Follow along as we enter the year 2020 and walk through equipment manufacturing’s hottest technology trends that we predict will have a huge impact on CAT, and other heavy equipment, dealers.
Heavy equipment dealers and manufacturers are realizing the importance of a strong and unified service department. In this edition of Field Force Friday, Adam reveals the biggest CAT dealer technology trends and what the heavy equipment industry will look like in 2020.
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For your reference, here’s a transcription of the video:
Hey everybody. Happy Friday. Welcome to another edition of Field Force Friday. I’m Adam Bartos. Thanks for being here. Today, I’d like to talk specifically about Cat dealers. Heavy equipment dealers, whether that be power or heavy equipment in the field. Why are we talking specifically about Caterpillar, you ask? Two reasons:
1. They are a robust heavy equipment organization. Like I said, they have power equipment systems for generators, they have heavy equipment for earthmoving and that’s something that applies nicely to a lot of heavy equipment dealers. You may be cranes, you may be something else, but it will apply.
2. We’re familiar with Caterpillar as a company. We’ve partnered with them and done some work with them as a field service organization. So we know where their head’s at. We have a feel for their business and their industry and where they’re going in the future.
First, where are they at today, in 2015. They have a huge, robust dealer network dealing with a lot of heavy equipment and end users. And all of those tools in the field require service. And those service technicians are manning things a little differently depending on the dealer. So, different processes, different service technologies, different technologies in the field itself keep things disjointed, although the product is fairly consistent. We’ve talked about streamlining dealer networks in previous episodes–so that point does come back and apply.
So, where are we going. We’re actually going to fast-forward in a time machine and think about 5 years down the road what a Cat dealership would look like in the year 2020. Bear with me; we’re going to go into the future. We’ll still need roads where we’re going….name that movie.
1. Internet of Things Connected Equipment
To begin, internet of things connecting equipment in the field. Fast forwarding 5 years, we see Caterpillar equipment machinery, generators, whatever the case using that embedded technology to record back to their dealerships or Caterpillar, the OEM. Why is that important? the equipment in the field that requires preventive maintenance, that requires repairs, that needs break fix type installations or repairs. The current data is managed if the user is on their business site and something breaks down and they can’t continue the operation. So I’m a construction manager and we’re managing an installation of a road or a highway and all of a sudden the equipment breaks, I’m experiencing down-time on site and I can’t continue my job. That’s lost efficiency, lost money, lost productivity, so that’s not a great thing. Internet of things connectivity devices will report data back to the office whether it be they need a repair, they need a diagnostic evaluation of the status of oil or levels of the equipment. And the dealer or Caterpillar corporate can use that information to maybe dispatch a technician proactively. If a machine says, hey, looks like some of these parts are wearing, we need to dispatch a technician in the field, so we’re going to do that immediately before any downtime occurs, so our customer doesn’t experience any loss in productivity. The other good thing is that those diagnostics can enable more sales. So if a bulldozer’s in the field and it says, these parts aren’t really working all that great, you can send a person into the field to sell some new service contracts, more parts, and enable more profit for your dealership.
2. Big Data and Predictive Analytics
We have binary code up here–a visual for big data and predictive analytics, more specifically. I talked about internet of things connected devices and feeding that data to the dealership. What do you do with all that data? Predictive analytics and software capabilities at the dealership level will enable you to become much smarter about what your systems are doing in the field. Getting that data from the field and analyzing it in the office whether that be through software or your own internal process, lets you become much more intelligent in the field. What parts aren’t working properly? What’s a design that tends to have more issues. Maybe it’s geographic location. There’s something in certain industries and certain regions that don’t perform as well. That becomes a useful bit of information because you can become much smarter about your equipment in the field. What works and what doesn’t. And, again, that all goes back to the customer experience and the downtime they encounter. If you can enable yourself to be smarter about that and what will break when, it’s taking this a step further. From, my machine is telling me it needs a repair to letting you know when your machine might already need a repair. So that’s a big value add for dealerships and something we see Caterpillar going to in the future.
3. Across the Table Service Initiative
The across the table initiative is something that’s been well publicized for Caterpillar and what they’re doing is taking all dealers within their Caterpillar dealer network, they want to make sure all of those dealers are doing service really really well. We’ve talked about this in spades. Service is a huge part of a heavy equipment dealer’s business. And they need to be doing it as well as possible because it’s a customer facing part of the business, it’s a revenue generator, and really, it’s where your equipment is being used the most; where you get feedback on your actual manufactured product. This is a really important part of the business process and not one to be ignored. The across the table initiative is having all the dealers look at, more intently, more carefully, at what they’re doing for service. Making their technicians more efficient, doing it smarter, going to the job with the correct information so they do the correct job. And that ties us back to all of this information here. Go to the job with the correct information. Know more about the equipment and if it’s telling you it needs a repair. and complete those with a good mobile app and software as a service tool. The dealer network, we see as adopting that in the next five years or so, many, if not all of them, becoming much better at that part of the business, and that equals huge amounts of profit for Cat and great things for the customer as well. So, all of these things working in tandem to make a better service organization.
4. Connected Autos and Fleet Management
This is something that’s more far out than 5 years–we’re talking about connected autos/ connected fleet management. Whether it be for service vans, bulldozers, whatever the case. We talk about self-driving cars often; this is the first step in that direction. A custom experience depending on your service technician. It could be live traffic rerouting. If you have a technician going out to a jobsite, there’s a traffic accident or something broken on the road, or come construction that is really going to delay that service technician getting to the end user, that connected automobile can reroute and get the technician to the job much faster. There are features that go with a connected automobile that would supplement your physical technician getting to the job more efficiently and getting them to the job in a way that they can manage it better. Tailoring that experience to that technician and getting them onsite to the customer as quick as possible is a way we can do that. And you’re already seeing with leading car manufacturers–Subaru, Ford–and the list goes on and on, they’re adding wifi and 4g capabilities to their cars, and that enables a whole lot of things, especially for the heavy equipment industry. Keep an eye on that. If we’re looking at more than 5 years out, we’re going to be talking hovercrafts, but not today.
You may be wondering, this was just four quick points about the future Cat dealership and again it can apply to any of your dealerships. You may be wondering, 5 years is not that far out. It’s 2015, 2020 is right around the corner, and that’s a good point, but our point is that many of these things already exist. It’s trending in the direction where many if not all dealerships are going to adopt these technologies, become smarter about their equipment, smarter about service, and better about data operations. Again, it’s all about that customer experience, and making you better at service as a dealership. This enables better profits, better sales, getting your technicians to the job at the right time with the right data quicker. It lets you do everything quicker and more with the same amount of technicians you already have. So you don’t have to change up your staffing level. You can service dozens more end users a day if you adopt these principles and become smarter about your operations. I know five years seems like a lot, but it’s really not. This has already arrived. This is just where the market is going. And this is where we see it being in five years.
Welcome back to 2015. Thanks for joining us today. Hope you had a good experience as we traveled to 2020 with our Cat dealers. That’s all I have for today. Thanks for attending another episode of Field Force Friday. If you’ve missed any of our past episodes, be sure to check our website that we’ll have on our last screen. And be sure to check us out next week. Have a great weekend!
