Southside Lifts & Rentals

Located near Atlanta, Southside Lifts & Rentals provides a variety of construction equipment rental services throughout the region. Part of the Barnsley Construction Group, Southside Lifts & Rentals was established in 2021 and deployed the Texada Platform the following year to solve three key business challenges.

Top Three Challenges to Business Growth

As the business began to take off, Operations Manager Tim Brakefield identified some critical obstacles to the organization’s growth. The first of these challenges was the rental invoicing and order process itself which was manual, paper-based, and prone to inaccuracies.

“There is no way in my opinion that a very large business could be successful doing it that way,” said Brakefield about the manual, paper-based processes often favored by small to medium-sized equipment rental businesses. “There are too many opportunities for errors.”

With paper-based documentation, Brakefield also had difficulties communicating with teams when they were offsite.

“A driver would have to come back to the branch and physically get some paperwork and then turn around and go back,” Brakefield said. “That’s a lot of time and wear and tear on your vehicles that way, not to mention balancing the safety and exposure to more time on the road.”

In addition, customers were seeking easier and more streamlined ways to do business, including the ability to quickly process transactions using a credit card on file, rather than paying by check. With these emerging challenges, Brakefield knew it was time to deploy a rental equipment business management solution that could help take Southside Lifts & Rentals to the next level. 

Choosing the Right Solution

Brakefield and his team had specific functionalities in mind as they began the process of selecting a solution to manage and modernize their business.

“Knowing what I didn't want from a platform helped me narrow down who I wanted to go with,” Brakefield said when asked about the specific criteria he used in selecting the right products.

Most important to the business was deploying a comprehensive solution that covered all of their bases.

“Initially it was Texada Rental Management (SRM) and Texada Mobile,” said Brakefield on the order in which his team deployed the new solutions. “Then a month later we added Texada Pay when customers wanted to do credit card payments.”

Southside Lifts & Rentals was quickly able to see the return on their investment with the new capabilities.

“With Texada, I can send rental documents straight to a mobile phone and make it pop up in the app,” Brakefied said. “That way employees know where to go to see contact numbers, to get signatures, or even to take pictures right there. It all circles back to the customer. The faster we can do that, the happier the customer will be.”

“Texada is worth its weight in gold,”

Tim Brakefield
Operations Manager, Southside Lifts & Rentals

With the addition of Texada Pay, Brakefield also began offering faster and easier payment options to Southside customers, while reducing travel time and payment hassles.

“Having the ability to save that credit card for the customer on file, and you have the prior authorization, they can just confirm and pay their 30-day balance,” he said. “Or we can just charge the card on file. That took away a lot of work and headache from having to get people down to get the checks.”

The team also benefits from accurate and clear reporting, a functionality specifically valuable to Brakefield.

“One of the things I love about Texada is any kind of report that I've ever had to put together myself, Texada will spit it out,” he said. “Whether it be rental reports or billing inquiries, referential reports, or just a general P&L statement. A lot of times, especially with other platforms, you’ll have to pull that information from several different places manually.”

Using intelligent solutions from Texada has reduced the error-prone manual work of the rental equipment business, while freeing up hours to ensure Brakefield and his team can work smarter.

“Texada is worth its weight in gold, to be able to do that,” he said. 

Rental Results

After deploying Texada Software, Southside Lifts & Rentals has enjoyed a 14-point lift to accounts receivable (AR), an up to 30 percent increase in order accuracy, and 100 percent better efficiency. 

For Southside Lifts & Rentals all of that translates into happier customers, which to Brakefield and his team is the most important metric of all.

Going Forward

“We went live with Texada Rental Management (SRM), Mobile, and Pay and we’ve been there ever since,” said Brakefield on the organization's extensive use of the solution set. “I like to say we are full-on with Texada.”

Southside Lifts and Rentals is looking forward to continuing their business growth with Texada Software.

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