The management and maintenance of equipment in a hire business can be a challenge if you’re still using spreadsheets, paper, or even your MYOB or Xero accounting system.
In fact, you may already know how time-consuming these tasks can get. Whether you’re hiring out equipment without proper tracking, trying to figure out what needs to be serviced or just want to get an idea of which assets are under-utilised; if you’re using dated tracking methods you may be putting your business at risk.
Losing your equipment, missing routine services and holding on to assets that are not being used is not something anyone wants to deal with. Not only does this add unnecessary stress but it may leave you liable should an accident occur.
When it comes to hiring equipment for fast-paced and demanding clients like medical facilities, you can’t really afford these errors. Especially because the availability of cutting-edge medical equipment management software means that these risks can be reduced and managed effectively.
Keep reading to learn how an effective software solution can streamline your operations and make your medical asset hiring business more cost-effective.
1. Keep track of your assets with ease
Managing the status of your inventory on paper or even through an outdated system makes it all much more tedious than it needs to be and leads to problems like inaccurate data entry and repeated records. This is when laborious administrative tasks take a toll and start contributing to equipment being lost or damaged, shorter equipment lifespans, customer dissatisfaction, and ultimately, higher costs and a drop in sales.
When you have a well-integrated software solution, you get complete visibility into your equipment and devices throughout every stage of its distribution.
The right solution will have advantages across your organisation. Take, for example, an asset tracking feature.
Features like GPS tracking can trace the exact location of your equipment while they are on hire, preventing your assets from being stolen or not being returned. Similarly, you can trace the usage of a particular hire asset—by checking metre readings, for example—to ensure that your equipment isn’t being used outside authorised hours. This is a straightforward way to identify contract breaches and act accordingly.
2. Never miss out on routine servicing and maintenance
While the quality you are able to provide your customers is a high priority regardless of the industry you serve, the medical sector especially requires well-functioning equipment in order to ensure high-quality patient care. With a management software solution in place, you can check on your equipment constantly and know when your machines need maintenance, what condition they’re in, and predict when they may need to be repaired or replaced.
Take, for example, an asset tracking feature that makes scheduled maintenance easier. It lets you keep an eye out for warning signs of equipment failure and note down patterns in machine behaviours. Even with things that seem as little as a particular machine taking longer to complete a specific task—this feature can keep you in the loop so you don’t miss routine servicing.
By monitoring the reliability of your assets, you can also receive prior notice when your assets reach the end of their lifecycle and plan ahead for new purchases.
By using software-driven insights you can also plan your equipment routines. For instance, you can make the best use of low-demand periods by scheduling equipment maintenance.
3. Prevent holding your assets and leaving them idle
With medical equipment management software, you gain a complete overview of all your equipment and devices usage that your team can access from wherever they are—even from their mobile on the road.
These comprehensive records let you in on the data you need, to recognise things like:
- Rising demand for a certain device
- Demand for a particular device during a particular time of the year
- Specific devices needed by the industries you serve
With these insights in your arsenal, you can balance ideal product availability throughout the year, and set your prices accordingly.
Whether your priority is to track your asset maintenance, order spares or new equipment, or whether it’s to plan ahead when sending out your equipment so that you’ll know when to source equipment externally, you’ll be able to make maximum use of your own equipment.
Medical equipment management software—reach new heights of cost-efficiency
With the need for medical equipment hire rising, and healthcare facilities under pressure to keep up with the speed of innovation, medical equipment management software has become a necessity for every equipment hire business that deals in the healthcare sector.
With equipment management software, you can meet rising demand without missing a beat.