OREM, UT – Eighth Day Sound Systems of Highland Heights, OH recently became rental and production management software provider Flex Rental Solutions' 100th customer. The software is used by rental and production companies in 10 different countries, in niches ranging from corporate event production, concert touring, special event rental to network television production. Customers 99 and 101, which also signed up on the same day, included Production Services Ireland and SR Audio.
More details from Flex Rental Solutions (www.flexrentalsolutions.com):
Flex Rental Solutions turns 100 with 8th Day Sound
Orem, Utah, October 26, 2011 – Today Flex Rental Solutions added its 100th customer, marking a major milestone in the development of the industry's fastest growing rental and production management software provider.
Eighth Day Sound Systems of Highland Heights, Ohio completed their registration on Tuesday, making them the 100th customer on a growing roster that includes rental and production companies of all sizes in ten countries, and working in niches ranging from corporate event production, concert touring, special event rental to network television production. Customers 99 and 101 also signed up on the same day, adding Production Services Ireland and SR Audio to the Flex
Eighth Day Sound is one of the leading providers of touring audio solutions in the world. Their client roster is a who's who of top touring artists, ranging from Kings of Leon to Madonna to Eminem to Lady Gaga. In addition to touring audio, Eighth Day Sound is also a leader in the installation and corporate event markets.
"Flex4, Flex's latest creation, is an innovational approach toward rental and production management. With features including off-site hosting, a Flash based interface and SQL backbone, the cloud has never felt so right. Chris' past experience throughout the trade have certainly influenced the final product for the best. It seems to mesh well with our current operations, while simultaneously providing flexibility and an openness to change. We are very excited to see how Flex4 will support Eighth Day Sound's internal goal of Exceeding Expectations Worldwide."
-Alan Herschman, Inventory Control Manager, Eighth Day Sound
A Major Milestone
In the 16 months since the release of Flex 4, Flex Rental Solutions has gone from just a handful of early adopters to one hundred customers – and without losing a single customer along the way.
"Crossing over the 100 customer threshold has been a major milestone for myself and the team, far exceeding our growth expectations. The team behind Flex has put thousands of hours of work into our software and it's very gratifying to see all the late nights, long hours, and time away from friends and family start to pay off. We're excited about this achievement, but also mindful that growth presents new challenges. In the months ahead, we'll focus on how to maintain the high level of service our customers have come to expect as the number of customers grows."
-Chris Stein, Chief Executive Officer, Flex Rental Solutions
A Real Engineering Team
Flex attributes a skilled full time engineering team and leading edge development practices for much of its success, preferring to focus time and resources into the product instead of marketing and sales gimmicks. Flex employs three full time software engineers and recently added a Quality Assurance Analyst to keep improving and adding capability to Flex. In addition, Flex leverages formal test automation for most features, including availability calculations, pricing and warehouse processes. The Flex engineering team uses an agile development methodology and test driven development with continuous integration, meaning that thousands of automated tests are automatically executed every time the code changes.
"The 100 customer milestone gives all of us on the software engineering team a great morale boost and affirms that we're on the right track, but we all know we have a long way to go. We're currently finishing up the 4.4 release of Flex, which will be a big release for us. In addition to the continuing hard work of Suman and Roger, the addition of Courtney to the team now gives us the ability to apply the kind of quality control to the front end UI that we've had for the back end logic since day one. I think we've got a great balance of skill sets now and the next 12 months should see significant advancements in the maturation and usability of Flex."
-Jeffrey Payne, Chief Technology Officer, Flex Rental Solutions
Customer Focus
Another key factor in the success of Flex is a commitment to customers. The development roadmap is a direct result of customer feedback and Flex strives to provide frequent, meaningful updates to the software. In addition, Flex sponsors two free user conferences a year that permit customers to get in person training, interact with the development team and help determine the future of Flex.
Preparing For Growth
Flex is committed to scaling up its operations to accommodate the influx of customers. Just in the last few months, two new members have joined the Flex team.
- Devon Schroeder comes to Flex after ten years supporting customers for Intellievent and is leading up efforts to formalize support processes and start the long delayed documentation project.
- Courtney von Nieda joins the engineering team straight from the QA team at Expeditors International where she oversaw software QA for several big projects, including the supply chain system for a major Dell manufacturing facility in Mexico and Expeditors' internal accounting systems.
The Road Ahead
Flex Rental Solutions has a lot of big plans for the coming year including significant user interface improvements, multi-session event planning, and a new high availability deployment architecture. Flex would like to thank all 100 customers for their support and look forward to continuing to help them serve their customers.
