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The tech leadership realizing more than the sum of parts
Waiting on replacement parts can be more than just an inconvenience. It can be a matter of sharp loss of income and opportunity. This is especially true for those who depend on industrial tools and equipment for agriculture and construction. So to keep things run as efficiently as possible, Parts ASAP CIO John Fraser makes sure end customer satisfaction is the highest motivation to get the tech implementation and distribution right.
โWhat it comes down to, in order to achieve that, is the team,โ he says. โI came into this organization because of the culture, and the listen first, act later mentality. Itโs something I believe in and Iโm going to continue that culture.โ
Bringing in talent and new products has been instrumental in creating a stable e-commerce model, so Fraser and his team can help digitally advertise to customers, establish the right partnerships to drive traffic, and provide the right amount of data.
โOnce youโre a customer of ours, we have to make sure weโre a needs-based business,โ he says. โWe have to be the first thing that sticks in their mind because itโs not about a track on a Bobcat that just broke. Itโs $1,000 a day someoneโs not going to make due to a piece of equipment thatโs down.โ
Ultimately, this strategy helps and supports customers with a collection of highly-integrated tools to create an immersive experience. But the biggest challenge, says Fraser, is the variety of marketplace channels customers are on.
โSome people prefer our website,โ he says. โBut some are on Walmart or about 20 other commercial channels we sell on. Each has unique requirements, ways to purchase, and product descriptions. On a single product, we might have 20 variations to meet the character limits of eBay, for instance, or the brand limitations of Amazon. So weโve built out our own product information management platform. It takes the right talent to use that technology and a feedback loop to refine the process.โ
Of course, AI is always in the conversation since people canโt write updated descriptions for 250,000 SKUs.
โAI will fundamentally change what everybodyโs job is,โ he says. โI know I have to prepare for it and be forward thinking. We have to embrace it. If you donโt, youโre going to get left behind.โ
Fraser also details practical AI adoption in terms of pricing, product data enhancement, and customer experience, while stressing experimentation without over-dependence. Watch the full video below for more insights, and be sure to subscribe to the monthly Center Stage newsletter by clicking here.
On consolidating disparate systems: You certainly run into challenges. People are on the same ERP system so they have some familiarity. But even within that, you have massive amounts of customization. Sometimes thatโs very purpose-built for the type of process an organization is running, or that unique sales process, or whatever. But in other cases, itโs very hard. Weโve acquired companies with their own custom built ERP platform, where they spent 20 years curating it down to eliminate every button click. Those donโt go quite as well, but you start with a good culture, and being transparent with employees and customers about whatโs happening, and you work through it together. The good news is it starts with putting the customer first and doing it in a consistent way. Tell people change is coming and build a rapport before you bring in massive changes. There are some quick wins and efficiencies, and so people begin to trust. Then, youโre not just dragging them along but bringing them along on the journey.
On AI: Everybodyโs talking it, but thereโs a danger to that, just like there was a danger with blockchain and other kinds of immersive technologies. You have to make sure you know why youโre going after AI. You canโt just use it because itโs a buzzword. You have to bake it into your strategy and existing use cases, and then leverage it. Weโre doing it in a way that allows us to augment our existing strategy rather than completely and fundamentally change it. So for example, weโre going to use AI to help influence what our product pricing should be. We have great competitive data, and a great idea of what our margins need to be and where the market is for pricing. Some companies are in the news because theyโve gone all in on AI, and AI is doing some things that are maybe not so appropriate in terms of automation. But if you can go in and have it be a contributing factor to a human still deciding on pricing, thatโs where we are rather than completely handing everything over to AI.
On pooling data: We have a 360-degree view of all of our customers. We know when theyโre buying online and in person. If theyโre buying construction equipment and material handling equipment, weโll see that. But when somebodyโs buying a custom fork for a forklift, thatโs very different than someone needing a new water pump for a John Deere tractor. And having a manufacturing platform that allows us to predict a two and a half day lead time on that custom fork is a different system to making sure that water pump is at your door the next day. Trying to do all that in one platform just hasnโt been successful in my experience in the past. So weโve chosen to take a bit of a hybrid approach where you combine the data but still have best in breed operational platforms for different segments of the business.
On scaling IT systems: The key is weโre not afraid to have more than one operational platform. Today, in our ecosystem of 23 different companies, weโre manufacturing parts in our material handling business, and thatโs a very different operational platform than, say, purchasing overseas parts, bringing them in, and finding a way to sell them to people in need, where you need to be able to distribute them fast. Itโs an entirely different model. So weโre not establishing one core platform in that case, but the right amount of platforms. Itโs not 23, but itโs also not one. So as we think about being able to scale, itโs also saying that if you try to be all things to all people, youโre going to be a jack of all trades and an expert in none. So we want to make sure when we have disparate segments that have some operational efficiency in the back end โ same finance team, same IT teams โ weโll have more than one operational platform. Then through different technologies, including AI, ensure we have one view of the customer, even if theyโre purchasing out of two or three different systems.
On tech deployment: Experiment early and then make certain not to be too dependent on it immediately. We have 250,000 SKUs, and more than two million parts that we can special order for our customers, and you canโt possibly augment that data with a world-class description with humans. So we selectively choose how to make the best product listing for something on Amazon or eBay. But weโre using AI to build enhanced product descriptions for us, and instead of having, say, 10 people curating and creating custom descriptions for these products, weโre leveraging AI and using agents in a way that allow people to build the content. Now humans are simply approving, rejecting, or editing that content, so weโre leveraging them for the knowledge they need to have, and if this going to be a good product listing or not. We know there are thousands of AI companies, and for us to be able to pick a winner or loser is a gamble. Our approach is to make it a bit of a commoditized service. But weโre also pulling in that data and putting it back into our core operational platform, and there it rests. So if weโre with the wrong partner, or they get acquired, or go out of business, we can switch quickly without having to rewrite our entire set of systems because we take it in, use it a bit as a commoditized service, get the data, set it at rest, and then we can exchange that AI engine. Weโve already changed it five times and weโre okay to change it another five until we find the best possible partner so we can stay bleeding edge without having all the expense of building it too deeply into our core platforms.
