The Swiss company Avesco Rent has been a leader in the rental equipment industry for thirty years. Being the official Caterpillar dealer in Switzerland, Finland and the Baltics, Avesco Rent has become one of the most influential operators on the international market, thanks to its ability to think about the future in an innovative way, opening up to the possibilities offered by the digital world, well in advance of its competitors.
In 2014 we opened Fast Rent, the web channel for all rental needs. Designing an online platform that would allow users to carry out all the necessary operations with ease, while being as “paper-free” as possible, was an important challenge: we were the first to provide the users with a web experience which was fully designed to the rental of industrial machinery, from visualizing the available range of machinery and their dynamic prices to the confirmation of the contract and online payment.
In the extremely “conservative” market of industrial machinery rental, six years of experience in digital means a huge competitive advantage for Avesco Rent.
The online channel is not just a website, but a complete experience, transported from physical to digital. This is why we have worked on the integration of our solutions with the company’s internal management processes: today the client can rent from the website, the smartphone app or from the kiosks located in all the Avesco Rent resellers.
The Pricing Tool is a software that we have developed to provide a solution to the rental negotiations of industrial machinery: it is based on the concept of dynamic pricing and its algorithm is able to calculate the best price range to rent a machine, taking into account all the variables involved (times of use, market situation, etc.).
Thanks to this tool, the sales force can get a complete picture of the negotiation, including the incentives that can be used if the suggested price range is respected or even exceeded. But the Pricing Tool is much more: it allows you to track and manage the complete workflow, from the first contact to the quotation, and from the approval of a price exceeding the proposed range to the conclusion of contracts.
As always, at Alias the release of a software is not a simple handover. For the Pricing Tool, as with our other products, we provide regular support and training activities, so that users can make the most of the product’s potential. Moreover, we have started an e-learning process that includes video tutorials to explain the software features and the system updates.
We are impressed by the mix of expertise we have found in Alias: deep knowledge of our market, creativity, competence in new technologies, high level of daily support. It’s really hard to find all these expertises in one company.
Vincent Albasini, CEO Avesco Rent
Avesco Rent is an excellent demonstration of how openness to digital transformation can provide perfect solutions in times of crisis. In the first part of 2020, when the Covid-19 emergency broke out, all European Avesco Rent branches remained closed for almost two months.
At Alias, we were faced with a sudden and urgent need: it was necessary to allow customers of all these branches to access online rental services in order to save an important part of business that would have been otherwise lost. Before the epidemic, this had been scheduled for the end of the year; but thanks to the digital culture already consolidated within the company, and Alias’ agile approach, we were able to complete the project in a few days.
