At Point of Rental Software’s annual user conference this week, five companies were honored for their contributions to their communities and the industry throughout 2018-19.
Each of the companies, selected from a deep pool of candidates, highlight different ways that rental businesses affect their customers, their communities, and the world around them.
EPIC Event of the Year
Beachview Event Rentals was called upon to recreate New York’s legendary Rao’s Restaurant, from its exterior to a Harlem street scene shown on a video wall, to photos of famous diners, for three nights of pop-up dinners during Super Bowl week. Beachview relied on Point of Rental to pull the event together, scheduling equipment shipments from Brunswick, on the coast of Georgia, to Atlanta for the build out, for contracting and invoicing others, and to pull off a successful event that couldn’t be overshadowed by even the biggest event in America.
EPIC Project of the Year
When another rental company needed help creating a 38,000-square-foot tent for a corporate event, they turned to Tents for Rent to make it happen. They used Point of Rental’s inventory management and kitting to help manage the pieces used to construct the 100-foot by 380-foot tent. During the installation, a rainstorm poured water over the site, adding another level of difficulty to the project, but the team pulled off the installation successfully.
EPIC Innovation of the Year
Choice Party Linens wanted to track their warehouse productivity more efficiently. They’d used shuffled paperwork to track worker productivity and track hundreds of daily orders, but after installing Fulfillment, they were paperless! They used Point of Rental and Microsoft BI to develop dashboards that show the data they need. The ability to track results and send reports to department heads highlights who is accomplishing the most, stokes friendly competition, and has resulted in increased warehouse productivity. With monitors throughout the building, people are able to track their progress throughout the day.
EPIC Community Service Award
The Alleen Co. produces Holiday in Lights, an affordable annual outdoor light display near Cincinnati, Ohio, sending proceeds to A Child’s Hope International to feed starving children around the world. They’re not only serving their community by building an event that everyone can take part in, but they’re making an impact worldwide - the money raised from Holiday in Lights last year provided 115,217 meals. That’s the equivalent of feeding 384 children for an entire year.
EPIC Employee Empowerment Award
Brandon Rental Centers created a low-risk position and the company works with a nearby school for the blind to create jobs for students. With their experience working with people with disabilities, they added a full-time deaf shop technician, who has impressed with great mechanical skills. In addition to empowering these employees by allowing them an outlet for their talents, it benefits their other employees, who are pushed to think more clearly about how they communicate and realize daily some of the things they take for granted, which has helped create a more considerate, caring workplace.
Point of Rental is dedicated to working with others to make the world a better place, the company said, whether helping build communities or freeing rental businesses to focus on what’s important to them, they’re about more than software. Find out more at pointofrental.com/epic.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.