R ental specialists,CEG, have been renting their professional lighting and production gear to customers and clients across the UK and Europe, since their company origins in 2008. Like most rental providers with an impressive repertoire of the latest industry tech, when you’ve got a lot of kit to manage and jobs on the go, you need robust software that’s up to the challenge.
On board with Current for over 4 years, the CEG team have certainly put our software through its paces. This has all been in pursuit of their simple mission: making the process of renting gear as painless as possible for the customer.
Starting out…
With a drive to improve the efficiency of their workflow, in 2014 CEG started looking for new ways to manage their rental processes. They got in touch with Chris Branson here at Current RMS, to see how our cloud-based rental management software could help them, by joining our Early Adopter Programme. This was just months before Current was due for general release.
We were becoming frustrated with the PC based solutions available to us. I initially made contact with Chris, who was friendly, approachable and most importantly forward thinking. Once we'd started using Current within our business for an hour or so, it was a no-brainer to stick with it.
Ben Bowles, Director at CEG
The team began using Current to its fullest capabilities from the get-go, finding it simple to seamlessly integrate with their day to day processes. Current appealed to their flexible way of working in the fast-paced AV and lighting industry, where often key details of products and orders need to be viewed there and then on the job, even when the team is away from the office. Here, Current’s cloud-based functionality has really helped them out.
The cloud gives us complete control of our hire stock, regardless of location or workstation. We’re able to react quickly, whether we’re in the office or on the beach - it’s great.
While Current has been ideal when the CEG team is away from the office, it even helps whilst getting those jobs prepared and fine details with customers ironed out, back at base. The warehouse team uses the robust Job Planner within Current every single day, finding it useful to schedule and drill into which of their differing jobs are on the go and coming up.
As a rental business, we’re busy with all sorts of customers and projects. Every day brings something new. I personally enjoy how quickly quotes can be generated in Current, allowing us to get them over to our customers in a very fast manner.
Scaling up…
Over the years, business has been great for the CEG team. They’ve expanded their ambitions and their stock holding, supplying to a massive variety of jobs across the UK and Europe, including music and theatrical touring, as well as one-offs and special events.
The last year has been incredibly busy for us. We've been growing the business in many ways, including getting new rental stock and new expanded premises at our location in Cambridge. Current's been great the entire time, allowing us to scale up quickly and cope with demand.
Ben has even made use of Current’s Open API to enhance a variety of different areas of the CEG business. The Open API is a free-to-use tool available to all Current customers, allowing those with experience in development to create integrations with other external services.
We were keen to use the Current RMS API in many areas of our business and started with some basic projects in the warehouse. We're constantly looking for ways to incorporate technology into our growing rental operation.
In 2016 the real challenge started, when they decided to give their website a complete overhaul integrating with Current’s Open API to pull some of their Current system’s data straight through onto their live website for customers to view. This was a massive undertaking, not without its challenges, but something Ben and the CEG team dove into head-on.
We chatted with Chris and his team to see how we could build our new website using the functionality built within Current. From the start of the project we were keen to incorporate some groundbreaking features into the hire catalogue and rental account sections of the website.
The website, www.ceghirepro.uk, allows customers to view the real-time availability and pricing information of CEG’s products as they shop - ideal for speeding up the quotation process. Customers can choose exactly what they would like to rent from CEG, without too much back-and-forth with the team and keeping all channels of information accurate. Photography, statistics and other sales information are also pushed across, saving valuable time for staff.
Hopefully our customers love the new website. It all forms part of our overriding aim - to help reduce the friction of hiring for our customers.
It’s been a blast having customers like CEG on board with Current RMS and we can’t wait to see what’s next. We’re not only proud to support a growing rental business and a team as forward-thinking as CEG, but to help them deliver excellence to customers every single time, whatever the job.
Cheers, team!
More to come!
Since our own launch, Current RMS has has thousands of companies on board, from all corners of the globe.
While companies like CEG are able to implement their own custom uses for the Open API, we’ve also got the Customer Wishlist, which allows users to vote on features they want to see in Current. The past 12 months have seen us add in highly requested game-changing features like Global Check-in and Serialized Containers. With lots more in the pipeline, we sure don’t have any plans of slowing down soon.