How is ProService reshaping the way businesses buy and hire equipment?
What is HSS ProService?
Amazon started with Jeff Bezos selling books from his garage at his home in Washington, but as we all know the site has expanded to become somewhere where you can buy virtually anything.
HSS ProService has that ambition. We want to deliver real change for our customers. This is a site where you’ll not only find the equipment you want to hire, but we’ll work with you, looking at the challenges facing the building services sector, and helping you to find the solutions.
And it doesn’t stop there, we want to understand what else you need from us in the future. So we’re asking for feedback and suggestions so we can build and expand and really become one marketplace and one solution for your business needs.
How did HSS ProService start?
We started work on the site back in 2019. As the biggest rehire company in Europe, we rehire for customers so they can have all their goods in one place rather than have to go to multiple companies to get whatever they need for each project.
We realised back then that the systems that existed to manage this were frankly just rubbish. So we built our own computer programme to manage our rehire internally, and to make all the processes more efficient for us.
The software meant we could see all our hire in one place, we had central invoicing and could track equipment. We then thought about our customers and how frustrated they must be with the systems they used to manage their own supply chain, and how wasteful the whole process was. So we decided to launch the software to our clients and we gave it a name ‘HSS ProService Marketplace’.
We started with four customers and built this up to around 50. The system wasn’t perfect, but we redesigned and repurposed it, took on all the feedback we could, went back and tweaked it all again and we are now ready to roll this out.
As you can see we want it to be easy to use, to look good, feel good, work quickly and efficiently for your procurement teams but also help customers with some of their external challenges.
So what will HSS ProService do to help my business?
Our customers told us they had two big problems when it came to rehire and supply chains. One was invoicing and the administration and costs involved in hiring. The other was helping them with their net zero targets.
Tell me about the invoicing and the paperwork?
We want to make it easy for you to book, order and manage your hire. This isn’t all about a nice-looking website, this will help cut your costs and reduce time spent on paperwork and administration.
One customer told us that hire was 5% of their spend but 45% of their invoice queries. That’s unsustainable.
We looked at all the time it took to hire and off hire a bit of kit. Also, what if it went wrong? How do you report a fault? How do you track the equipment you’ve hired and then follow up on multiple invoices in multiple places?
With HSS ProService, there’s a trail in the order process. You can search and find the equipment you need quickly, and if we don’t have it we’ll find it for you. You can put it on hire and end that hire with the click of a button.
It means there’s no delay, no waiting around for the right person to pick up an email or phone to make a change or put through an order. It’s all done on the website and you’ll get clear invoicing in one place at the end of the process.
How will HSS ProService help me track my net zero targets?
So many of our customers need to reduce their carbon emissions. They want to get there quickly but they don’t always have the tools to help measure everything.
We believe we are the first organisation to come up with a way for businesses to measure some Scope 3 emissions. We’ve created a market-first “use” emissions customer carbon calculation, based on manufacturer information and DEFRA conversion factors, to measure CO2e equivalent per hour for fuel-based products. That data has been fed into the booking flow on the platform, so that greener alternatives are recommended at the point of order. These choices are tracked, so users can easily see top emitting products and opportunities for improvement.
We’ll also give you data insight into your hiring habits. You can see where you’ve chosen a better emitting product and how much you’ve saved by doing that. We want you to be able to give your senior team clear reporting so they can decide what to hire and track behaviours.
