In the vehicle rental industry, every minute counts. From fleet management to invoicing to vehicle readiness, inefficiencies can quickly affect customer satisfaction and business growth. For specialist rental businesses, such as wheelchair-accessible and adapted vehicles, the challenges are even greater. Operations are complex, fleet visibility is critical, and every process must be precise.
Specialist Vehicle Rental, a trusted name in specialist hire for 17 years, is a prime example of a business that understood the need for a solution built to scale. Today, the company operates a fleet of over 300 vehicles nationwide, serving long-standing clients and new customers alike.
We spoke with Krisi Hulme, Associate Director, who has been with the company since its incorporation and has seen the business grow from its first five vehicles to the extensive fleet it operates today.
“I started with the company on its incorporation and have worked my way up to Associate Director, it is a great company to work with, we are more of a family than work colleagues.”
Krisi shares the origins of the business:
“The owner and Founder of the business Juggy Kudhail had a friend that struggled to find the specialist vehicles that we supply; he wanted to make accessible vehicles as easy to hire as it would be a standard vehicle. He spent a year looking into this and we started with 5 vehicles back in 2009 and now have a fleet of 300 and increasing monthly.”
The Challenge: Scaling Beyond Legacy Systems
For most of its history, Specialist Vehicle Rental relied on a bespoke-built rental software and fleet management system. While effective for a single depot, growth exposed its limitations. Multi-site operations, increasing fleet numbers, and evolving customer expectations required a platform built for scale, flexibility, and remote access.
“Whilst this was amazing when we only had one depot, we were finding new challenges which was impacting the operations, and started looking at alternate solutions.”
When evaluating alternatives, the business needed a system that could adapt to their unique processes, manage multiple sites seamlessly, and scale cost-effectively as the business expanded.
“When we had our first trial, we realised how ProhireCloud and Companion could achieve all the points we needed it to cover and the cost wasn’t as much as we thought it would be.”
A key operational win came from ProhireCloud’s flexible invoicing, removing bottlenecks that previously consumed hours of administrative time.
“We have found that the different invoicing intervals can be set per client which has helped massively with reducing the month end billing runs as we can now carry out at different stages throughout the month and no more Sunday and Bank holiday billing run days for me if the last day of the month fell on these days.”
A Fast, Confident Transition
Migrating to ProhireCloud was a high-pressure project, with just two weeks to move from the legacy system. The Prohire implementation and service desk teams provided crucial support every step of the way.
“Pete, Lauren and Rhys have been amazing through our set up, we only had two weeks to move from our current system to ProhireCloud, this was a difficult task however with the ProhireCloud teams help we managed to do this with minimum disruption, the team have always been at the end of the phone to assist in our training process.”
Change can be challenging, but ProhireCloud’s intuitive interface and structured training made adoption smooth.
“At first with any new system it was a struggle, but this was mainly down to the time constraints we had, now we are in our ‘Go Live’ period the whole team loves the system, it has far surpassed what we thought it could do and how much we can do with the system. I know the rental agents found the tutorials very helpful, especially in set up stages.”
Transforming Operations Across the Business
Since implementation, ProhireCloud has delivered measurable efficiency gains. Vehicle bookings, fleet tracking, and invoicing now happen faster, giving staff more time to focus on customers.
“There are so many positives that have helped our operations from the time it takes to book out a vehicle, being able to monitor on one system where our vehicles are and being able to use the filters to find anything, the invoicing process and time it would normally take has massively reduced, the fleet management tools for service reminders and MOTs have been very beneficial.”
The check-in and damage recharge processes, historically time-consuming tasks in vehicle rental have been transformed. The upcoming addition of Prohire Companion will take this even further.
“The largest impact has been the check in and damage recharge process, we are just about to sign up to Companion and just Companion alone will help with invoicing loss of fuel, mileage and damage more efficiently and quickly.”
Future-Ready with ProhireCloud
For Specialist Vehicle Rental, ProhireCloud isn’t just software, it’s a platform that enables growth, operational clarity, and consistent service across multiple sites.
“I would certainly recommend this system to any rental business, it is a very powerful tool, and I wished we had moved over to ProhireCloud sooner.”
By streamlining processes, increasing visibility, and providing flexibility for a growing fleet, ProhireCloud allows the business to focus on delivering specialist hire services with confidence, efficiency, and reliability; ensuring they can meet the demands of today and scale seamlessly for tomorrow.
