The Issue

Grosh had an old bespoke warehouse management system that was no longer stable and could not be upgraded effectively. The requirement was to replace this unique program in order to manage the day-to-day warehouse shipping and receiving operation. The new program would need to integrate with FedEx and provide a thorough picking, packing, and receiving process.

The Solution

During the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rental System team here made a conscious effort to leverage that downtime to reevaluate nearly every aspect of our operational workflow. We understood that the AV rental industry might be a very different space following the pandemic and hoped to leverage new and upcoming technologies to position us in a potentially uncertain future. Accordingly, one of the technologies that topped our list was RFID. It became apparent that R2 was the fastest way to implement RFID into our workflow.

We have been fortunate that our management has always given us the freedom and support to go down the path least traveled, thus keeping us ahead of the curve with emerging technologies; however, in our initial discovery, we hesitated to take on such a significant project during such an uncertain time. We anticipated a very lengthy process with costly consultants and expensive proprietary hardware. While it has required extensive work and meaningful investment from our owners, we have been pleased to discover that after a relatively short time, we could implement the full benefits of RFID entirely in-house using off-the-shelf (and, in some instances, even second-hand) hardware. The cost has also been significantly less than initially proposed by third-party consultants. The real-time visibility into our stock levels has minimized errors and reduced the time spent using more traditional manual processes.

Chris Budin, NMR Events, Director of Business Systems states "R2's RFID functionality makes adopting RFID technology very simple. Being based around a mobile application, as well as the system's compatibility with nearly any RFID tags and readers, has simplified the entire rental workflow, allowing us to focus more on continuing to deliver the exceptional service that our customers expect from us rather than being burdened with inventory management complexities”.

Vic Khosla, Vice President, Business Development at UBS added “R2’s development and professional services teams worked hand in hand with NMR in making sure that the functional benefits set of the R2 Asset manager mobile app was as required for NMR’s chosen RFID solution”.

Chris further adds "Integrating RFID features through UBS and the R2 platform has been a valuable experience for our rental business. It has and continues to optimize our operations, increase efficiency, improve our overall customer experience, and, most importantly, allow us to continue to provide the exceptional level of customer service we did before the pandemic. Our leadership has always supported us in developing innovative solutions".