Alta Equipment is a full-service equipment dealership that sells and rents construction machinery to businesses and individuals around the country. They employ about 2,700 people, are headquartered in Michigan, and have coverage in Ohio, Illinois, Florida, New England, and New York.
We spoke with Kyla Greene, the regional director for rentals in the Northeast, to learn how using signNow has significantly improved the rental and sales process.
Saving 300 hours each week with signNow
When Kyla started as a coordinator at Alta Equipment, signNow was already part of their tech stack. As she started to dive deeper into using signNow, she realized that it made receiving rental equipment back from customers way more efficient than it had been with other platforms.
“I had used other platforms in the past, like AdobeSign and AdobePro,” says Kyla. “What I didn’t like about them was that customers had to make an account in order to sign a document. Or customers would not even receive the docs because they’d end up in spam. With signNow, we can just email or text a customer with a doc and they can sign without needing to create an account, and docs never end up in spam. It’s just created a much easier and more efficient experience with clients.”
The texting feature is quite important, especially for those in this type of industry. People in construction tend to lag behind when it comes to adopting and embracing technology and may not even be sure how to electronically sign documents, but this is one tool they can get on board with.
“We have a lot of owner operators that rent out our machines and don’t have full time office staff who can print out documents, fill them out, and send them back,” explains Kyla. “I might text an owner who could be in the cab of a machine, take a quick break, open up his phone, sign documents online for equipment he needs tomorrow, and then get back to doing what he does best. He doesn’t have to worry about finding a printer and scanner and everything else. signNow just really works for us and our customers.”
The efficiency Alta Equipment has been able to create with their customers thanks to signNow has resulted in some pretty tremendous time savings.
“Chasing down contracts takes a lot of time. With signNow, we’ve gotten the process down to about 3 minutes. We have 60 coordinators who are saving at least one hour a day, five days a week. That’s 300 hours a week we’re saving, or 15,000 hours over the course of a year, just by using signNow.”
– Kyla Greene, Regional Director Northeast Rentals, Alta Equipment
Ensuring compliance every step of the way
In the rental business, it’s really important to have documents organized and contracts in place, especially because there’s insurance involved. Since Alta Equipment is a publicly traded company, contracts must be uploaded in a timely manner in order to remain compliant. Because of the nature of their business, they also tend to get audited frequently, so being able to access important documents is key.
“Our goal is to have 100% of our rental agreements completed and uploaded into our system, and month over month we’ve accomplished that here in the Northeast because of signNow,” says Kyla. “I have no doubt in my mind that we are more efficient because of signNow.”
Customers obviously play an important role in the compliance process because there is no compliance unless document signing occurs. Prior to signNow, it was difficult to get documents signed quickly because customers were not only busy, but they were asked to complete a lot of paperwork, like credit card forms, sales agreements, bill lading forms, and so on.
“signNow has been so valuable with our end-users. When you can just text or email a document and get it back within a couple of minutes, it really helps improve that customer relationship.”
– Kyla Greene, Regional Director Northeast Rentals, Alta Equipment
Alta Equipment does not schedule deliveries until they have received a correctly completed, signed document. With paper docs, or even other electronic signature solutions, it might be easy to overlook an important section of a document. Kyla loves that with signNow, she’s able to place a box around specific sections and require initials next to that box to be sure that a customer has read what they’re supposed to. It helps Alta run more efficiently and keeps customers clear on expectations as well.
Kyla is also a big fan of signNow’s stamp feature which shows who signed and when and allows you to print an audit trail.
“When you’re trying to chase around 100 unsigned contracts, it’s a grueling task,” says Kyla. “To get a signature app that’s simple to use and makes it so much easier for us to be compliant and get our documents done, it makes such a huge difference. When my job isn’t tied up tracking down customers, I can spend that time working with coordinators on items that really need our focus. It’s just really nice.”
Recommending signNow to others
As Kyla’s role continues to expand and her experience with signNow broadens, she’s seeing opportunities for other Alta Equipment teams to benefit from eSignatures.
In particular, Kyla is working closely with a lot of sales managers in the Northeast who are starting to get audited as frequently as the rental side of the business. She is highly recommending that the sales team adopt signNow to help streamline both their sales agreement process and also the auditing process.
Kyla considers herself an advocate for signNow and sings its praises to anyone looking to eSign documents and automate their document processes.
“signNow is so user-friendly for both the creator of the document and the signer of the document,” says Kyla. “I tell anyone looking at signNow and contemplating whether it’s the right fit that if they want the digital process to be easy for their team and easy for their end-user, then signNow is exactly what they need.”
Alta Equipment used signNow powered by AWS.
