Dale Hanna and Ron talk about Technology and Dealerships

Well, let's talk about something we are actually doing together. We deal with dealer KPIs and we give dealer those KPIs. But one of the biggest problem you and I discussed was that dealer always want to know, what is that good? Yes, it's 73% about is that good? And so your years of experience and training and knowledge. And you were able to provide what is good, what is really good, what is really, really good. Would that be a good topic?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, we provided that to people. People said it was 73%. Are we doing well?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I think there are a few driving forces, right? Like you mentioned, you're very right. I think we were a little bit ahead of the time when we started this about 10 years ago. But now there are several factors and the dealers are substantially bigger. So the management approach are much more scientific from what we can see, right? Much more business-like. So those kind of sort of metrics and especially your knowledge of what do we do about it if it's yellow, it's not too great. What do we do about it and how much can we gain? I mean, if we're going to get to green, we're going to get extra, say, you know,12% out of this thing. And what does that mean? And is it worth the investment to do that? Right? I think that's definitely driving force. And the other thing, too, is that the pandemic, I think, forced a lot of things to change. And some of them are probably going to come back to the way it was. And a lot of things are not going to come back anymore. There's a lot more remote work and there's a lot more technology being used by people. Whether we don't nearly go to stores as much anymore from our personal lives, right? To use, to be able to look at things and know where it is. self-service, right? I want to see where it is. I want to see if it's okay. It's far less than going back to a whiteboard and doing a presentation the old way, far less likely to continue that. So I think the stage is better set for people to take a more serious look and to say, hey, this is the new way we have to manage it, right? So even from our company, our own experience, we drive towards much more result-based management. If people are remote, you know, there's no reason to pay attention to a lot of exactly what happens and all that. It's more what did the result get delivered. And if that was working great, I think, you know, that's great. And we can move forward.

Very much so.

so

Absolutely.

Absolutely. A lot of things can be done remotely. And, you know, I never undervalued collaboration. So you come to collaborate, then heads down. Sometimes that's the most productive way. Yeah.

I know. Yeah, that's changing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean. So accounting is probably easier to be done anywhere. It doesn't matter. You have scanned everything in and you pay your bills, you record whatever. A lot of those functions can be a lot easier. I see, you know, places like innovation is harder, even though Zoom can have meetings. Just sitting next to each other and sharing some snacks even. makes a huge difference in the speed of sort of new ideas sparking. Yeah. Yeah, I see that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we're thinking about, you know, even on our side, changing our office possibly. One of the suggestions is Can we all have tables that have wheels? So today I'm working on a project. We want to push five tables together. We can do that. And tomorrow we're not working on that's not the same team anymore. Then we'll go to another corner. We're good again. Yeah.

letting

No, that's such a good topic. So well said. You know, customers want to choose now how they do business with you. And they want to choose when to do business with you. And they don't always need you to be sitting there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. But we're also being trained, if I need something, I need something. I need something now. Okay? We get upset. What do you mean the prime? You can't do it in two days anymore. What do you mean? I'm used to it. Or click a button. I'm getting it in two days. So the technology behind it becomes more and more important to be able to drive that. So people have the same experience.

Absolutely.

It is crazy, but it's also human nature. That's how we want to be served. Yeah. We can't change it, actually. I mean, some stuff I buy, I want to know. I've set up alerts, so I know exactly when I left the warehouse and we got to Dallas. Do I need to? Probably not. But do I feel happier knowing it? Yeah. Why? I have no idea. It doesn't really matter because I already told you you're going to write Wednesday.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.

Yeah.

But

we

Absolutely.

Yeah, very much so. The way I look at history a little bit. So those things tend to sort of happen in the background in a hidden way until it hits a critical mass. Then it's going so fast. If you haven't started at that point, it's very difficult to catch up.

to

That's absolutely astounding. And in the beginning, it was very quiet. Right. And like Jeff Bezos talked about, he was pushing it in his little Volkswagen with a hopefully he could buy a little forklift. That was his dream. The acceleration is just amazing. So from what we see, the world is changing, even though some of them somewhat seem quiet. Right. Even even people doing business on Internet, it might subside even a little bit when the pandemic. It's better. People want to get out. But the general trend is unstoppable. And there will be a critical mass, which a lot of things already happen, like shopping, everything. Other things are going to happen as well. And if you're not on the train using your earlier thing, then there's almost impossible to catch up at that point.

being

That's a beautiful case study.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's such a beautiful story because you see Amazon is buying up Whole Foods to have local presence. Walmart is actually taking advantage of local presence, right? So I'm getting a lot of things from Walmart same day. So you think, okay, that's better than Amazon.

Absolutely. Now you look at the other side of the case study, right? Barnes & Noble. So if you talk about Amazon started selling book, Barnes & Noble trying to get online. And, you know, I bought stuff on Barnes & Noble online as well. And it's going to be an uphill battle. It just doesn't have the same experience. They don't have the same infrastructure. They can't deliver the same cost. It's just very, very difficult from what I can see. Walmart played well with their strengths. So it's going to be a pretty tough fight, which is good for consumers. But Barnes & Noble, I just watch stores keep getting closed.

Yeah, if you want to return it. One click, print it out. Next time a Whole Foods, drop it off, you're done. Yeah, that's difficult. And, you know, from a business sense, Amazon has been great, continued to innovate, innovate, innovate.

they

do. I come from the ERP world, right? ERP will continue to serve a purpose, important purpose, to glue some of the stuff together, payrolls and purchase orders. But just like anywhere else, in terms of technology, you have programs, that's going to do certain things substantially better than this aircraft carrier that can only turn two degrees at a time. It can't. And that's the nature of the beast. Not that aircraft carriers are bad, but they just can't turn that fast. And if you're doing business, we're talking about doing business speed attacks, then we're talking about, you know, people get response literally 90 seconds on average. And a lot of times you do need to turn. fast. And so what we see is the continuing focus on the connectedness. And that's true on the job site too. When we talk about connected job site, you have all kinds of things, great controls. You got, you know, machine have fault codes and you have drones looking at things and you got people recording time and each system is getting better. And if you want to build a system that does everything, now we know that trap. Yeah, I do everything, but I can't turn again. So I think what is going to be very powerful is basically a lot of things, systems that can do a lot of things well, and they get connected. So in a strange sort of way, that's sort of what Apple did, right? They didn't try to do everything, provide every app for you to use, and that did everything. They just let people do it and connect it. If you want to connect it, connect it and do whatever. Here's the platform. Here's underlying things you can connect with and have at it. And you see the innovation flourish at a speed that is unbelievable.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, from back to what's close to our heart, you know, dealer business and all that, we see the revolution coming. You can hear the rumbling already and how people want to do business in the future. It's definitely not going to be the same.

Absolutely. Amazon versus Barnes & Noble, Amazon versus Porter. Then on the other side, Amazon versus Walmart.

No, I think we covered really a lot of interesting technologically based advancement everywhere. I think that's going to continue to accelerate. So be on the train or there will be a pivotal point.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.