Sarah MachinWe’re delighted to announce that Simpala has officially joined the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA). It’s a big milestone for us—and thankfully one that didn’t require a hard hat or a site induction.
Joining the CPA reflects our commitment to supporting equipment, plant and tool hire businesses across the UK. We’re a Salesforce partner with serious experience in the plant hire industry — enough to know your generators from your database tables. We’re passionate about helping hire companies simplify complex operations, improve efficiency and embrace digital transformation with confidence.
Joining the CPA isn’t about adding a logo to our website. It’s about becoming part of the conversations shaping the future of plant hire. The more we listen to the people running hire businesses every day, the better we can build technology that genuinely makes a difference. And if we can save a few people from wrestling with spreadsheets and month-end invoicing along the way, that’s a pretty good bonus too!
– Sarah Machin, Business Change Manager, Simpala
Strengthening Our Commitment to Plant Hire
If you’ve ever worked in plant hire, you’ll know there’s never really a “quiet Tuesday”. One minute you’re dispatching equipment, the next you’re juggling maintenance schedules, compliance paperwork, last-minute customer requests and trying to remember who took that generator without updating the system.
It’s a fast-moving industry with unique operational challenges. Fleet logistics, asset utilisation, servicing schedules, compliance and customer expectations all need to work together seamlessly. Yet many businesses are still expected to fit these complex processes into software that was never designed for plant hire in the first place.
At Simpala, we believe technology should adapt to your business—not the other way around.
That’s why we’ve built a specialist solution on Salesforce, tailoring it specifically to the workflows of plant hire companies. By connecting systems and automating manual processes, we help create a single, connected operation that gives teams greater visibility, saves time and supports long-term growth.
Why Salesforce?
Salesforce probably doesn’t need much introduction. It’s trusted by organisations around the world for a reason. And unlike that spreadsheet everyone promises they’ll replace “next month”, it’s built to grow with your business.
By bringing your hire operations into Salesforce, you benefit from:
- A single source of truth – bringing together customer information, hire contracts, fleet availability, service history and billing in one place.
- Enterprise-grade security and reliability – backed by one of the world’s most trusted cloud platforms.
- Real-time reporting – providing instant insight into fleet utilisation, cross-hire activity, revenue and operational performance.
- Automation that actually gives you your time back – from dispatch and maintenance scheduling to contract renewals and, with the right integrations in place, even generating your monthly invoices automatically. Because month-end is stressful enough without manually chasing paperwork and pressing the same buttons every four weeks.
- Future-ready innovation – including AI capabilities, advanced analytics and seamless integration with third-party applications.
And with Salesforce continuing to invest heavily in AI, your system keeps getting smarter too—helping your team work faster, make better decisions and spend less time on repetitive admin.
We’ve seen hire businesses replace four or five disconnected systems with a single Salesforce platform, giving everyone—from the depot and workshop to the finance team—the same real-time view of the business.
The result? Less time chasing information, fewer manual processes and more time focusing on customers and growing the business.
Why Our CPA Membership Matters
For decades, the Construction Plant-hire Association has represented the interests of the UK’s plant hire industry, championing best practice, improving safety standards and driving innovation across the sector.
Joining the CPA allows us to spend even more time talking to the people who live and breathe plant hire every day. That’s where the best conversations happen, and if we’re honest, where some of our best ideas come from too.
By working closely with hire businesses, industry leaders and fellow CPA members, we can continue developing solutions that reflect the real challenges operators face—not just what looks good in a software demo.
Technology is only valuable if it solves genuine problems, and that’s exactly what we’re here to do.
Looking Ahead
The plant hire industry continues to evolve, and technology has an increasingly important role to play in helping businesses improve efficiency, profitability and customer service.
By combining deep industry expertise with the flexibility and scalability of Salesforce, Simpala helps hire companies build connected, efficient and future-ready operations without asking them to reinvent the way they already work.
We’re excited to meet fellow CPA members, share ideas and probably learn a few things ourselves along the way. After all, the best technology is built by listening to the people who use it every day.
Here’s to stronger partnerships, smarter systems and—if we can help it—a few less spreadsheets.
We’re proud to be part of the CPA community and look forward to helping shape the future of plant hire, one integration at a time.
