Choosing to keep track of your important event rental company data on pen and paper is like choosing to navigate with paper maps rather than GPS. It’s inefficient and bound to lead to mistakes due to human error. In today’s competitive environment, technology is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gain an edge over competitors. If you’re apprehensive about learning new technologies, or don’t understand why adopting new technologies at your event business is important, these insights will be very useful for you.

What is automation?

Automation is the streamlining of processes using technology to minimize the need for human input. In more simple terms, automation is allowing technology to handle parts of your job for you, so that you can spend more time on other tasks.

Think about the manual tasks you currently do. For instance, do you have to continuously call customers on the phone to chase them down to pay? Smart technology can automate this frustrating process for you with automatic emails and digital payments.

What are the benefits of automations?

The core benefits of automating event rental processes lie in efficiency, organization, and cost saving, but let’s get more specific. How will you and your event rental business really benefit from automation?

Simplify and streamline repetitive tasks

Repetitive tasks take up a huge amount of time for event rental business owners and staff. These same tasks are often perceived as boring and frustrating, which can lead to lower morale, and therefore lower productivity. By using automation software, you can streamline these repetitive tasks, and make them much more simple and time efficient for your employees.

Accounting, for example, is one of the most despised aspects of owning an event rental business. Did you enter the events industry to deal with numbers and balance sheets? No! The appeal of the events industry comes from the opportunity to be creative, work with people, and to be a part of people’s memorable experiences.

Automation tools can handle accounting and similarly unpleasant tasks, saving you hours on manual entry, and allowing you to focus on the reason you joined this industry — the events!

Reduce labor costs and avoid costly mistakes

Automation is NOT a replacement for employees, although it may allow you to function more efficiently with fewer employees. Event rental software is a game changer in this area. It allows you to manage several business tasks simultaneously through one application. The implications for your event rental company’s efficiency and productivity can be massive. Leave the tedious, frustrating tasks to software, and free up your team’s time to focus on more creative, value-adding processes.

Inventory management, for instance, is known to be extremely time consuming and inefficient. You pay your employees for their time, so whatever they spend significant time on is a significant expense for you. Keeping track of inventory manually would take incredible attention to detail, and would still inevitably result in some miscounts and a huge amount of time spent each day. These mistakes can be costly, and this process is an unnecessary drainage of time and resources when event rental software exists.

Instead, let software handle this task for you by uploading your inventory into the software with the total counts for each item. The software will track how much stock you have remaining for each item as deals occur, and will notify you of potential double booking. This will save you and your employees time and reduce the risk of costly errors and double bookings.

Get more work done and plan ahead

By enabling your employees to work more efficiently by streamlining their most repetitive tasks, you have now also equipped yourself with the tools to become more productive in other areas. Automation will free up time to get more work done — and more important work at that. Take the time you save on customer interactions with digital contracts and quote to work on developing better upselling strategies. With the time you save on financial tracking by using finance and utilization inventory reports, you can make plans for your holiday season deals and other discounts.

The events industry is fast paced, and it can be difficult to plan ahead when immediate business tasks and processes already overwhelm your schedule. Learning and integrating automation software may seem like a large task in itself, but it’s actually quick and easy to get started, and will save you significant time in the long run. It will allow you to prioritize your most important tasks, rather than your most immediate ones.

What tasks will automation software help with?

While several examples with links have already been described in this article, here’s a more comprehensive list of tasks that automation tools can streamline for event rental companies.

• Inventory management
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Billing and payments
• Quote and contract building
• Planning and scheduling marketing content (emails, social media, ads, etc.)
• Financial tracking and reporting
• Accounting
• Storing contacts
• Client communication
• File management
• Sales processes
• Team management
• Customer service

This is still not an all-inclusive list. It seems there’s a tool out there for just about anything these days. It is always recommended that you do your own research and figure out what tools would be most beneficial for you and your event rental business.

Don’t fear technology, fear complacency

For companies and individuals who aren’t very technology-oriented, it may seem easy to ignore new automation tools and to keep chugging along as usual. This mindset will allow your competitors to gain efficiencies with software that you won’t be able to match. Technology is the way of the future, and if you don’t keep up, you’ll fall behind.

Embrace automation software and empower your business to work better and smarter. Discover how much more efficiently you can work when given the right tools.