If you're not using an asset tracking system, there's a good chance your business owns far more returnable assets than your records show.
“In many cases, companies discover they have 20–30% more cylinders than they thought after just a couple years of tracking,” says Doug O’Dell, Account Executive at TrackAbout. “That means the business was overcapitalized and undervalued — often by millions.”
He shares the story of a company that was sold under the assumption it owned 750,000 cylinders. After the sale, the new owners began using TrackAbout to track their containers — and soon discovered they actually had over one million in circulation, without having purchased a single additional unit. Considering each empty cylinder is valued at around $250, it was a significant and eye-opening discovery.
Finding assets that you just didn’t know about – otherwise known as “black hole recovery” – is just one of the many benefits of using a system like TrackAbout, says O’Dell.
TrackAbout’s easy-to-use asset tracking software enables companies to run a perpetual inventory of their returnable assets and helps them to properly manage and maintain their cylinders and containers. That means you always know exactly how many units you have, where they are, when they were delivered, and when your customers need to be topped up with a new delivery.
TrackAbout helps users track any returnable, refillable container. Our customers work in a wide range of industries, including the medical and healthcare sector, hospitality, industrial, and manufacturing businesses.
The system is based around a barcode, which links the serial number of an asset with location details and its history in ways that tracking programs in off-the shelf Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems cannot. The barcodes correspond directly to the asset’s serial number, so its entire history is transparent and readily accessible.
Companies can try tracking returnable containers like gas cylinders or kegs with off-the-shelf ERPs, but these are designed for the linear progress of raw materials turning into goods and being stored and sold to customers. That means they struggle to understand returns, says O’Dell.
“Typically, companies would have to go through the ERP system’s returns process, which is very cumbersome when dealing with a swap rather than a failed product,” he says.
TrackAbout offers its users an easy-to-use system that provides complete control over their stocks.
TrackAbout is trusted by customers worldwide to help them:
Monitor and manage their returnable assets.
Make better use of capital.
Recover lost rent on assets.
Minimize billing errors.
Reduce the number of discrepancies and customer disputes.
Lower theft rates.
Win new business.
Using TrackAbout, barcoded containers can be loaded one at a time or in groups and delivered to the customer. Hospitals, for example, often use palletized deliveries of large numbers of small oxygen tanks.
When the filled containers are delivered, the driver scans each of the containers off the truck with their smartphone and generates an invoice in the customer’s ERP system. As the containers are emptied, they can be scanned again by the customer and placed at a collection point.
As the supplier knows how many containers have been used, they can proactively deliver an equivalent number of filled containers to their clients.
The absence of manual data entry means it is harder for mistakes due to handwriting and data input to creep into processes. The TrackAbout mobile app, available for Android and iOS, allows users to catch and fix billing mistakes before they happen on an average of 4% of deliveries, adds O’Dell.
The system means the vendor also knows how many containers were delivered and how many were collected, so rentals can be accurately billed. This also ensures that any “missing” containers are identified, found, and put back into use as quickly as possible. After all, idle containers are lost revenue.
TrackAbout also helps users accurately charge rent for the time the containers are with customers. This alone could add up to an extra 8% increase in rental balances, says O’Dell.
Feedback suggests many companies are now requiring distributors to use asset tracking software to win or retain business, not only because of the improved efficiencies but because of improved traceability and transparency.
Being able to better understand where containers are and how long they’ve been there significantly reduces the number of customer disputes, saving time, money, resources, and reputations in unproductive resolution processes.
An effective tracking solution even makes it possible to detect customers who return fewer containers than they should because they are being stolen and resold. Our estimates suggest a company operating a fleet of 25,000 containers could achieve savings of as much as $211,500 in the first year of implementing the system, and $136,500 in subsequent years.
If you know exactly where your containers are, you will always know whether you have enough to fulfill your orders. That means never having to buy unnecessary inventory to fill holes because those assets are being used inefficiently.
Asset management makes processes and inventory control far more effective, saving both time and money. O’Dell points to one company that would close the site for an entire day every month to manually count the number of cylinders it had onsite before it implemented TrackAbout. The business was even hiring extra help for this extensive stock-take every month. Since introducing our system, this just hasn’t been necessary. Without that additional labor cost and the regular shutdowns, they increased their efficiency by about 5%, he says.
An effective management solution can also be used to better monitor the contents of assets.
Portable liquid cylinders, for example, will vent when not in use. This means that if a liquid cylinder has been sitting at a customer’s site for too long, it will gradually deplete. If, however, the supplier is using TrackAbout, they will see it is not yet in the returns pile and know exactly how long the cylinder has been at that location. They then have the opportunity to be proactive and replace it with a newly filled container or return it to be used elsewhere.
In locations such as hospitals, where many assets are moving through a complex environment, often busy or involving many different contractors and trades, TrackAbout’s functionality can be extended to the customer. This gives both the asset owner and the customer a far greater level of understanding of which assets are where, how they’re being used, and whether they have been misplaced or are sitting idle.
If you would like to find out more about TrackAbout and how our software can help you elevate your asset tracking strategy, request a free demo.