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The Hidden Revolution in the Equipment Industry

The Hidden Revolution in the Equipment Industry

With 20+ years of business system design and business intelligence experience, Dale Hanna founded Foresight Intelligence in 2009 to help leading equipment dealers achieve operational excellence and a sustainable competitive advantage through effective use of real time KPI’s throughout the organization. Recently, Dale has added telematics to his passion and is enjoying the challenge of making oceans of disparate data useful to manufactures, dealers, rental companies, and end customers.  Dale obtained a BSEE degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and has been engaged in many associations serving the equipment industry. In his first guest blog for Learning Without Scars, Dale writes about the hidden revolution taking place in the equipment industry.

Technology is driving a revolution in the equipment industry that we can easily see: grade control, idle tracking, fault codes, autonomous equipment, electrification, etc. While the advancements are amazing and will continue to be, dealers are noticing brand differentiation becoming more and more of a challenge. In this margin-conscious market, we see the battle of the future being fought on customer experience and we see technology is quietly but rapidly driving that revolution.

This hidden revolution is happening in all areas of dealership operations.  Today we focus on how technology is increasing efficiency and enhancing customer experience in the service area, especially during this time of unprecedented labor and parts shortage.

Below are strategies that are giving some equipment dealers a leg up:

 Increasing Trust from Your Customers

We all know trust is a vital ingredient in delivering a great customer experience.  If you are like me, I used to think building trust was an elusive and subjective endeavor.  Chris Voss, a lead FBI hostage negotiator, gave us a formula to build trust quickly and predictably:

Trust = Predictability.

A system that can be configured to your workflow to automatically notify customers at key milestones creates a predictable service experience every time without adding more work for your people.  Yes, UPS and FedEx have perfected this.  You know exactly where your packages are all the time and the moment they are delivered.  It is hard to imagine any shipping company being able to survive without it.  Our expectations for the service experience are quickly reaching the same level.

Doing Business at the Speed of Text

When we do not get an email response from someone, what do we do? We text. According to a research report, on average, people respond to a text in 90 seconds and an email in about 90 minutes.  Adding an integrated SMS (text) platform is like adding nitrous to your service engine.  A fully integrated text platform notifies your customers of progress, provides new quotes, gets instant sign off for additional work, shares inspection results and obtains satisfaction survey results at lightning speed. All the communication history is saved for future reference. With the busy schedule your customers have, who would not appreciate a faster ride?

Self Service Makes Happier Customers

The pandemic has accelerated a trend that was already happening – we want to do more things online, by ourselves, at whatever hours we want, without having to wait on anyone.  Providing information your customers need, in the forms they need, always accessible makes them feel informed and in control, both are important elements for happiness.  A robust dashboard, easy to use interface, searchable/sortable/exportable data and schedulable reports keep your customers smiling while your people sleep.

Have Your Process Your Way

A lot of service systems were built based on someone else’s ideas, usually from the first few customers the system makers had. Your workflow is what makes your people efficient, and your organization stand out. Today’s technology allows an effective system to adapt to you rather than the other way around. Dynamic dashboards by user and role, quick and easy work order assignment and tracking, Apps for field technicians to easily add comments, pictures/videos, inspections can be required and enforced as a part of your workorder process are all examples of how today’s systems serve you the way you do business.

We Are More Powerful When We Are Connected

So are data and systems. At dealerships, we still use multiple systems to get things done. The last thing we want to add is another siloed system. Any service system today should connect with your OEM system for fault codes, warranty information and even submission, your telematics system for real time dispatching, customer’s telematics system for asset location and hours, maintenance management system to organize all the maintenance plans you sold and your business system for cost and PO information. The more your systems are connected, the more efficient you become.

The current pandemic will end for sure, but our world has changed forever. If we look at carefully, there is an undeniable trend – tech rich companies have done better in general, some has done exceptionally well and taken sizeable market share from competitors during COVID 19. This trend is definitely here to stay. Technology is not only changing things we can see and buy, but it is also changing the way we perform and experience service. Customers will certainly buy more equipment, especially with the new infrastructure bill, and whoever delivers the best customer experience will have the bigger share.

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Management Musings 2.7 (Reprised) #MondayBlogs

We are in the process of updating the business page for our consulting, and I wanted to give you a reminder. What follows is our statement of where we are as a group and where we are going. I am as excited now, and as motivated today, as I have been at any previous time in my forty five years working in the Industry. I am truly blessed.

Our consulting business is winding down. I am not aggressively soliciting business like I once did, but will be dealing with requests on a one to one basis. As long as there is interest in my skills and experience I will be more than happy to assist.  Our website, rjslee.com, is still live and active, with ongoing updates to our articles and our recommended reading.  With our reading lists, you can find selections from Business Teachers, or Business Management Tools, and many more.  I like to direct avid learners to that resource, as it can provide foundational texts to motivate you in pursuing your goals.

The Learning business is becoming a much more prominent focus for my time. We are excited about our new venture, Learning Without Scars, and using all the current technology to bring our learning products to the market worldwide. We will be offering ten classroom seminars, forty webinars and ten internet based self-study programs in fifteen different languages. We will be moving to having a YouTube channel and developing a series of streamed products for use by everyone in fifteen languages as well. All of this is being done with a new web page as well. We are working with a terrific partner on this project. Brian Shanahan of “shanahandesign” is the gentleman we have selected to do this work. I am extremely pleased to have found Brian as he does wonderful work. Thank you, Brian.

Our Company Insight (M&R) Institute which has been the platform for the traditional Twenty Group business is being replaced with a new and improved technology driven product. I suspect this new model will become the new standard for twenty group operations in the coming years. This new product is being developed in conjunction with Foresight Intelligence. Dale Hanna, the CEO of Foresight Intelligence, and I are putting the finishing touches on what we believe will produce strong value to dealers in assisting them to be all that they can be. The new product offering will be complimentary and confidential. The dealer will be able to sign on to a model and either identify who they are on not, their choice, enter their information into a “FITNESS” model and receive a “FIRST” results response on key management measures for each of the five major departments within a dealer. The FIRST will show each management measure and a traffic light type graphic with a color code to recognize their performance as out Insight standards. These standards have been developed in our consulting business over the past forty five years in working with well over 1,000 different dealers around the world. The dealer then can go and make the necessary changes in their business without anything further. If however, they want assistance with the click of a button they will be directed to the “FAIR” page will is a series of “TIPS.” Each TIP leads to an implementation process. Each one of the TIPS is a tried and true example of the consulting work I have been doing for the past thirty five years. If the dealer wants further assistance we have developed a network of “ACES.” Each ACE is a retired senior executive from a dealership who still has the interest and energy to continue working in the Industry just not on a full time basis. Dale and I are very excited about this new offering, which we are presenting as the Capital Goods Sages.

I hope that you will find this news as exciting as I do in providing you with it and look forward to continuing to be a part of your team in Product Support.

The time is now