Go with the Flow: Aptean Equipment ERP and Aptean Advanced Workflow Take Your Business to the Next Level

Managing an equipment rental, sales or service business is already difficult – it’s even worse if you’re using spreadsheets or pen-and-paper for your operations. Imagine this scenario: one of your current customers is opening a new facility. They realize that they require additional equipment. Your current process may include filling out endless piles of paperwork, waiting for credit approvals and then waiting more for a delivery date. But with Aptean’s industry-specific equipment enterprise resource planning (ERP) system combined with automated workflows, these processes – which used to take months to complete – can be finished in just a few days.

Aptean Equipment ERP has the crucial functions you need built right into the software. You get a single source of the truth to oversee sales, service, rentals, parts and equipment management processes. Our solution offers tools that no other ERP on the market can match, like Work in Progress (WIP) order and labor management, contract management, advanced parts planning and equipment availability. Even better: Aptean Equipment ERP is fully cloud-based, so your technicians can get all the information they need while on-site with a customer, and your administrative and sales teams can work from anywhere.

Workflow Automation

Aptean Equipment ERP really rises above the competition with the addition of Aptean Advanced Workflow. All ERPs will help you streamline and automate processes, but how many can set up triggers to let you know when a customer has reached their credit limit? How many will send an automatic notice to a customer if a delivery promise date is no longer valid?

Aptean Advanced Workflow gives you a competitive advantage by allowing you to create hundreds of automated workflows. This saves your business valuable time and resources that you can use elsewhere. Specialized tools and templates let you easily set up workflows for processes like new vendor setup, inactive customer checks, new employee and new customer onboarding, and even financial closeouts.

Enterprise workflow automation sounds intimidating, but it doesn’t require any coding skills. Aptean Advanced Workflow, our robust and unique industry-specific technology built on the underlying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform, lets its users design, execute and automate internal business processes with ease and simplicity. You set it up based on specific workflow rules so that any tasks that need to be completed are routed between people or teams based on your business needs. With simple training, your system administrators can create most workflows in less than an hour. Aptean Advanced Workflow includes templates and pre-built tasks that you can arrange and connect to get up-and-running even sooner.

Of course, you need more for your business than just streamlining processes. Let’s find out how Aptean Equipment ERP and Aptean Advanced Workflow can give you better control over the most important aspects of your operations.

Equipment Management

Equipment management functions are the key component of any equipment ERP—and Aptean Equipment ERP has all the features you need to administer your equipment lifecycle from the original purchase order to the day it arrives in your warehouse, and to final sale or rental. It even handles such cases of trade-ins and fixed asset depreciation. In addition, a sortable availability tree will give your equipment sales and rental teams the ability to see where all the available equipment is located and provides key information like attachments, accessories, book value, service history and more.

Robust equipment management tools and workflows make service management effortless. Integrated tools record the history, maintenance and warranty information of both customer-owned and company-owned equipment. You can easily track attached components and see the installation dates for each component.

With this complete visibility into your customer’s equipment, including warranty status, you can easily track any warranty claims. Knowing the equipment’s history, mixing in automated workflows, you can even request hour meter updates if you haven’t serviced the equipment in a while.

For equipment rentals, automated workflows allow you to get contracts out, signed and returned in a snap. You can easily check on the customer’s insurance certificate status and add a loss damage waiver fee before sending valuable equipment to them.

For your service technicians, the system maintains every detail of the equipment and because the ERP is cloud based, all past and present service information is available to your technicians through the mobile application. This means your technicians provide quality maintenance services faster because they won’t spend hours looking through previous service records.

Sales Management

A successful and motivated sales team is the key to any company’s growth. Our solutions give your sales team the tools they need to concentrate on getting results. They shouldn’t have to spend hours on administrative tasks—instead, they need to be out talking to prospects and giving special service to high-value customers.

In a recent study, the analysts at McKinsey estimated that about 30% of sales tasks can be automated. Aptean Advanced Workflow allows you to automate the most common jobs that your sales team must complete when starting and closing any sale.

Your team can set up automated approval requests with an email notice to a designated team or employee. If the quote is approved, they can easily convert that quote to a sales order and all details from the quote will be included in the order. All order changes are tracked so your team will always have the latest version at their fingertips. Prospects will also immediately know their purchasing power by leveraging workflows for credit and approval paperwork.

Once the sale is complete, you can schedule and dispatch delivery and even set up service contracts. Workflows notify your customers via email of any schedule changes. For leasing sales, accounting functions will record the lease into the proper sales category and a built-in lease calculator will show you types and rates. Before the lease expires, workflows will notify the salesperson to contact the customer and discuss their options with the leased equipment.

Inventory Management

Aptean Equipment ERP has one of the strongest inventory management tools available. You can automate the running of journals that print cycle-count sheets for the warehouse and set up workflows to notify a specific employee when certain inventory is getting close to the “return by” date. That way, you can return excess inventory to the vendor without having to pay a restocking fee.

Define safety stock levels for your parts and the system will continuously monitor these levels to recommend purchases when levels are too low. You can even send notices to the procurement team to order more. The system can also recommend transferring parts from a slow-moving branch to one where they’ll sell quicker.

Our solution has the capacity to handle millions of different catalog parts from your manufacturers and all costs can be uploaded into the system with resale prices automatically calculated based on robust pricing rules you configure. Your service team will know at a glance that they have the parts they need to complete a job. And if one location needs different parts than another, you can maintain different stocking levels throughout the enterprise including service vehicle inventory.

Leverage Your Investment with Equipment ERP

The uses for Aptean Equipment ERP and Aptean Advanced Workflow aren’t limited to what we’ve outlined here. Our solutions can help you manage and automate processes for every aspect of your business, including equipment and inventory management, accounting, logistics and warehouse management.

If you want the best equipment ERP backed with the most agile, functional automated workflows, the choice is clear. You need Aptean Equipment ERP with Aptean Advanced Workflow. Our team of experts know the equipment industry and the challenges you face in your daily operations so they’re ready to help you solve them.

Want to learn more about what Aptean Equipment ERP with Advanced Workflow can do for you? Reach out to us today.