SkiOne is a Finnish family business that was established in 1989 and consists of three ski resorts. Vuokatti and Kasurila provide small groups and families with a complete ski resort experience with ski schools, slopes, rental equipment, and restaurants. Tahko, on the other hand, attracts a younger audience looking for a fun time with their friends. In both cases, the clientele consists of locals and tourists visiting during their holidays.
While the main form of business is running and operating the slopes, renting equipment comes in as a strong second. Running such a vast operation means all emphasis lies on flawless customer service.
"The most important things in the customer experience are speed and smoothness. When our customers visit any of the three resorts, fast and great customer service is what the visitors expect to receive," says Jyrki Tikkanen, the rental operations manager of SkiOne.
Vuokatti alone rents out 30 000 sets on a yearly basis, which is why it became the first of the resorts to take Twice into use at their rental store. The other locations use Twice to support them, for example, in ski lift ticket sales.
Before Twice, SkiOne’s rental operations were heavily based on manual work and a paper rental form, in which one part was given to the customer, one part to the rental store personnel, and one to the archive for the rest of the season.
At the end of the day, the personnel would have to manually go through each card and check what was returned and what wasn’t. This was the biggest reason for SkiOne to look into ski rental software.
The old way worked okay, however, it was very time-consuming and not very efficient, to be honest. The store personnel would spend up to an hour after closing shop each day checking the inventory and returned equipment.
The decision of which tool to take into use was between Twice and another rental system. Fortunately, Jyrki saw the potential and was convinced that Twice would end up being the right tool for them. SkiOne’s biggest expectation was to be able to offer an online platform that is beneficial for both the staff and the customers.
It’s obviously easier for the customer to book their equipment online on their phones, or use tablets in-store rather than spend time filling up a piece of paper. On the other hand, it’s also much more convenient for the staff, because all of the needed information is saved in the program making the other processes much more efficient and faster.
In SkiOne’s case, taking Twice into use also meant that the ski school gets to book the needed amount of equipment for their activities, making the overall inventory management much more unified and smoother. Of course, the initial problem related to the returned equipment was also solved.
Twice isn’t perfect and there’s still a lot of room for development - however, the inventory management is now so much faster and better than before. It also makes it so much easier to manage the equipment and change the availability, and prices, and so on.
Despite the initial hiccups in implementing Twice into SkiOne’s operations, daily life quickly became as smooth as promised. During the fall, SkiOne will receive over 1500 sets of equipment, and they are confident that they will be able to easily register and manage the inventory.
Twice also has made it easy to identify which products are used the most, which makes purchasing new equipment for the upcoming season straightforward.
Twice is an overall working and fully functional system. The staff likes it, and I doubt they would ever want to stop using it.
Jyrki Tikkanen believes that there is a bright future for Twice and SkiOne. He emphasizes that Rentle has the simplicity that is important for any rental business: it is extremely easy to use and get started with. Should there ever be any problems or unclarity, the team at Twice has always been there to support and guide Jyrki and his team.
I believe the future is bright for SkiOne and Twice. If Twice continues cooperating with their customers and developing the software as they have so far, Rentle will undoubtedly become the best rental software in the world.