Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
The Road Ahead for Dealership Dynamics and Software Solutions
Prepare to unravel the tangled reality of business systems within the heavy equipment and agriculture sectors alongside industry expert John Andersen. In a marketplace where the schism between dealership demands and software solutions deepens, we dissect the shortcomings of recent mergers, such as the one resulting in Vital Edge, critiquing their surface-level rebrandings that neglect the true trials of dealers. As we peel back the layers of this complex narrative, we also uncover a glimmer of hope in a software underdog that may just have the potential to shake things up.
Strap in for a ride through the transformative landscape of the automotive service industry, where chatbots and data analytics are steering us into the future. We spotlight the plight of New York's taxi medallion owners and immigrant drivers against the backdrop of a market shifting from dealer monopolies to savvy independent technicians. John illuminates the mechanic shortage and reveals how emerging apps and AI-driven tools are poised to overhaul service writing efficiency, offering a preview of a more streamlined, customer-centric service experience.
We cap off our journey with a retrospective glance at the evolution of dealership operations technology, traveling from the paper-heavy '60s to today's SaaS paradigms. APIs emerge as the unsung heroes, enabling the orchestra of platforms that could mirror the app harmony of our smartphones. The episode culminates with a battle cry for radical industry-wide change, championing the advent of a Chief Change Officer to spearhead the progress needed for the heavy equipment sector's survival. We're not just discussing change—we're demanding it, challenging all industry players to rise from complacency and actively fight for the elevation of their operational standards.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Aloha and welcome to another candid conversation Today. We're joined by the inimitable John Anderson, who is loving the weather in Florida, where we finally got warm, and we're going to be talking about all things systems and business and dealers this afternoon. John, good to see you.
Speaker 2:Nice to see you, Ron. I'm glad it finally warmed up here. How's the weather in Hawaii?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's boring. You know the real, the real joy here. I don't want to take too long on this, but the real draw here is the ocean is 76 or 77 degrees every day. I could almost care less about the air temperature, you know. But that having been said, the stability that we have here with weather seems to have permeated the software business in our industry In that. Let me, let me paragraph, explain that, from SAP to N4 to Oracle to JD, ediwars to Microsoft Dynamics, to XAPT to DIS or Constellation to E-emphasis, cdk, e-emphasis, they're all systems, people. They haven't got a clue of the industry they're serving anymore. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think you're wrong. I think there's a. I think they're misguided in some cases. I think the challenge is everybody needs to get back to the roots, and by their roots, it's not. It's not unlike a preacher to his congregation. You have to know who you serve. And the challenge is what are you going to do that's going to benefit your customers? That's going to keep you at the top of the market. That's going to keep you top of mind. That's going to keep you, keep the dealers making money, keep you making money, keep everything going in the right direction. And I'll give you an example, because you know I can't hold back on this this week at AED, I'm going to say 10 months, it might be nine months after.
Speaker 2:You know what was arguably one of the most interesting announcements last year and that was the merger slash, acquisition of CDK and E-emphasis to become arguably the number one provider of systems to the heavy equipment market space. And you'll remember, I think I wrote an article and that's been 30 days now what? And then there was 90 days now what? Six months, no change. So I was thrilled to hear rumblings and know that something important was going to happen in the announcement was going to coincide with conducts, great planning by the marketing department. That's the show that if you've got something important to say, that's when to tease it or, better yet, when to release it entirely. And imagine how surprised I was when I read the press release that talked about having consulted with the greatest minds in the industry. I'm not sure they made it to you, ron, but they tried, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Through their own leadership, through their highest, most important customers I think is what they said. You know they're leveraged their customer intel and everything else and then worked with the one of the leading branding companies in the world and I couldn't wait to see what was going to come out of this. And as it turns out, after nine months, with some of the greatest resources that we've seen come to bear on a problem of systems in the construction equipment industry and the agricultural equipment industry, they got a new name. They didn't get new software. They didn't get new features. What they did side it is what they were going to name the joint company, and I had to ask myself if I was a dealer and I know a lot of them, because my phone rang off the hook immediately after the press release came out.
Speaker 2:What was the impact on my day to day business going to be? How was this going to help me make more money? How was this going to help me stay in business longer? How is this going to help me provide premium support and services and product support to my customers, because it was now no longer called CDK or E emphasis, but the overall company would be called. Pardon me, it was so memorable I can't remember it. Vital Edge. I think If I sound ticked off, ron, I am because there is an opportunity here, with that many resources, with that kind of customer base, with the incredible knowledge that they have in the market, with that many customers, to be able to come up with something that would truly change the industry and propel it forward. And what we got was a name change.
Speaker 1:Let me not give them a pass, but give them a bit of a pass, in that all of the software suppliers that I'm aware of in this industry now are almost uniformly systems people. They have very little, if any, knowledge of the dealer operations. The second chapter of that is the dealers themselves don't make it easy for systems people. Remember the years at PFW, john, and even before you and Bob and Ross and Frank got into it. There were dealer conferences once a year and there were people like you running around asking and talking to dealers. The dealers were the people that were the developers of your software and you guys started to understand how the business ran the parts business, the service business, the sales business, the financial reporting, etc. Etc. Today, the dealer principal, the executives, don't know what the workers are doing. The workers' input is not being sought. The workers are frustrated because there's too few of them doing too much work driven by the profit motivation. This is an industry that is ripe for serious disruption, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Well it is. But the industry it's ripe for disruption, but there has to be somebody willing and able to disrupt it. I think that's the bigger piece and the opportunity was there. I had the good fortune to come across something in the last month or so that really has been flying under the radar. It's a golden opportunity and I don't want to put out a commercial for anyone, but I will tell you.
Speaker 2:Imagine taking a good software application, a stable software application and a lot like a barn find it's been sitting relatively dormant with a dozen developers on it that have had the opportunity over the last decade. Can you imagine the developers always say they never have time to make it right, to have the opportunity to fine-tune and make sure that it runs like nobody's business. It's like finding a 57 Chevy and a barn that was parked there and the fluids drained out and you get the opportunity to clean it off and that software is going to come out and that software is going to be released and it's going to be strong. However, it's going to be strong, stable and 10 years old. So what the world needs to do now is say, okay, so what do I do to take that piece of software, that good dealership management system that's tried, that's tested, that's multilingual, multi-currency, multi-country, that'll handle 99 divisions, that can spread across not just North America but across the globe. And what do I do to take that now and bring it into this time period I'm going to say this decade, I'm going to say the decade coming up and really it relies on ideas. It relies on the opportunity to say okay, I have a stable base now. What's my idea moving forward? What am I going to change going forward? I was talking to you briefly about a good friend of yours, alex Kraft. He has an interesting company that looks at an alternative way of providing technicians to be able to work on heavy equipment as kind of a stop gap, maybe not even, maybe it's the ultimately the way to handle a market where we don't have enough technical expertise and diesel mechanics.
Speaker 2:It was easy for me to poo-poo and say bad idea. The fact of the matter is we have had so many brilliant and game-changing disruptions that started with what essentially looked like bad ideas. And, ron, I can see the headlines now. Anderson says we need more bad ideas. Because that's what we need is, we have to have an idea to determine that we can flesh out and make it work and make it successful and make it different.
Speaker 2:When you told me about Peeve and I'm sure you can enlighten your listeners on exactly what your thoughts were on it my thought was this equates to the Uber experience, which, when I first thought about it, means I land in a strange airport, I call a stranger on my cell phone, I get in a car with somebody I don't know and they drop me off at a place I've never been before. What part of that sounds like a good idea from start to finish. However, we know the success that you've had at Uber now, and if you go to any airport in North America, I believe the number is 78% of the people that are arriving that are not at that home airport are using some kind of a rideshare service. Talk about disruption to the rental car market. Imagine what that happened Now.
Speaker 1:I'll apply that to.
Speaker 1:Hold that thought for a minute. When Uber started and they were the leader, they were the pioneer. A medallion in New York City cost a million dollars. So if you wanted to drive a taxi, a yellow taxi, in New York City, you had to pony up a million bucks. The drivers didn't have the million bucks. So what happened? The medallions were consolidated, owned by one person. He had 150 and he hired immigrants to drive who really could barely speak English. That was the target, if you will. So here comes Heath. Stay with technicians for a moment.
Speaker 1:And our view from the dealer perspective congratulations. They got 5% of the maintenance market that the dealers perform and they got depends on where you are and what your brand is between 8% and 30% best practices, market share and repairs outside of the warranty. The only place the dealer gets all the business is warranty, and the argument that they come back with now is oh gee, I can't find people, I can't hire people. Hey them, number one. The second piece of the puzzle is all these independents are out there. Alex has channeled their opportunity now where they can expand.
Speaker 1:So how many mechanics are there in the United States? How many mechanics are there in Canada, China, wherever you want to go that don't work at dealers. It's well over 80% of the mechanics that they're doing work on capital equipment, whether it's cars or trucks or tractors or backhills, and we're just fat, dumb and happy sitting here saying, well, I can't find mechanics. It's worse than that, John Cause. If they had mechanics, they don't have facilities. Oh, wait a second. We only work one shift a day. The building is empty for two thirds of the day, 16 hours. There's nothing there. Oh, but I don't have enough room to hire more mechanics. There's so much thinking that is defensive and Anderson wants bad ideas. I just want burn storming. I used to call it. Throw us football against the wall. Some of the most they, the bad ones, get to the floor. We've always had to have more bad ideas than good ones. We've got to fail more than we succeed in order to ultimately be successful. This is an unbelievably interesting period of time.
Speaker 2:But I think it doesn't require it, doesn't? We are living in a time period where we should see more bad ideas right now, and, by the way, with all due respect to Alex Kraft, the first time I heard it I thought this is a horrible idea. I'm going to take my most valuable piece of equipment, the one thing that I have that provides a livelihood for my company. I'm going to put a call into somebody, I don't know who's going to come work on this valuable piece of equipment. They're going to leave. I'm not going to see them do it, and what's my repercussion? Doesn't sound an awful lot different from Uber, does it?
Speaker 1:Well, stay with that for a second. What's interesting is the guy will be there tomorrow. You don't have to wait two weeks to get in.
Speaker 2:And he's certified.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, my goodness, how the hell did all of that happen when we weren't looking.
Speaker 2:And he sends me photographs, and he provides communication with me, and, and, and I mean so, bad ideas eventually become good ideas. I'll tell you, I woke up with one this morning, can?
Speaker 1:you imagine.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I've been ruminating on it all day long. So I'm going to give it to you for free and somebody can have it. And you know what, If one of those software companies, if one of those software companies that has immeasurable resources both locally and abroad, want to take this and run with it, I'm happy to help them. If you understood what we talked about last year all about the advent of AI and what was coming on with chat GPT and everything else that was growing you will notice that now that the hubbub has dropped a little bit, people are starting to figure out how to apply it, and any high school kid worth this weight can write what they call an automated chatbot using whether it's Microsoft chat GPT or Google's Bard or whoever you want in the background to run it, and they just feed it a certain segment of data elements.
Speaker 2:So in this case, let's take your work order history, your machine history and your customer file.
Speaker 2:We just feed chat GPT that information and then we also in their chatbot and we also take our number one service writer or number one and two service writer and we have them brainstorm for three days on every question that they get asked, every time a telephone rings and how they answer it.
Speaker 2:It's really that simple and within a timeframe of weeks not months, Ron we've gone to an automated service writer that will probably handle 90 plus percent of the inquiries that you get over the telephone. So dealer calls up and says I'd like to open a work order, and the chatbot knows what questions to ask what type of machine it is, how long is it gonna be here? Who's going to work on it? Where is it now? What's the hour meter reading? What's the critical failure? What are you seeing as a diagnosis? A good chatbot will probably come back and even start to give you things to check and then eventually it's gonna just tap into your business system, set up the work order for the customer, schedule it accordingly, and now the only thing we need to do is use those service writers is to deal with that top 10% of the issues that come with it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so stop there. Stop there. Forsyth Intelligence, dale Hanna's company, already has an app on the phone that's voice activated, that answers all those questions Today. It's been in use for months. So that, and it's a wonderful idea, and I'm gonna try and figure out something that we can call these Anderson's ideas of the day. We'll come up with a slick deal. Maybe it'll be an Anderson idea the month that you can promote. But where we are with that, here's another little crazy. So that chatbot, the high school kid that's in place.
Speaker 1:Number one, number two I was talking to a learning management company about three weeks ago. They said, ron, I can put four images of you up on the screen and I can have a conversation with each of the four of you and I will bet you money. You can't tell me which one is actually you. It is that good. We now have classes, john, that are artificial intelligence, using avatars that are real life people, coordinated mouth, closed caption, men, women from all over the world, young and old. It's almost like magic what you can do today. It's phenomenal. Now bring it back to the dealer network. I don't know of a dealer anywhere in the world that has 10% of their products that's coming in on the internet, do you?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't, but I know a bunch that should I know that it should work that way.
Speaker 2:Of course, I know that they should be bringing it in and I think the bigger challenge right now is you and I can talk about it and, yeah, some of it can be written. Maybe it's all written. And look at any of these applications. The question is they don't need to stand out there on their own. Where they start to gain traction is where somebody takes it and integrates it back into those legacy systems.
Speaker 2:I heard the term monolithic to describe them today, and that's not necessarily. I don't necessarily take that as a negative either, because they are critical infrastructure to a lot of these dealerships. Incidentally, you'll like this, they were going all the way back talking about DBS and Caterpillar, but the interesting thing is that DBS system at Caterpillar is probably not probably is the largest data repository that any single product line dealer holds historically and is the best predictor of everything from engine failure to future financial performance. Now take that and multiply it by every dealer you have, you know, under an umbrella whether it's under a software system umbrella or under a manufacturer's umbrella and you add that multiplier in there. The data and the intelligence is ridiculous. Now all you got to do is take one of these applications and integrate it into that data and it's literally world changing.
Speaker 1:So let me talk to the audience just for a moment. Can you hear the passion in John's voice? Can you imagine the passion that he brings to the business? And now I want you to think about the people that provide your software, your dealer management system, and find out on how they communicate with you, how they support you, how they give you the customer service, how they handle releases, updates to the software. It's a little different, isn't it? So we've got all of this stuff, the data analytics that John's talking about.
Speaker 1:Md Anderson, one of the major medical networks in the United States. A friend of mine is a director there and they've been digitizing patient history between the years of 2020. No names, just data. So when they're finished just what John said you go to see your doctor, you go to the lab, you get your blood work done, you go see the physician's assistant or whoever it is. They review the reports and they show you your age, your gender, your particular medical background and they compare you to the universe. This is what you need to do.
Speaker 1:Now we're talking about diet. Now we're talking about exercise. Now we're talking about sleep. Now we're talking about stress. It's all a manner of things. We know so much more today than we use. It's scary, and one of the other things that's out there that bothers me. Sarah Hanks is the proponent of this. She's the GE engineer who did manufacturing management and also does Six Sigma and process mapping, rascii charts, etc. We don't know how to do that anymore. It's the last time that you were involved in taking a phone is ringing on the counter in the parts department all the way through to the orders being shipped out the back door with all the intervening steps. It's been a long time, hasn't?
Speaker 2:it. It's probably been 15, almost 16 years since I went through the whole process, but I can tell you I'm going back and I'm revisiting it again, Ron, and I'll never apologize for being passionate about a position.
Speaker 1:Oh no, no, I'm just happy about that.
Speaker 2:And I just think that's.
Speaker 2:You know, I wrote a blog post a year ago or a year and a half ago about having a champion in your environment and having an evangelist in your dealership, somebody who was trying to promote change, somebody who was questioning, not for the sake of questioning, but questioning why are we doing it this way and is there a better way to change it?
Speaker 2:You know, I think in some of the software organizations and, let's be honest, I really only know two things in life, and that's software technology and the dealership marketplace. And if I put the two of these together, it wouldn't take long for me to tell you what customers are crying out for right now and what customers need right now and what they want right now. Because little to do with what you name, it has very little to do with who deploys it or how it gets deployed. They just want a solution that works and a new idea and something that's going to solve a problem for them. And I'll tell you what the first person to market that has a real application that's stable, that solves a problem, is going to win, not the guy with the best name.
Speaker 1:So let's go into a different direction DBS dealer business systems, then DBSI dealer business systems. Internet was born out of dealer data processing, which was 1965, a Delaware corporation inside Caterpillar dealer data processing department. It was a service bureau and we started with paper. The forms were four and six part long. The piece of paper was sent to Peoria, was key punched, data entered, reports were sent back once a week, once a day, whatever the frequency edited, sent back and reported. So that's where we started.
Speaker 1:And it is more now 58, call it 60 years later to taking a piece of paper, putting that format on the screen, not using a pen or a pencil anymore, but using a keyboard, and filling in that data. And that's what Alex Shusler and I call paper to glass. We haven't changed the damn process at all. Yet to your point, the needs and wants of the dealer are important. What are the needs and wants of the customer? When they call into that parts department, the phone is picked up. They want the answers to three questions in my mind have you got it, how much is it and how long do I have to wait before I can get it? Yet the first thing typically we ask them is who the hell are you?
Speaker 1:Because I got to put in a customer number. It's a different world today and the software, the legacy, monolithic, whatever the terminology you want to use I think we're going to end up with a bunch of specialty firms like Salesforce, like Target, like Foresight, like Heave, like Zintoro with Steve Clegg, special as SaaS, software as a service, like Text Out is doing with the rental business Very successfully, I might add, and that was a piece of the market that the legacy companies, the PFW, really didn't have the rental business going full bore before ADP purchased them. Tell me what legacy system has got a good rental package? Zippo, None.
Speaker 2:The one that's going to win the market is going to be the one that integrates with what is a lot more than just having a menu option on the screen that you click on that takes you to another screen that now is a different rental program. It needs to be a seamless integration with a heavy, heavy set of APIs to be able to make it happen.
Speaker 1:Okay, stop there. Api stands for Application program interface. Okay, so further the uninitiated. Explain to people what that is and how it works.
Speaker 2:So it's the way that one application works with another application.
Speaker 2:The best example I can give you is somebody who uses an iPhone and when they go to send a text message to you, they don't click on the contact and copy your name and your phone number and then go into the message and paste your name and your phone number and then go to a word processor and write what they want to say.
Speaker 2:There are actually three different applications, right? They go to the message. It uses an API and goes out to your contact database contacts type in Ron Slee it pulls it up, populates it with your phone number and then the next thing it says is what do you want to say? And it brings in a word processing document and that word processing document then lets you edit whatever text you're going to send or whatever text I'm going to send to you, and then, finally, the last piece that uses an API. That actually is the transmission piece, another application that sends it through the I'm going to say intentionally through the ether, whether it's the internet or whether it's direct pin-to-pin messaging or whatever way they want to do it, and it sends all of that information but to the end user, to the uninitiated, to the unwashed like me, all I did was type a message, and you need to know that there's four applications behind it that did that something.
Speaker 1:So you put in a name and you typed your message and that was the end of it. You can also put in your name and talk your message and that's the end of it. And all of that is in the background. So let me take it to Learning Without Scars for a second. The schools that we have as centers of excellence have mapped every single one of the products we have on Learning Without Scars into their syllabus so that when a student registers for a class at a school, pays the school the tuition, that particular item comes right across to us as a registration. Nobody sees it, nobody knows it. It's just done by technology, it's an API, it's beautiful, beautiful application that's been waiting for a long time. So, if we think about that, I need a repository I'm going to call it a central storage beast into which all this information goes and I'm going to be able to do my CRM. I'm going to be able to find a mechanic, I'm going to be able to get a quote, I'm going to be able to schedule a piece of labor.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be able to find my machine inventory, I'll know about my attachments and I can do that all by voice. I can do that just as easily as you just talked about with the text message, and all that data is in this huge depository of data and I have access to it without anybody knowing about it. We're at a place that I don't. I no longer need the monolithic anymore, I just need function. So I need a function of placing a parts order, I need a function of placing a stock order, I need a function of opening a work order, I need a function of finding a job code, I need a function of making a warranty claim, and that should all be automatic, simple and program, like the old days where you layer the program so it becomes a very different ballgame, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:And again, what it lends itself to is for things to be developed quickly, easily and effectively, because you're not having to navigate the monolith. You used the term, I used it, I don't remember who started it but you're not having to navigate the entire monolith to be able to get back and find out what made the change happen. You don't have to worry about somebody's affecting parts over here and is that going to affect accounting over here? And you can pull all of that together in one spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's really becoming possible. So here's you and I having this chat on the sideline, because neither of us are involved in decision making in that area, either at the dealers, or at the software houses, or at the specialists. Everybody's picking the ball up out there. I don't know if Vital Edge is going to pick up the ball. I don't know the constellations picking up the ball. Although they're adapting a little bit better these days, sap is not going to change.
Speaker 1:It's a really interesting. And how many dealers? Let's take it from that side. Take one of the largest dealers in the world, holt in Texas, close to $2 billion. Or let's talk a different way. Let's look at Canada. There's now two Caterpillar dealers in Canada. When I started, there were 10, and the Arctic was open. There's now one John Deere dealer in Canada. There's one Kamatsu dealer in Canada. There's one Volvo dealer in Canada. The United States has, when I started, 50 Caterpillar dealers. They're saying 15 is where they're going. Kamatsu is down into the 20s now. It's really an interesting world. All the dealers are saying, god, my sales are up. My sales are up. Well, sure, because the competition has gone away. Your territories are bigger, congratulations. But their market share is down by 50 percent. It's really something. There's a puzzle here about to be picked apart.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think the problem is it's already picked apart. There's a puzzle here that's about to be put together. I think that's probably the better analogy.
Speaker 1:I like that better because that means I'll be able to see it, which means I can critique it. If it takes too long, I'm not going to be here.
Speaker 2:If I do it right, I'm going to be in the middle of it.
Speaker 1:There you go. What do you think of my statement that the dealers are part of my problem, that the leadership of the dealer doesn't recognize that the people doing the work at the dealership aren't happy with how they do the work. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 2:I think the challenge yes and no, but I think the ownership of the dealer needs to challenge people to be able to come up with these questions. We've talked about empowerment for a long time. They need to challenge people to come up with this. But at the same time, we keep hearing and it was this year's AED again about the industry is suffering and it's dying and nobody wants to be part of it and anything like that. Well, who would be? Who would be? What you need is somebody who's going to say okay, I'm wanting to build a new dealership, I'm wanting to do something different, I'm wanting to introduce something that nobody has ever seen before. I really think that's where it's going to change.
Speaker 2:I think in the dealership. Again, if you hire somebody, you have to empower them to come up with a few bad ideas. I'm not asking anybody to bury the dealership, make them go broke, but have a few bad ideas and find out if it works. The fact that we think texting a customer is modern. We're modernizing our software because we can text you now or you can order parts online now. Look at us, ron.
Speaker 2:This stuff has been going on for decades, decades. I remember working with Syncrude when they wanted to have a remote terminal so that they could order parts themselves. It wasn't even an internet issue at the time. It's just somebody's got to get in there and challenge it, and then you've got to be prepared to take that challenge back to and this is the part where I get real passionate again You've got to take that challenge back to your system suppliers, and if they can't do it, they can partner with somebody to do it. Or if they've got so much money, they can buy somebody that does it, and then it just needs to be fully, fully integrated. And it's interesting because you mentioned Constellation and I've heard Constellation say how they're going to solve problems, and it's really simple they either build it, they either partner with somebody who's already built it to integrate it, or they buy it and integrate it. But either way you've got to be prepared to make that move. Nowhere in there did anybody say we buy it, and then we worry about changing the names.
Speaker 1:Let's go back to your Syncrude story, because I was competing with the dealers up there at that time and we used to call that terminal that you referenced at Syncrude a cash machine, because when it went in, all it did was allow Syncrude to place orders to the dealer. It didn't give them price, it didn't give them availability, it was just an order entry station.
Speaker 1:So, we went out and put a terminal right beside it that allowed them to find out if we had it and how much it was going to cost, as well as place the order. So guess what happened? We took a big slug of business because we were prepared to put the price out there and the availability out there from the other dealer. But stay with what you're saying the purchase, the partner or the develop. We used to have only one option the develop, and we did it with people Look at that quote and the original founders of PFW.
Speaker 1:They found a need, they didn't find a solution anywhere and they created it. And if I remember right, they were a John Deere dealer in Ontario, canada, which is in a merger with the emphasis in a company called Fertilege. And I don't know of any major change in the emphasis or CDK to the fundamentals of the parts business, the service business, the rental business or the sales business in the last 10 years. So let's go in a different direction. About 40 years ago the rental business arrived in North America. It's been in Europe and Asia for a while. Our geography was in the way, did the?
Speaker 1:dealers create the rental business. Hell, no. Who's the biggest user of supplier of rental business machines? Sunbelt, united Rentals, etc. The dealers that were in it had an inquis, ais, randice, others. They really got shuffled off. The buffalo Rentals are different business altogether. Why would we want to rent a machine when we can sell it and get all of that money? Ebs, the company that brought me into the States to run it. They were a service bureau. They had 450 dealers. Here comes interactive online systems. They didn't want to do it. As a result of that, they lost 400 of their customers before I arrived. The mission I was given is package this sucker so I can sell it and at least get out of here with some money. Rather than having an online interactive system, they chose to continue with the service bureau cash cow. Are we doing the same thing with the dealers today?
Speaker 2:I don't think we're doing anything with dealers today.
Speaker 1:So the cash cow is. It's about to be a sacred cow. Correct, sacred cows get shot. It's a really interesting time, john, and I don't know that there's a lot of people that are paying attention to it. I really like what you were saying. Every dealer right now, of consequence, should have a chief change officer, not just a chief technology officer or chief information officer, a chief change officer who's a process-driven maniac. Effectiveness, not efficiency effectiveness.
Speaker 2:And I think there's a clear difference there, and it's the opportunity to see beyond what you're doing today and what you've done for the last 10 years, and I don't mean change for change's sake, ron. There is an end user right now who expects far more than what any dealer is able to deliver, and I think what scares me is when those dealers start asking those software suppliers to deliver. It's fallen on deaf ears.
Speaker 1:In a blog. On Tuesday night, jay Lucas, who's the owner of Jordan Citter, wrote a blog called the Delusion of Culture, where organizations have either acquired territory or have acquired, or been merged or acquired and they got lost in the shuffle and now the culture of the organization is fraying. You got employees that aren't listened to anymore. Their opinions aren't being sought or listened to or paid attention to. Everybody just continues to do what they've always done, which has been the definition of insanity forever.
Speaker 2:And I will leave you with this. Have those people call me, because there is a revolution brewing. I can tell you, the last time we had this discussion, I think I was a donkey braying at a tin barn. I can tell you, there's people inside the tin barn that are starting to listen and I think it's going to be really important for people like you, like me, to carry on the message that says if you want to be around, if you want your business to be generational, if you want this industry to continue to thrive, because it is foundational to so many things it's time for a change. It's time for people to actually start asking, start demanding, and it's time for companies to start doing something different.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's use that as the circle that we end with today, that we're getting very close if we haven't already passed it to the point in time where radical, perhaps revolutionary certainly change needs to take place at all operational levels inside the supply chain, not just at the dealer, everywhere, manufacturer, dealer, the host match. Is that what your message is today to the folks?
Speaker 2:100%, 100%. If you're not waking up in the middle of the night right now thinking, oh no, we have got to do this differently, then that ship has already sailed. I mean, there is a fundamental requirement to change from top to bottom, and I'm not talking about just change your software or change your distributor or change your people. I'm talking about fundamentally going back and saying what is this business today and how do I morph to own it? What does my end consumer want? What does my employee want?
Speaker 2:10 years ago, 20 years ago, people were at a dealership for a lifetime. We've got a generation now that a two-year stint is just the next step to the next job and the next resume. So understand, how do you retain good people? How do you retain good customers? What are you going to do to your business that's going to differentiate it from somebody just buying it online, from a nameless, faceless person who's got the cheapest price and you and I might have said that was Amazon, but Amazon's done a wonderful job of personalizing everything they've done. I don't think they really know who I am, but, boy, they can pretend better than anybody I've ever seen. People are going to really need to rethink. Or the other answer is ride this train out for three more years and you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1:And the wonderful thing is the Amazon example is they looked at a market like Uber, like Heave, like Zintoro, like Foresight, and they found an opening. It was in books. The books that people wanted to buy were not on the bookshelf at the bookstore, so they had to place an order. So it was going to come in from. You have to wait anyways, and that's how they started, and it's not that long away. And then now look how ubiquitous the cell phone is. We don't change software very quickly, but somehow the cell phone is almost a fashion statement. If you don't have the S24, or if you don't have the I-15, or if you don't have the Apple Cherry Red or whatever, there's something wrong with you. And almost every week now I get a summary of my Android as to how many hours I was on the phone. It's getting embarrassing. It's really bad news.
Speaker 1:This week has been a normal week. Between 4 and 4.30 in the morning, I'm on the cell phone texting people all around the damn plant. I got a phone call this morning at quarter to six. Nobody pays any attention to time zones anymore. What can I do for you? I answered the phone in bed beside my wife, who's still asleep. This is not good, john. This is not good at all.
Speaker 2:It may not be good, Ron, but it's the world and be prepared for it.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's true. So this is a subject. I hope the audience has listened to this. I hope they don't just look at two old guys talking and whining about things aren't happening the way that they're supposed to be happening. This is serious. It's serious as a heart attack, and ignore it at your own risk, I guess, is the best way that I can say it. So with that, john, thank you very much, unless you want to put a nice little ribbon on the package and wrap it up for me.
Speaker 2:I do, and thank you for knowing that, because I can't get out without having the last word somewhere, and that is to all of my dealer friends, to everybody that's out there that's struggling with this, to the people that are as frustrated as I am, and even if you're not frustrated, take it upon yourself and demand better. I really think that's the issue right now. As long as the dealers stay silent and as long as the suppliers stay silent, as long as the manufacturers stay silent, this ship will continue to sink. Somebody needs to demand better, demand more and expect more. Aloha Ron.
Speaker 1:Aloha. What I'd like to say is we are settling, unfortunately, for two low performance. So thank you, John, and thank you everybody who's been listening to this Candy Conversation. I look forward to having you join us at another one in the very near future. Mahalo, Mahalo.
