Built from 26 years inside event production and equipment rental

What 26 years taught me

The following lessons come from operating around real productions, equipment and teams. Each points to a deeper control problem rather than a promise that software alone solves it.

• Rental quotations cannot be separated from inventory availability.
• Spreadsheets can help a team begin, but parallel files become risky as rental work, people and assets multiply.
• Individual employee memory is valuable experience, but it cannot be the only control for a production.
• Warehouse preparation is as important as the sale: an approved quote is not a dispatched production.
• Returns and reconciliation are part of the commercial process, not an afterthought.
• Sub-rentals are controlled external inventory with their own custody, due-back and cost obligations.
• AI recommendations should remain explainable, permission-aware and approval-based.

How the vision developed

This is an operating sequence, not a dated corporate timeline. It avoids inventing milestones while making the connection between experience, product direction and industry input explicit.

1. Experience26 years of event-production and equipment-rental work.
2. Operating realityProfessional backline and equipment-rental operations exposed the coordination problems a generic stock list misses.
3. Problem identifiedRequirements, availability, warehouse preparation, movement, returns and commercial close needed one connected operating record.
4. Platform directionOperations360 was shaped as a Production-centred rental inventory ERP.
5. Intelligence directionO360 was added as an evidence-grounded layer for explanation, signals and controlled recommendations.
6. Industry inputThe platform is being opened to rental professionals who can challenge, improve and validate the operating model.

Our vision for Operations360

My vision is for Operations360 to become the next generation of rental inventory ERP and event-production management software: an intelligent operating system connecting clients, productions, equipment, warehouses, teams, logistics, documents and financial outcomes through one shared source of operational truth.

At its centre is the Production: a single operational record connecting everything required to plan, prepare, deliver, return and commercially close one rental job. A Production is more than an order number; a change to a requirement should remain connected to its reservation, allocation, movement, custody, return and cost.

Instead of working through disconnected spreadsheets, messaging groups, paper documents and isolated modules, every authorised team should be able to work from the same current information. That shared view must still respect each person's responsibilities and access permissions.

Read the connected platform overview and the enquiry-to-return operating workflow.

What a shared operating record should make possible

Sales

Genuine availability and commercially accurate quotations, with changes visible to the people preparing the job.

Warehouse

Clear picking, QC, packing, dispatch and return instructions, including what is missing or awaiting inspection.

Operations

A connected view of shortages, conflicts, delayed returns, sub-rentals and production risk, with responsibility for the next action.

Crew and logistics

Responsibilities, equipment movements, venue details and production timing that stay connected to the job.

Finance

Quotations, additional costs, sub-rentals, damages, invoices and profitability traced back to the operation.

Management

Inventory utilisation, warehouse readiness, operational performance, revenue opportunities and risk in their operating context.

Built for different kinds of rental businesses

Our starting experience is professional backline rental. The wider design direction includes the equipment, dependencies and working practices of:

• Professional audio and sound-equipment rental
• Lighting rental and production
• LED wall, projection and video equipment
• Backline and musical-instrument rental
• Staging, trussing and rigging
• Event production and technical production
• Corporate audiovisual services
• Exhibition and experiential production
• Film, broadcast and studio equipment rental
• Wedding and social-event production
• Touring, festival and concert production
• Multi-service rental companies with several equipment departments

The platform must work for a new rental business managing a small inventory from one location. It must also grow towards the needs of established enterprises operating thousands of serialized and non-serialized assets across multiple warehouses, cities, teams, departments and legal entities. Growth should not require a business to abandon its operating system and begin again. This is our design ambition, not a claim that every enterprise deployment requirement is available today.

Explore the workflow discussions for AV rental, sound and lighting and backline companies.

More than inventory management

The rental lifecycle is connected, even when different teams own its stages:

1. Enquiry
2. Quote
3. Requirements
4. Reservation
5. Allocation
6. Pick
7. QC
8. Pack
9. Dispatch
10. Show
11. Return
12. Reconciliation
13. Maintenance
14. Invoice
15. Profitability

Our goal is not to add features for the sake of having a longer feature list. Every capability should solve a real operational problem, reduce repetitive work, improve accountability or help a team make a better decision.

For practical operating examples, explore the rental operations knowledge centre.

Intelligence that understands rental operations

O360 is the intelligence layer being developed within Operations360. It is not intended to be a generic chatbot placed inside an ERP. It should understand the relationships between a customer's requirement, available equipment, preparation, people and the practical consequences of a change.

The direction is to help teams interpret enquiries and technical riders, identify missing information, check availability and readiness, detect booking conflicts and shortages, and recommend alternatives, transfers or sub-rentals. It should highlight production and dispatch risks, prepare controlled actions and explain recommendations using supporting records, assumptions and missing information.

For example, an amplifier returned this morning is not automatically ready for tonight's dispatch. Its return record, QC outcome, fault history and next reservation all matter. A useful assistant would show those records and the unresolved check, rather than confidently treating the asset as available.

The questions we want O360 to help teams answer

These are representative goals for the intelligence programme, not a claim that all ten questions are supported today.

• Do we have everything required for this production?
• Which assets should be allocated from each warehouse?
• Will this reservation create a conflict with another job?
• Which returned equipment has not completed quality control?
• What needs to be sub-rented, transferred or substituted?
• Which productions are at risk of delayed dispatch?
• Which assets are frequently damaged or underutilised?
• What changed between the original quotation and final invoice?
• Which clients, equipment categories and productions are most profitable?
• What action should the team take next?

Artificial intelligence should support experienced people, not hide information, make uncontrolled decisions or remove accountability. Recommendations must be explainable, permissions must be respected and important operational or commercial actions must remain under human control.

See the O360 intelligence page for demonstrated scenarios and the limits of the current evidence. Core operational decisions must remain usable without AI.

Designed around trust and control

Client records, negotiated rates, equipment inventories, production schedules, supplier arrangements, workflows and financial information are commercially sensitive. Rental businesses, including companies that compete with each other, need confidence that their information does not become another customer's context.

Our engineering requirements are secure multi-tenant architecture, strong tenant and data isolation, role-based access control, auditable activity and change history, controlled automation and explainable recommendations. These are controls to implement and verify throughout delivery, not an assurance that software can never fail.

Flexible private or locally deployable intelligence is a longer-term product ambition. It is not an available deployment option or a promise that every AI request currently stays on a customer's infrastructure. Data-processing arrangements and supported capabilities must be confirmed for the actual service being used.

Our security information and integration disclosures provide public reference points for evaluating the current service. Contact the team about privacy or data-processing questions before sharing sensitive business information.

Shaped by the people who run the industry

A backline business does not prepare equipment exactly like a lighting company. Audio, video, staging and multi-service operators have their own dependencies. A new single-location team and an established multi-warehouse company also experience different pressures.

That is why I want Operations360 to be built with the industry, not merely sold to it. Rental owners, production managers, sales coordinators, warehouse teams, crew chiefs, technicians, logistics teams and finance professionals all have experience that can improve the product.

You do not need to design a feature to contribute. Describe what you are trying to achieve, what gets in the way and how you handle it today. Several different feature requests may point to the same underlying problem. Understanding that problem matters more than collecting votes for a longer feature list.

• Which part of your rental workflow consumes the most time?
• Where do mistakes, delays or communication gaps usually occur?
• Which tasks are still managed through spreadsheets or messaging apps?
• What information do teams struggle to find?
• Which reports or operational insights are missing?
• What do existing rental-management platforms make unnecessarily difficult?
• Where could responsible AI genuinely help?
• What would make your business trust a new rental ERP?

Sharing feedback does not commit your business to adopting Operations360 and does not guarantee that a requested feature will be implemented. We will not publish your name, company or feedback without permission.

Operations360 began with lessons accumulated over 26 years in event production and equipment rental. Its future will be shaped by a much larger community of rental professionals, production teams, technology partners and customers.

The vision is ambitious: a fast, intelligent and dependable rental inventory ERP that can support a business from its first booking to multi-location, multi-warehouse operations, without losing the practical understanding of how equipment, people and productions move in the real world.

If you have an idea, an operational challenge or a better way of doing something, I invite you to share it. Together, we can build the operating system that the rental and event-production industry deserves.