, for us. Some other rental systems may seem simpler because they’re more basic, but they’re just not set up for the level of detail and analysis that Enterprise is.