Digitising the depots: Point of Rental boss on the AI tech already making a difference for hire firms

When you’ve been in the rental industry for as long as Wayne Harris, CEO of Point of Rental Software, there isn’t a lot that will surprise you about the tech being used in rental depots.

Point of Rental Software CEO Wayne Harris. Photo: Point of Rental

From the age of 11, Harris would clean and gas up equipment at his grandfather’s sales and rental business in Ada, Oklahoma, which his dad also ran and which, in 1984 became the thirteenth store in the world to install a Point-of-Rental inventory management system.

Harris quickly established himself as his parents’ tech help, something he says fuelled his interest in computers and eventually helped him win a place at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study for a computer science degree.

He would then go on to join Point of Rental in 1993 as head programmer and finally take over as CEO of the business eighteen years later.

Though he might not have known it at the time, Harris says those days spent mowing the grass, painting the equipment, working on the counter and as a delivery driver, would prove to be pivotal in shaping the culture of Point of Rental as it is today.

Speaking to IRN via video link, Harris was quick to outline that one of the biggest differentiators of the company is that from top to bottom, it is filled with staff with experience and knowledge of the rental industry, enabling it to act as a consultant as well as a service provider.

The secret ingredient

“I think that one of the secret ingredients that Point of Rental Software has is we have a lot of people that have had an entire career in the rental industry,” he says.

“By hiring people who’ve actually been delivery drivers, fulfilling orders and dealing with customers, all these things allow them to know what it’s actually like on a daily basis. So, when we go out and design software, we’re designing software from first-hand knowledge of how that is.”

It all centres around acting as a consultant that caters for real-world problems that rental companies face, he adds, and not just developing software for the sake of it.

Under the guidance of Harris, who became CEO in 2011, the company has seen a significant amount of growth, going from 17 employees and one product to over 350 employees and an ever-expanding portfolio.

At the time of writing, Point of Rental has around 5,000 rental companies using its products.

Yet, despite his longevity in the industry, Harris is genuinely enthused by the opportunities offered to the industry by rapidly advancing technology.

“When I was a kid, I’d read magazines about all this future stuff that we’re going to have, whether that’s flying cars or whatever,” he says. “There was all kinds of stuff that I would read about and say, oh, I can’t wait for the future. Now, in reality, if you look around, the future is here.

“Technology is amazing today and it continues to grow and, in another decade, it’s going to be even better. We really have arrived at the golden era of technology.”

Point of Rental’s Blur Detection tech uses AI to detect blurry images and alerts users, enabling rental businesses to capture clearer photos. Photo: Point of Rental Software

Foremost among these right now is artificial intelligence, about which Harris says the company is “very excited”.

The company has recently started incorporating an AI blur detection feature into its offering, which the company said is the “first of many” features in its AI suite and is designed to improve the quality of images taken during an inspection.

The detection feature uses AI to detect blurry images in real-time, then gives the user the opportunity to either accept or reject the images depending on the quality.

If accepted, the system is trained to understand compliant images of a similar standard. All in all, it will help the entire inspection process and improve accountability, quality and accuracy.

“Almost 10 million photos a month, our customers do on the inspection side, and so over the course of 2024 I think 800,000 or so have been marked as blurry that they have fixed. That’s a real good use of AI,” Harris says.

The company has also launched what it calls an ‘item supercharger’, which allows users to add a new item to a company’s e-commerce platform and it will automatically compile things like unit specifications, descriptions, SEO words and good quality pictures.

“We’ve shown that having good quality description, having good quality SEO and organic searches increases the dollar value going through your e-commerce system and so using AI to handle those type of things that people just don’t want to do is a good use,” Harris adds.

And, as the technology continues to advance, and rental software companies continue to compete in an arms race to offer customers simple tech solutions to cumbersome problems,

Harris says that it will be able to take on many more tasks.

The potential of AI

“I think that AI has the potential to really change a lot of the workflows that we do, especially in the area of communication and the repetitious type of things that we do,” he says. “Let me analyse all my data to find out what piece of equipment I should buy more of and what piece of equipment should I sell. Those are the type of things that AI is just great at.”

“Where I see the biggest use of AI is in repetitive tasks, so we can keep somebody from having to go do mundane tasks. But then it’s also in deep thinking analysis across the database and large data models. People are busy on a daily basis. There’s lots of stuff going on and they don’t have the time to analyse trends and analyse what they should be doing to their business.”

However, despite the excitement, Harris says that the company is trying not to get carried away with the new tech, citing previous much-hyped innovations such as RFID tags, which ultimately didn’t revolutionise the industry to the extent many thought they would.

“I do think that there currently is a certain amount of hype that’s going along with AI and about how every aspect of your life is going to change and in five years everybody’s going to be sitting on the couch and AI is going to be doing every bit of work for us,” Harris says.

Aside from AI, the company is also sharpening its focus on its mobile portfolio.

Rather than focusing on new mobile phone apps or new functions to add to its mobile offering, the company has changed tack to think more about the types of people who will be using its software on their phones and what they actually need to be able to do with it to complete their jobs more efficiently.

Through Record360, almost 10 million photos a month have been uploaded, with 800,000 or so marked as blurred with the use of AI. Photo: Point of Rental

“Everything is mobile these days and everybody wants to be working mobile,” says Harris. “And so, instead of thinking about functional things that we can add to our mobile, what we think about is personas, whether that’s the yard person, the mechanic, the service tech or the drivers or sales reps. So, we’ve changed our mindset to say, OK, what are the functions that a service tech needs to do 100% of his job on the phone.”

Another recent upgrade has been the company’s move to integrate its Syrinx platform with accounting platform AccountsIQ. software that offers cloud-based accounting capabilities without the need for a full ERP (enterprise resource planning software package). The integration allows Syrinx users to transfer financial data such as purchase orders and sales invoices directly into AccountsIQ.

What’s next?

Next Point of Rental is working on integrating its recently-acquired Record360 machine inspection app into its offering.

“Record360 is the de facto standard on inspection,” Harris says. “They are the leader in the industry, and one of the things that’s really great about them is that [machine inspections are] all they focus on. They’ve just focused on that workflow, that process. It is really built out, full-featured, easy to use and easy to see.

“For Point of Rental or our competitors, inspections are just a part of a bigger thing. While we have that [function] in our current product, it’s just not as robust as Record360, so we’re excited about integrating to Record360 to bring that robustness into Point of Rental.”

As well as the deal for Record360 which completed last November, other notable acquisitions include the purchase of Slovakia-based online booking engine and customer app RentItOnline in 2020 and the deal for UK-based platform Syrinx in 2016.

And Harris doesn’t rule out further acquisitions.

“Part of that growth mindset is we’re always interested in ways that we can grow. Typically, we’re looking for additional functionality that we can bring or additional geographies. If there’s things that match those, we’d love to add them.”