John F Hunt

The Challenge

In the early days, the hire group used paper-based manual processes, moving onto an MCS Unix based solution, which they used for 10 years until they decided that a Windows based solution would be more appropriate to support the company’s rapid growth.

The Solution

After using the MCS UNIX-based system for 10 years, John F Hunt reviewed alternative suppliers of rental software on the market and finally chose MCS-rm. The process then began to move to the new platform and even with multiple depots, four databases and different priorities for each company in the group, the MCS team managed the implementation seamlessly.

Easy To Use

As MCS-rm is based on familiar Microsoft technology, new users pick it up within a couple of days. It’s very intuitive.

Valuable Business Information

MCS showed us how to produce reports, such as on-hire reports. We can let customers see instantly what they have on-hire by sending them an email with the report attached.

Flexibility

The system’s wide-ranging functionality is fully utilised. For instance, John F Hunt Plant Hire offers excavators on an operated or self-drive basis. Where appropriate, we use the operated plant module to input all the hours worked by the operator, and this time can be detailed in the invoice.

Workshop

If a generator fails at a festival, our reputation is on the line. Through the Workshop module, staff can schedule proactive maintenance alerts so the generators are serviced regularly and kept in prime condition.

The Benefits

Since using MCS-rm, John F Hunt has been able to:

• Effectively manage some 4000 items of equipment across the business, with the visual allocation chart displaying exactly what is on hire at any point in time.
• Calculate equipment asset utilisation across the fleet, as well as viewing the full accounting picture.
• Record all the test incidents and invoice for the time an engineer has spent on-site testing the customer's equipment.