- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video,
I wanna tell you why we use Flex Rental Solutions
for our inventory management,
for our audio visual and production company.
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or if you're looking to scale your event business,
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Now, why do we use Flex Rental Solutions?
Before we went shopping
for another inventory management software,
we were using a vendor that was starting to break
when we hit about 800 skews.
It was no longer fast to quick drag and drop
and things like client management
weren't happening very well.
So we went shopping.
Now the list of things that we were looking for
was quite short but we found them to be super important.
One we wanted a predictable pricing structure.
Now Flex has flat rate pricing
and you can add little modules to it if you want.
Like if you want the QuickBooks module
but it's all predictable and they've been super fair to us,
we've never been price jacked or anything crazy.
I think they raised the price once
but we saw it coming six months in advance.
They've been really fair
and I think that their value proposition is extremely high.
We wanted it to be cloud-based.
We wanted a inventory management software
that I could use on a PC, a Mac, my tablet, my phone.
Wherever I am,
I wanted to be able to look at the quotes that were open
and be able to kind of wheel
and deal when I'm out at events.
Now we do have a sales office here
but it's still important for me to see what's going on
when I'm out and about at different events.
Branding is also super important to us.
The ability to create a custom looking quote
and barcode are very important.
All our branding on all our cases
and everything we do is important to us.
Now with Flex, it's funny 'cause a lot of people use Flex,
so in Vancouver,
there's probably 12 to 15 different companies that use Flex
and they all have identical looking quotes
with a different logo slapped on the top corner.
So if you went into an AV company
and you got five different quotes,
ours stands out immediately
and I think that that's important.
Now if you go with Flex, I highly recommend,
it is a bit of a time
and money investment to get the custom looking quote
but get it designed properly by a proper designer
and make sure it's on brand.
It makes a big difference
and it is a reason that we win more quotes
because we look like we're more professional and organized.
Now the other thing that we take advantage of
is the ability to create vanity names.
Now I don't think a lot of other companies do this with Flex
but it's really important to us.
A lot of our customers, even something like a SM58,
they don't know what that is, they don't care what that is.
So on our quotes,
we like putting things like wired microphone.
Anyone with a grade three reading comprehension
can understand what a wired microphone is
compared to a wireless microphone.
When you go wireless microphone,
they don't care if it Shure ULX, BLX, ULX-D, doesn't matter,
right?
So we just put things like wired microphone.
Now if we're working with a production company,
they wanna see those nitty gritty details,
so we can choose with one click,
we can choose to show them exactly what's in each container.
But for something like Shure,
a wired microphone, that will have a child element,
that's a Shure SM58 and that Shure SM58 also has children
which is a mic clip, a 25 foot XLR, a 50 foot XLR
and a microphone stand.
Now when we drag this into Flex,
we also have a set up to prompt us,
do we want a table top microphone stand
or do we want any other little options
that are optional with that microphone?
That is super cool.
It's not one size fits all.
Depending on the inventory item that you can,
you can choose to let Flex prompt you
and ask about the different accessories.
It's that perfect parent-child structure
works really well for us.
In our history with Kettner Creative,
we've done about 10,000 different events.
Now with 10,000 different events,
we've had two truck drive backs for more equipment
because we mispacked.
Flex has been absolutely perfect.
Both of those truck drive backs have been
because a client has called us
when we were driving out the drive way
and they've added something
and we didn't use Flex for the pack, we just eyeballed it
and forgot an IEC cable or something super silly like that.
So Flex itself, if you set it up properly
and you take the time to build a good parent-child structure
and ship everything you think you might need,
it's bulletproof.
The warehouse teams can't screw it up.
They can't complete the order
without physically scanning each item.
Now for us, we're quite excessive.
If you drag in a 10 channel mixer,
that's what the client sees, 10 channel mixer.
That item has a ton of children elements.
It has green and black gaff tape.
It has a 50 foot extension cord.
It has a six outlet power bar.
It has the power supply for the mixer itself,
it has a soft bag for the mixer itself.
It has a black sharpie,
it has two balance quarter inch XLR cables
in case you need to use the aux out on the board.
It has two, what we call, laptop audio cables
which is eight to stereo quarter inch cables.
It has a lightning to eighth inch adapter.
It has a USB-C to eighth inch adapter.
So every 10 channel mixer
gets all the things you could possibly need to hook into it.
Now, for us that's super important.
Other people just like saying 10 channel mixer
and their warehouse team eyeballs it.
I don't like that.
If my warehouse person calls in sick
and we put somebody else in that role for that day,
I want it to be bulletproof
and Flex is a big part of making that happen for us.
Flex also does a reasonably good job
about contact management.
Like I don't have anything I don't like about it.
It just does what it's supposed to do.
I can have a company,
we deal with four people at that company
and we can adjust the discount level for the company
and that automatically applies to all the employees
that work with us and get quotes for that company.
So things like that are super handy.
It does have a task management thing.
So for our warehouse team I can drop something in,
like I wanna do firmware updates
on all our digital audio consoles or video switcher
and all that and then when they log into Flex, they'll see,
not only do they have to pack these jobs for this week
but these new tasks arrived
and here are some things that need to get done.
It's a lot easier than sending emails
or something through a different channel.
It keeps everything organized
in the screen that they're working on that day.
Really cool thing that they do, is they do RFID now.
We haven't invested in it just
because the RFID tags are so much
but it is obviously the way of the future.
The fact that I can roll a cable trunk through RFID scanner
and it'll scan up to a hundred items in that cable trunk,
will massively speed up the check in process after events
especially for walk in orders.
If walk in orders come in with their box of stuff,
we just wave the wand over it
and we know exactly what's in there.
Stuff like that is super important.
We just haven't quite had the time to do it
but it makes me feel good to know
that the platform that we're on has it built in now,
so that's super important to me.
And it exports to QuickBooks.
For our bookkeeping we use QuickBooks
and Flex sends all the invoices through, which is awesome.
Some things to think about when you're setting Flex up.
Whether or not you want items to be serialized
or non-serialized.
So serialized, for us, a good example is the XLR cables.
It was important to me
that I know where every single XLR cable is.
Every single XLR cable
is tracked uniquely across our inventory.
Some people, for something like cable,
will choose to go non-serialized.
The quote will call for 40, 50 foot XLR cables
and they'll count out 40, they'll throw them in a box.
For us, we scan all 40 of them
and we track where each one is.
That might be overboard but for us, for organization
and keeping things perfect, it was important to me.
Also for asset management and insurance reasons,
we know where all our assets are at all times.
So that's helpful.
Now when do we use non-serialized items?
We use non-serialized items
if its not practical to put a barcode on an item.
So it's something like banjo drape or velour drape.
We haven't found a good way to do it
and it's just as fast to count the items,
it's less likely to screw up,
so we don't serialize those items.
We don't serialize things like drape hardware.
When a huge bin of drape hardware comes back,
it's way faster to count
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
10.
And you're not gonna screw it up
the same way you would screw up cable
or adapters coming back.
It's a lot more simple to get right.
The error rate is far lower.
And then any consumables.
So obviously you're not gonna track
each battery or each roll of gaff tape.
Consumables you just wanna count,
this job needs four rolls of gaff tape,
it gets four rolls of gaff tape.
Now what are the con's of using Flex?
It's a pretty short list
but it's worth mentioning some of these.
Obviously if you're considering any
inventory management software,
there's a huge upfront labor cost.
Now for us, we were lucky.
We got into Flex when we had about 800 skews.
I think now we have close to 12 or 13 thousand,
so that's a big difference.
But for us, with 800 skews,
it took three of us 10 days
to go through the whole thing and do all the barcoding.
And after that we changed the way
that we did a couple of things.
We didn't want drapes to be serialized anymore
and we kinda figures somethings out.
So it really was
like a two to three week process for only 800 skews.
So be ready for that.
A lot of people do this during slow season
and a lot of people will bite off one chunk at a time
as they switch between systems.
For us, we just pulled the trigger on a slow week
when we were smaller and we just did it.
So just be ready for that labor cost upfront.
And then kind of related to that,
there's obviously some lock in, right.
Once you do that labor cost,
once you put Flex barcodes on everything,
you're not gonna revisit this decision again for ten years.
It's too much work to switch
but Flex does a super good job of doing it,
I'm not concerned about that
but being locked into your rental management platform
obviously is a big concern,
so just be aware of it just
because it is so much work if you ever change your mind.
Couple of things that I wish they did better, two things.
I wish they had a good looking sales dashboard.
I wish it knew that,
me as the owner when I log in,
the first thing I wanna see when I log into Flex is
March sales, April sales
and I wanna see them on a line graph
compared to year over year last three years.
I've emailed them a couple of times.
It doesn't sound like it's on their roadmap
and I can get that in QuickBooks
but I know other platforms do a really good job
at showing that sales dashboard.
I wish they had it.
It has nothing to do with the efficiency of the platform
or whether or not Flex does its job.
It's just that's the thing I wanna see when I log in.
I wanna know how we're doing, quotes open, quotes closed,
quotes canceled.
I wanna see that right off the top.
I don't,
like right now,
the default screen is open quotes for the next 30 days.
So anyway, that's what I wanna see.
And the other big one they've been struggling with
but they're trying to get rid of,
is the desktop version of Flex still uses flash.
I remember when we joined in 2015, 2014, there was a problem
and they finally announced in 2017 something like that,
that they're headed there.
It's 2020 now, the sunset,
like literally browsers are starting to not support flash.
It's becoming a bit of an issue
but my understanding is that they're months away,
I can't,
I'm so excited to get rid of flash
and be on something that is ACML 5 based,
so I hope that comes sooner than later.
It's obviously the biggest thing on their roadmap,
they're aware of it, they're working on it.
Hopefully it gets results soon but that's the big one.
That's the big annoying,
when you have a huge multi-day quote,
man it takes like,
sometimes it takes 30, 45 seconds
for the quote page to load.
But I will say the big thing, at the end of the day,
and I should've mentioned this off the top,
is their support is amazing.
I've emailed them at 10 p.m., I've emailed them at 1 a.m.,
I've emailed them during business hours.
They have awesome support.
They always get back to me within about 30 minutes.
If you phone them during business hours,
someone's there, boom, it's fixed
or they'll walk you through.
More often than not, I made the mistake.
More often than not,
I deleted their email that said
that we're having a software update at 1 a.m.
and here I am working in the warehouse at 1 a.m.
and "hey, it's not working" so I email them,
"Flex is down", "oh it'll be up in 9 minutes",
like they respond right away.
Their support is amazing.
I think their pricing is bang on,
like I feel like it's a ton of value for the dollar.
And I think that once Flex 5 comes out,
it's the perfect product for what we're looking for.
If you have an specific questions about how we use Flex,
they have a ton of YouTube videos.
That's another thing they do really well,
their warehouse training.
I can pretty much turn anyone loose on their YouTube channel
and they get it right away.
So the actual "how to" videos, I'm gonna leave to them.
This video is just why we use it
and why I think they're the best
in the business at what they do.
If you have any questions, please leave it below.
If you liked this video
or you wanna see more videos like this,
please like and subscribe.
Comment about anything you wanna see related to the industry
and we're just gonna keep cranking these videos out
and be as helpful as we can.
Thanks so much.