If Best Doesn’t Mean What You Think, What Does It Mean

I know Mets since like last six years, I guess. And we started working on the DMN since day one and since right before COVID Yeah, we started with very little with the code is everywhere. We had a very little vision and now it's a humongous, monstrous platform that does everything for the dealership. It have every single nuances, every single thing. So we did lots of things in six years. Looking back at it, it's pretty amazing. And Metz and I live like 20 minutes away are become a very good friend in last six years, so. And Ron, I hear about you here and there. So, so, yeah, it's, it's nice to, yeah, nice, nice to connect with you all. Yeah, yeah. And I, I'm from the, from the technical side. I'm from the IT industry. I consider myself as a learner. I'm still learning about the new stuff and it's a, it's a good time in the industry.

Are lots of things happening, as everyone knows, and, and lots of things going to change very quickly and very fast.

No, no, no. First, first step is always understanding what you want to do, right? Where you want to serve, what is the businesses. You don't want to drive yourself ahead of the business. Like if, if I'm looking for a pen, I'm not going to go and buy the entire staples, you know, like I just got to understand what we're looking for and then depending on that, we're going to use the technology to achieve this in a very efficient and better way. That's what it is for me. That's what the starting point is, understanding what we need.

It's an agile approach. You go Step at a time. You do small things. You work with Mets and maybe the client and let's see what they are looking for, are they happy? And then you just simply build on top of it. You don't think at the end line, finish line. You do slowly, steady, step at a time and building on each other. Like, let's say, I'll give you an example, you do three things and your mind. The third item is the best thing that you did, but the client might not like it. When Matt's going to try it, he might think that, you know what the second thing is the best. So you just have to go with what will be the useful and what would be the, the best feature for the client and how they can interact with it and how useful it will be rather than what you think will be the best. And you just have to build on top of it.

Just add to what Matt said. Just add to quickly what Matt said. The foundation is very important, right? So what you want to build, you want to make sure the choice of technology, the choice of platform, the foundation has to be solid. Then the requirement will change, you will grow the Software will grow but as long as the foundation is better, they're not going to cause you the financially and the mentally and the time wise is not going to give you the hard time down the chain. So that's what we learn on and that's what we as mentioned we corrected as soon as we realized this framework and the technology we're using, it's not going to be scalable. It might be good for now, but once we're going to have that many user base and the clients and the dealers might be problematic. We realize that and feature on right away.

That's a very, very important like it's just give you the like. In some scenarios when you have to make a decision what would be the right, what would be the best or what is important and what is not important where you know the business then you can kind of have like a little predict about it. And most of the time knowing the domain knowledge and the business knowledge will help you to, to make that decision right and better. And sometime you might think oh you know, this is not a big deal but sometime if you know about the industry and the domain and as a technical person this might not be a big deal but for the user who doing this thousand times a day for them it's a very annoying thing. Right. So understanding about the business and how they work their day to day life cycle, that would help. That way we can see the world in a different way.

We can see oh this might not be a small little thing, this will be an annoying thing for them and then we can approach it better.

Software?

It's a very. It's getting very expensive. You know, software is. People just understand software is, oh, I can just build it. They don't. They don't understand the nuances that comes with it. Like once you build it, then you have to host somewhere because software need a computer to run on, and that computer cannot be your laptop. It needs the secure place. It's like you have to either put it on a cloud or you have to buy the service and, and you have to regularly maintain it. Now the business who specialize in selling the parts, that's not their, that that's not their domain of business. And they might able to do it, but for them, they don't have expertise. They might able to build it themselves as well. But then they'll have to figure out or they'll have to hire someone or they have to learn or where I going to host this? Okay, now this technology is now redundant. Now I need to upgrade the technology. Like what it will take to upgrade.

So there are. And then there is a constant security threat. Okay, what happened if you're where you hosted your application, that server burned down, or there is some flooding in that area, like your entire thing will go down and if your software is go down there are 40 people how they're going to sell their parts, right? So most of the company what I realize is their business is not writing a software. Their business is selling the parts, right? So they either partner with someone or who are best at writing the software understand the business as well that how best way they can sell the parts like the DMS and they can partner with the visibility DMS or any other DMS or any other providers and then their job is to sell the parts. Other providers job is to make a software that will enable them to sell more and more parts in a very fast and effective way.

So there are very clear line and if you're going to do everything together, you're going to fail on both sides. So that's why I have seen that most of the company is just like do what they are best at and then seek other self who they are best at.

Like so when I. So when I said technology, technology is not just the writing a software. Like technology comes with you enter the door, you have the fingerprint. Like that's also a technology. You know, like you enter the door then you punch your card, you open your computer, your computer go back like you know, so technology is everywhere. So when we, I think this term get misused that it. It is not. Software development is different than the regular information and technology. It is different than the software developer. Software development is the own dedicated branch inside the it. Right? So now the company needs the IT people. They don't necessarily need the software developer or the, or the designer or something. They need the IT people for their day to day businesses like, like their punch card, their timesheet, their laptops management, their inventory management, their email management.

So you can get those kind of expertise and those are the very easy expertise. Then the software development. So I think most of the companies now have small set of those IT stuff to do this and manage that.

No, I think that's not right on point.

Yeah. That's just like AI how you're going to. Now we're going to go into this AI and all this modeling terminology. AI is nothing but going to help you or excel your task or achieve your goal in a. In a very effective and a faster way.

That's right.

So no one really set the criteria in a legacy CRM system. So legacy. I mean it's not even a legacy because AI is still evolving. So in a current and old CRM system where the person who operating the CRM who deciding that you know what like I haven't talked to Mets for a month. It's time to give him a call or oh, why this guy is not purchasing for last six months. Let me, let me just send him an email. So the guy who operating who making a decision who should go after and who should ignore now there are human mind tend to make a mistake or we try to lose focus when there are too much information given to us. Right. So the growing company where there are so many variations where you're going to miss Something you might going to reach out to 10 different people, but then you're going to miss all the hundred people which you haven't thought about or you completely lose track of. Right.

While the AI and those modern modeling software where you've given your data and you have to give it in a meaningful way that it can understand your data and then it act like a human, but like a thousand times more powerful than human in terms of that thinking process. So we might able to miss some of the dimension, but it never going to miss, it's going to figure it out. Okay, Nick purchased the groceries at this store 10 times in a like a 10 time in every week. But then he is not doing it for last three weeks. Okay, Nick, I'm putting him in a grocery bucket. Then he gonna create all those bucketing segmentization. Then he can target all those different variation just by your instruction so you don't have to do much. So that's the real power of the AI understanding your data and kind of like increase your sales.

use of AI you don't need to collect anything. It can figure it can scrap a data for you, you know.

Is that your data? And it doesn't capture it, it's just understand your data and until you need it. Then it can do the word is called segmentation. Then it can do the embedding and segmentation on top of it.

That's why you see all the memory size and everything is going super up because all this hyperscaler is buying all those memory chip to store all our data.

It's going to be stored there and just sitting there it's not going to. And when AI thinks that now this data, I need to read it to understand it better then. And then it's going to go and read it. Otherwise if, if you're not going to ask anything to AI to get a good meaning out of those data, then this data is no use of AI and it's just going to preserve it somewhere. I mean as a we, as, as a. We need to preserve it somewhere so later on the AI can go in and access those data.

You have to change with the time and you have to, you have to understand where the world is moving. Right. So if you, if as a company being rigid and you might get a success by doing things A right. And doesn't mean that you're going to keep doing things a and you will assume that, okay, I going to have this success all day long. The technology is moving, the world is moving, the people's mindset is moving. I might like to wear something five years ago. Doesn't mean that I going to like that like that sneakers or I going to like that, you know, pants and shirts. It's like our mind is changing. Right. So with that every company need to adopt. And the good thing is that sometime, sometimes change is very hard. Like you know, sometimes it's not only adoption is very hard, but to see the change is very hard.

Yeah. And when we go to the, some of the dealership and when we explain that you need this, we got lots of resistance in a very passive way. They don't say it but like we have to, we have to explain them why this functionality is useful to you. Why, why this is going to enable your salespeople to do even job in a very efficient way. Like we got some of the project where we have to build just the website and something. But we'll have to justify or we'll have to say that not only the website, you need certain elements that you know who are visiting your website and what they are looking at, what they are clicking on. I mean you want to build a website. So for you just the website is good enough. But sometimes we have to educate them that building a website is a one thing, but having those connection point, having those data collectors is another thing. Because that going to make you successful in the future.

We are.

I, I might gonna, by saying this I might gonna offend some people in some industry. But I, I've been part of many industries. I've been part of the health industry, the banking sector. The government and also the heavy equipment. But so far what I've seen, the heavy equipment is the least developed and least educated industry.

I think I would say the, the capital comes in the, you know, the, the corporation, the capitalistic world. I think didn't, didn't see or none of the big guys came into it and poured some money in to, to just to make it to the next level. And the person or the companies who are running those businesses who just seeing as okay, I just want to. If my thing's getting done, if my business is going the way I want it to go and not acceptance of the change. Right. You look at like the world of Microsoft, you look at the world of like the old phone industry, where they started and where they are now. And if you look at pick any of the heavy equipment dealership like 50 or 30 years ago, where they are started and where they are now, you're going to see that maybe they are like a huge company but you see the huge difference between the Microsoft and them. They both might be started at the same time or maybe let's just not just take the technology company.

Let's take like Facebook outside of the technology they are in the marketing business, right? Or take some of the banks, some of the heavy equipment company and those company maybe started at the same time from the same, same level of starting phase, same level of money. But now the distance is very wide because the other guy realized that putting money to the business is also a correct thing to do at some point. And sometime what I've seen in the heavy equipment industry, they don't realize or they don't see the real value in the piece of software that if you're going to say oh I'm building this and I need 100k and everyone going to look at you differently where you're going to go there and you're going to say oh, I need this machine and this machine is going to cost me 2 million. They were like okay, I'll give you 2 million, just buy that machine, right? So where do you see the difference?

Because they see the value of that machine and what they're going to bring to the table and they are okay to spend 2 million in just a matter of one second,

I think it's, it's changing. I mean the industry is little slow as compared to the other but it's changing for sure. It's just need, it's just need like the more companies to build a software or to come as a technology wing in this industry, right? If you don't have those provider, if you don't educate the dealership about that, okay, we can do this or we have this technology then how would they know about it? You know like I could have a car just my car could run like my car car could drive without a battery for 600 kilometer. But if no one tells me that or no one tell me that there is this is the car exists that can you never have to refill or you never have to do the recharge like for 600 kilometer. How would I know, right?

Machine doesn't like the manufacturer to build the machine they need to partner with the companies who put the sensor in. Now now that relationship is growing. I can see that it's happening, but it is just the changes just started. So once you're going to see all the manufacturer going to adopt to this. So they start with you having to have a good enough like a software provider in this industry once you have it, that create a healthy competition and not only the healthy competition but that just going to, that's going to educate the entire industry as well. Now there are only. I have seen in this industry there are two and three dominant market provider. Now they know that they are only two and three software provider. They don't feel urge of evolve. They don't feel the urge of like okay, let's do something new. You know, they are like oh my software is working. No one going to come up and take our market share.

So they don't feel the pressure, they don't feel the motivation to do anything. And that's where I think it got stuck for last 15 years.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. You have to invest in the future. You know, there is no simple answer but you have to see the future. You have to invest in the future. Otherwise if you do what you keep doing. Now I think the.

or no,

You're muted in the, in the world of AI like you, they can know that the AI will know your past history like the data it collect the data and what the, what the history looks like, what the analytics say. And based on that, it will predict you the possible outcomes. And that will help like you know, if you go to the older way then you look at you do the same thing. But for you to do the same thing you have to scrap through or you have to analyze so many details. And we, as I mentioned earlier, we as a human tend to lose focus when we given too much stuff at once, right? So it's first, it is boring and second, there's so much stuff and we have a finite amount of time and we have a thousand other things to do. So we try to lose focus. While AI can analyze your data faster will help you faster give you the accurate answer. So that's where I guess AI can help you as well, understanding your past history and the past data.

I mean AI will not, AI will not shut down. AI will change this landscape completely. Right now the person's job is to analyze the data. Either that person need to evolve like because this job is changing itself, right? You know, so you might ask that oh what this guy going to do who used to look at who is the best operator right now. His job, how to evolve. His job going to evolve of how I going to feed AI this data, how I going to AI going to give me this 10 recommendation doesn't mean that the first recommendation is always best. How I can understand the answer that coming back from the AI How I going to, how I going to feed more information? And so, so the job is changing, you know, like everything is changing now.

It can does that. I mean it.

Time will comes. Time will comes like within like it's near. It's sooner than we all, we all think where every machine will able to analyze and think about themselves. Like you, you like it will know that okay, now my old change, or now my. This service is due, and we'll let you know before then even you understand that this.

you want to call us.

And it.

I think I'll say don't afraid of the AI. AI is not here to steal anyone's job. It's gonna excel your job. If you were able to do something in a n number of times, now you're able to do it much lesser time and very productive and powerful way. So I think it doesn't have to be afraid, just like we have to be grateful that its technology is coming and we are in a front face of it.