Why do rental businesses invest significant sums of money in equipment without basing decisions on data and numbers?
Why so often do these businesses not have an online store in a time when e-commerce is fast becoming the new standard?
The reason is that many rental shops are still running their operation with the age-old but battle-tested combo of pen and paper. The lack of digital solutions designed for rental businesses has hindered the digital adaptation and growth of the rental industry. From the consumer's perspective, this is shown as an outdated user experience.
Fixing the big and small picture
To solve these problems and help the whole rental industry to modernize, we work daily to develop better solutions to support the equipment rental industry. This means:
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Increasing the profitability of renting as a business model by removing friction from the rental management and automating manual jobs.
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Building tools to enhance the consumer experience by supporting faster, easier, and more convenient renting. This is the only way to make renting a truly competitive alternative for ownership.
Renting is a sustainable and efficient way to consume durable goods. Non-ownership is a growing trend, and rental businesses represent the future of the trend. Still, before the popularity starts growing exponentially, the convenience must first match the traditional retail for both the business and the consumer, online and in-store.
Easing everyday life in the rental shops
With cloud-based rental software, Twice modernizes the operations of equipment rental companies. Many rental shops are still operating with pen and paper, are not accepting online bookings, and the operation is run without clear data-driven insight.
For those who are unfamiliar with the rental industry, the current methods of running a business might seem outdated but are often the best available solution. Many of the modern digital tools have been built for traditional "selling as a business model," which everyone, who has worked in the rental industry, knows is a completely different operation.
Rental operation is a more complicated entity than traditional retail, for example, in terms of inventory management, scheduling, and legal liabilities. Hence, the tools designed for traditional retail are not suitable - or at least far from optimal - for rental businesses.
Modern tools mean that rental companies this means improving efficiency through automation and grow sales through online rentals. The end-user sees the difference in convenience and better consumer experience.
→ Why traditional ecommerce tools don't work for managing rentals?
Creating value for businesses and consumers
Companies that rent out equipment for consumers are likely to benefit from the features of rental software. Streamlining the everyday work in rental shops enables the utilization of data and offers tools to improve the customer experience. The digital sales channels commit consumers earlier and make the purchase decision less dependent, for example, on the weather conditions and other external variables rental shops can’t control.
Consumers will see the benefits of the improved processes as better customer experience - for example as, shorter queuing times in the shop. The possibility to rent online also enables consumers to make purchase decisions in advance, which eliminates the risk of low availability especially during the peak seasons.
Helping rental businesses to scale up
Twice's most important goal is to help rental businesses grow and improve profitability. Already, it has been promising to see how our customers have been able to show impressive growth numbers, for example, in terms of online sales and average purchase size.
Let's keep on building a better world of renting together. Stay tuned by subscribing to our blog below!
