With two depots, one in Cambridgeshire and one in Great Yarmouth, DTS serves the radio telecommunications industry across the nation. The software is hosted on DTS' premises and the company pays for its use via a monthly rolling contract.
The decision was taken, late last year, to computerise the DTS radio hire business to avoid some long winded processes. After doing a review of the rental software market, the company chose MCS, which has been providing solutions to hirers from different business sectors for over 30 years.
DTS went ‘live’ in June before its busy season began. Dave Scaife, operations manager, says, “We had been working on manual planning boards and spreadsheets for a number of years and it was about time to review what we were doing, the time it took us to complete tasks and look to see how technology could help us.”
The company is now using an electronic availability planner which offers a calendar view of all the company’s stock.
Scaife goes on to say “We were so used to using manual spreadsheets, but because we have so many parts and different items, it was a case of constantly cross checking and with hindsight we were wasting a lot of time. The MCS-rm availability planner is all very visual on the screen, it’s easy to use and has saved us countless hours already.”
Many of the jobs that DTS take on are repeat work so the ability to ‘clone’ a contract has saved the company a lot of time and effort. Scaife elaborates, “The ‘clone contract’ is a good time saver for us, as a lot of events that we do are just repeats. For example the same event happens quarterly. Before we would be looking at it afresh from a spreadsheet and redoing the same work.”
The MCS-rm software can be used to streamline radio sales and hire processes
MCS has worked in partnership with DTS Solutions to develop the software around radio frequencies to suit the mobile telecommunications industry. Each customer that hires radio equipment needs to have a license issued to them from Ofcom which specifies exactly what frequencies they are allowed to use.
Scaife explains how DTS are now using this in their hire operation, “When we send our paperwork down to the engineers, before it gets dispatched from the building, we need to be telling them what frequencies they need to have. Previously there was nowhere in the system for us to do that, so we had the frequencies tab developed. Now we can type all of that information in and it comes out on our picking list. This way the right kit is picked and they know how to program the equipment as well.”
Scaife continues, “MCS-rm helps to bring everything under one umbrella rather than having different systems for different processes. We chose MCS because of its approachable team and how quick and accommodating the company was. It wasn’t down to price. It was a case of responding to what we needed very quickly. The staff there have been really good and very helpful.”
