Case Study: Digital Leap Forward for a Construction Rental Giant
United Rentals is the world's largest equipment rental company, with about 13 percent of the North American market share. BlueLine Rental, a subsidiary of United Rentals, is one of the ten largest construction equipment rental companies in North America. With a fleet of 46,000 equipment units constantly moving between 114 locations, BlueLine serves more than 50,000 commercial construction accounts with industry-leading technology. Pimcore powers it all.
Business Needs
BlueLine’s time-starved customers needed a full eCommerce experience: fast quotes on rentals, instant credit line approvals, online billing, and equipment delivery notifications. But BlueLine’s field sales team was spending hours, if not days, manually calculating estimates with customized pricing spreadsheets. Credit line approvals took five days. Call center reps could not see customers’ online transactions. And the marketing division had no way of displaying real-time equipment inventory and availability on the BlueLine website. Without an integrated digital system, everyone was hamstrung.
Pimcore Solution
BlueLine engaged Pimcore Gold Partner Lightning Jar for a complete digital transformation integrating Pimcore with Blueline’s existing ERP, SalesForce, and other systems, Lightning Jar delivered a comprehensive PIM, DAM, CMS, Order Management and eCommerce solution to drive speed and ease of use for the customer.
Full Data Integration:
Pimcore integrated the existing ERP, RentalMan, with SalesForce and other data sources to create a single source of truth in the cloud. This included customer data, product data, inventory, and transactional data, custom pricing, product copy, images, billing status, repair status, and delivery status. From this unified platform, BlueLine could kick out their data in any consumer-friendly way they needed.
Self-Service Customer Portal:
A powerful online self-service portal allowed customers to review and pay invoices, dispute invoices, review transaction history, and view credit limits. Customers could also sign up for notifications about deliveries and even track deliveries in real-time on an Uber-like map. The new user experience also transformed a five-day credit approval process for new customers into instant online credit approval.
Mobile Apps:
With a first-of-its-kind mobile app, BlueLine customers could not only order and manage equipment rentals but also track deliveries in real-time, manage repair requests, view account status, apply for instant credit approval and pay invoices through the app; a feature set never before offered in the industry. A customer could also order equipment and track the delivery on a real-time map, review their past rental history and easily reorder the same equipment. An app for sales reps cut down the average rental pricing quote turnaround from one hour to five minutes.
Customer Service Center Dashboard:
Lightning Jar designed easy-to-use dashboards for customer service reps, sales teams, and maintenance personnel to replace an archaic green-screen interface. Dashboards also auto-approved orders and flagged potential issues that a human needed to look at.
Business Results
With Pimcore, BlueLine unlocked new sales opportunities, reduced costs, grew customer loyalty, and became known as an industry leader in digital customer experience. BlueLine was acquired in 2018 for $2.1 billion by United Rentals, another Pimcore customer. In the announcement, United Rental’s CEO cited their technology systems as a “distinct advantage” in the acquisition.
Customer Details
