Navigating the Commerce Landscape

Margaret Kelsey (00:47)

Today we're joined by Jamie Reid and Jamie Irvine–both from Parts for Trucks–to discuss how distributors are modernizing their customers' commerce experience, but largely also how to transform your business through community feedback loops. Here's the conversation.

Jamie Reid (01:05)

So my name is Jamie Reid and I'm the Vice President of IT for Parts for Trucks. I'm not sure how to differentiate myself from Jamie and Jamie, but we could do JR and JI or whatever works.

Jamie Irvine (01:20)

Yeah, my name is Jamie. Thing one and thing two, as they call us around the office. My name is Jamie Irvine. I'm the National Sales Director of Parts for Trucks.

Margaret Kelsey (01:20)

Jamie number one, Jamie number two.

Jamie Reid (01:22)

That.

Margaret Kelsey (01:29)

We’re going to get into the backstory of Parks for Trucks e-commerce journey. What did it look like in the before stage, let's say?

Jamie Reid (01:40)

Yeah, so as an organization, we had an e-commerce platform that we were using. It was an older platform that we knew wasn't going to take us to the next level. It wasn't a platform that was going to be able to bring on the new features and the expansion that we were looking to do at Parts of Trucks and to grow across coast to coast.

It just wasn't going to give us those things that we needed. So just about when I started, actually, the team had selected the Kodaris platform. And you very quickly can see that that platform was going to scale with us of what we wanted to do.

So we just spent some time figuring out what the customer experience was going to be. Think about how we wanted that journey to go from, you know, basically starting from search on the site to the purchase, and work through the project and decommission the old platform and move over to this newer platform. The timing of it was really good because we were doing an ERP project at the same time.

So I think that really is the catalyst that it was the right time to have something that was already integrated, ready to go, and was going to be a little bit easier, I guess, as an implementation that we could go live with our ERP and deliver an e-comm platform at the same time for all of our customers.

Jamie Irvine (03:06)

Parts for Trucks likes to do things big. We make acquisitions and double our size and we don't just do an e-commerce platform, we do an ERP at the same time.

Margaret Kelsey (03:16)

Yeah, the migrations of those are a little scary in my book, but I like the ambition of it all.

Tony Zakula (03:24)

I'll say that we did work for Parts for Trucks before Jamie R came on. And I met him at an NAW conference. He actually walked up to me and said, ‘Hey, I work for Parts for Trucks, and I'll be working with you.’ But I'd say that starting that journey, we had talked. We had done some implementing before he got there.

And then we're going to talk a lot about things that go well, things that don't. I'll say what I appreciated about Jamie when we started working together is a clear plan, clear expectations, the relationship. Not everything goes perfect, that's normal. We're gonna work through it, we can get this done, both with my team, but also working internally with the PFT team. You know, we couldn't ask for a better partner, a better person who's, I mean, it's big, right?

When it gets big, it gets a little chaotic. And so just having people stay focused, work through it, we're both working at it. I'm gonna throw that out there before we get into everything else that I've really enjoyed it. I love working with the Parts for Trucks team.

Jamie Reid (04:38)

Yeah, and we felt the same, like the responsiveness of the team and the ability to explain what it is that we were looking to do. You know, having that team be able to come back to us and say, yeah, that's a good idea, but what about this? Or, you know, yes, let's move ahead with that. So I think it was very iterative.

And in all honesty, the e-comm site was not the big thing that we were trying to do. The ERP was what we were trying to do. The e-comm was just icing on top of the cake that we were trying to get done at the same time. So sometimes it did take a little bit of a backseat and, you know, but Tony's team and the Kodaris team continued to pull through for us and deliver it and let us focus on the ERP side, you know, and not take our eye off the big ball.

Margaret Kelsey (05:31)

You mentioned that the previous e-commerce solution wasn't going to work. Are there a couple of bullet points of why it wasn't going to work? Was it about scalability or was it simply the integration with Infor or…?

Jamie Reid (05:45)

I think the integration was a big piece. I mean, it was integrated, it was there. And I didn't have a lot of experience with that older platform. But from what I saw, I don't think that it had the UI that customers were going to be looking for.

From the integration side, what I feel like as Kodaris is continuing to maintain that strong relationship with Infor, to then understand what changes are coming. And we were moving from an on-prem ERP to a cloud ERP. And so taking that older platform and trying to hook it up to a modern ERP in the cloud, I feel like we would have run into a bunch of problems and we would have eventually gone back and had to replace it anyway.

So jumping to this, that had kind of that user experience, had that connectivity, the modern architecture, to stay in touch with the data that's flowing back and forth. To me, that was a…you know, no questions asked. Let's just move ahead.

Margaret Kelsey (06:47)

So, Jamie, you have a background in consulting and the industry, what were you seeing in terms of commerce, e-commerce solutions, from that broader industry context?

Jamie Irvine (06:57)

Yeah, I think..one of the big problems that a lot of companies North America-wide have had is they've invested a fair amount of money and time and effort and energy and resources into an e-commerce solution. And if they don't take the time to ensure that that platform selection at the beginning is going to keep up with the business needs and, more importantly, is going to meet the expectations of the customer.

Then they can be very frustrated with the overall results that, you know, onboarding customers, getting them to continue to come back and use the site on an ongoing basis. All of that can be…really the results can be diminished quite a bit by selecting the wrong platform. And so you really have to have a good roadmap of where you're going in the future to be able to make that choice.

And I think that sometimes what I've seen with companies is that they almost rush to decision on the e-comm and all these other issues become a real problem. Instead of taking the time to map out the strategy, plan where you're gonna go, map out the needs and then find a solution that's gonna fit within that framework.

So definitely anybody who's listening right now that's going through that process, I would highly encourage them to take the time to build the map of where this thing is going. What does it look like when it's done?

And then work back from there prior to investing a lot of time, energy and resources into a platform choice that inevitably isn't going to work.

Tony Zakula (08:35)

I'll add to that, I couldn't echo that more. And I know I'm a little biased but my team asked me, or people asked me, what do we sell? And I say, well, we're selling the future. And to your point, it's about what are we gonna need in three years? Five years? And for distributors, you're selling, technology's become a service to your customers.

That's not a widget you're charging for, but it is an additional service they expect you to have in the future. So if you don't have something that's going to scale with you in the future, you're going to, the cycle is you get stale for three years, you look for the next platform, you get stale for three years, you look for the next platform, right? And it's a cycle. And distributors are unique. The needs are very unique, which makes it exciting, but also challenging.

And we'll talk more about that, I think. How do your customers work with you or want to work with you? And then you're selecting a platform to service that, not the latest and greatest features on the market.

Jamie Reid (09:43)

Yeah, and I think that came part and parcel of the selection was that, it wasn't just an e-comm platform that we were looking to sign up for. There's other things that we could see coming on the roadmap and you know, the Kodaris team was continually evolving and understood the distribution environment.

And things like having a mobile app or having other pieces that are considered already paid for when you bought the platform is definitely a big perk and there's not the surprise bolt ons of, you just have to add this and give us a little bit more and we'll add this piece.

So it's part of the platform that you're getting, which was great.

Jamie Irvine (10:26)

Yeah, I'd like to add onto that because in the years that I spent consulting prior to joining Parts for Trucks, one of the things that I saw was people kind of getting sucked into the sales pitch from other platforms. Like, look at how many integrations we have. And it's like, okay, great, but have you really mapped out what the cost of each one of those integrations is going to be? And all of a sudden you get this software creep and your costs start to spiral.

And you, and then you realize also that you're now dependent on an awful lot of different moving pieces to make this thing work. And one thing stops working and then the system starts to break down. So I think it's also very important to look at the overall picture and be able to identify the solution that's going to bring you, I guess, the most upside with the least amount of pain.

Margaret Kelsey (11:15)

Tony, do you have thoughts on that?

Tony Zakula (11:17)

I have a lot of thoughts, you already know my thoughts on that. No, I think, you know, Margaret’s making a joke because I always tell her I hate marketing people.

[laughs]

Margaret Kelsey (11:31)

Except for me. You used to say except for me.

Tony Zakula (11:35)

Except for Margaret.

Margaret (11:37)

Lately, when he makes that joke, I haven't had the exception, so I'm a little worried now.

Tony Zakula (11:42)

I think it's when, you know, and I make the statement we have, I don't know what we're up to now, 80, 85 engineers and five business people or, you know, six business people because we're all about the product and whatnot. But I do think, and I know we're going to get into it, but mapping out what you want your platform to do now and into the future.

You know, one of the huge mistakes I think people make is, when they're listening to e-commerce sales and marketing, is it doesn't matter because if Margaret was to go buy something on Amazon and say, I'm going to charge it to Tony or to Kodaris because I think we need it, I'd be like, well, you can go follow our business process. So there you go. You're up for firing.

But yet, as when you're listening to e-commerce pitch, it's like, well, we want to suggest, we want to get people to buy more, except they have a business process to follow. So lots of times I see some companies just driving and driving and saying, why isn't this working? And it's well, because your customers would be fired if they did what you want them to do. So it's never going to work, right? And that's what makes distribution interesting is it's not that impulse buy. It's not that.

It's more that business buy, business sale, business sales cycle, operationally. And so the tooling is much different, even though some of it's the same. Or if you go to the consumer, it's different. It's like consumer, but almost all commerce companies start in consumer and try to go into B2B. And I would say B2B and distribution is much more complex than the consumer. And it's easier to go from that space into the consumer that is backwards.

Jamie Irvine (13:35)

I tell just a very short story about that, that I think really illustrates the point. So, you know, if you buy something on an impulse buy on a consumer site, it's got an easy return button, right? Well, my daughter's 21 now, but 21 years ago when she was a newborn baby at home, I was quite sleep deprived and I was in purchasing at the time. And I accidentally ordered 200 of something instead of 20. And it was a very large ticket item, and I almost bankrupt the company.

And ironically, it's how I figured out that I could sell, because the owner came to me and said, you made this mess, now you’ve got to fix it. And I sold all 200 in the shortest timeframe that they had ever seen of that product being sold. And we got ourselves out of it. So it was a happy ending, but it just shows you that the stakes are so much higher in a B2B environment.

And if you make an incorrect purchasing decision, if you make an incorrect infrastructure decision in your business, it can have widespread effects that can be really devastating to your company. So yeah, I agree 100% that the stakes are much higher in B2B.

Margaret Kelsey (14:40)

That's like nightmare inducing. That's a nightmare inducing story, by the way. That could happen to any young parent.

Tony Zakula (14:44)

But it proves that when you're motivated, you could do a lot.

Jamie Reid (14:50)

Yeah.

Jamie Irvine (14:50)

That's right. That's right.

Apply the proper motivation.

Margaret Kelsey (14:55)

Well, and I know that we've mostly discussed this on like a technological fit or this idea of the right innovation for the challenge. But the under layer here is really like what do customers of distributors want in their buying experience, right? So–this is going to be something everyone can chime in on–how do you go about figuring that out? Like what are your customers’ changing processes, and what are their changing desires, and what do they think is table stakes now that maybe you haven't been offering?

Jamie Irvine (15:29)

I think we've taken an extremely innovative approach that is very complex and–no, I'm joking. We went and talked to our customers. How about that? We got every salesperson to go out and sit down with their customers. And we came up with a list of about 15 questions and we just said, look, don't, don't go and grill them. Just go have a conversation with our customers, find out what they're struggling with, what they like about other platforms, what they like and don't like about our platform.

What would they like to see? Where's the pain in their current process, right? We just went and had conversations with our customers and we made a very simple feedback loop for the salespeople to communicate back to our e-commerce team. And we validated some of our own assumptions that yes, we're on the right track. These are things we need to prioritize. And we learned a bunch of things as well that I think has started to have a real impact on our sales results and really helping our customers to be more successful with our platform. So that voice of the customer, I can't emphasize the importance of that enough. It is so important. And just go talk to your customers because they'll tell you more than probably you realize what they'd be willing to share.

Jamie Reid (16:42)

Yeah, I thought it was interesting. You know, when we first started, we took a crack at what we thought the customer needed and it helped us get started. But we quickly realized after, you know, Jamie had his team and the folks to go out and talk to the customers that there were definitely some things that we missed.

And I think making sure that you don't just take this internal view and think this is what the customer needs, and to make sure that you do go out and it was very insightful to hear and actually be on the calls. Jamie and I would get on a call in some of the cases with some direct customers and actually ask them, what's going on? How did that experience work for you and what could we do to make that site better for you and make your job easier? And so it was very interesting and insightful just to be with them.

Jamie Irvine (17:35)

Yeah, and so people understand the step-by-step that we took there. So Jamie Reid and myself and another manager on the e-comm team, we piloted the voice of the customer project first. We personally went and talked to some of our users.

And once we went through that process and we fine tuned the step-by-step process that we followed, and we also were able to see the immediate results. Then we were pretty confident that we could roll it out to the rest of our sales team, and that if they went and did the same things that we had just done, that they would be able to achieve similar results.

And so we gave them a six week timeframe to really focus on this and to go and interview as many customers as possible. And now that project has come to an end, it's part of the ongoing efforts–our regional management team works with our salespeople to have those ongoing conversations with all of our customers and to collect the feedback on an ongoing basis, because it's a dynamic world and things are always changing. And we don't want to hear about it six months from now, we want to hear about it today.

So if there's something new, if there's something coming up that we're starting to see in different parts of our regions where our customers are, we want to get ahead of that curve as quickly as possible to meet the customer where they are today and not be reactive. And the only way you're going to accomplish that is by actually having this systematic process in place to collect that information.

Margaret Kelsey (19:10)

And it feels like it kind of has to be top down, right? In order prioritize the extra time that it takes to–I know we were joking, but it is actually It's a normal problem that folks have to not talk to their customers. So it feels like it has to kind of, carve out top down, you need to make this a priority. Here's a system in which to do it, right?

Jamie Irvine (19:31)

Yeah. And, and well, I think we took a relatively simplistic approach to it. Where I think we excelled is we applied a very systematic methodology behind it. And so it's one of those old sayings like, common sense isn't always common practice, right? So if sometimes you just take the common sense approach, you put it into practice and you take that systematic approach, then you're going to get the result. And I think that that's an important part of it.

And sometimes for whatever reason, sometimes people in leadership shy away from talking to customers directly. But I just can't emphasize the importance of it enough, because it's one thing to have one of your salespeople tell you, our customer said this. It's another thing to hear the customer, to hear the inflection of their voice, to hear the frustration or the excitement about something, right? You’ve got to be able to capture that.

And when you can, as an e-commerce team, when we started to collect that information and we could read quotes, we could talk about the personal experiences we had. I think it brought our team a little closer together as well because it united all of the different aspects we were working on this project, and brought us all together with this common, okay, we have to help our customer. And now we understand a little better the importance of my role and Jamie Reid's role and our other people on the team and their role. So I think that was one of the byproducts of it that has been awesome.

Jamie Reid (20:52)

Yeah, we also spent some time thinking about it ahead of time. As Jamie mentioned, we had the set of questions, but we also put together the proper reporting on the back end. So that once the actual items were resolved or, we went in and we actually made the changes to the system, we were able to see tangible orders coming into the system and actually tabulate what did that sales call actually get us. And so that gave us that extra, bringing the team together and rallying the troops that they said, ‘Jeez, it actually does make a difference.’ So we were able to demonstrate real results and not just anecdotal ‘Jeez it was great to get out and talk to the customer.’

Jamie Irvine (21:36)

Yeah. And there's something called the law of diffusion of innovation. And it's a simple bell curve, but it breaks up human behaviour into about six categories, starting with the earliest adopters, all the way through to the lag groups. What I saw in my sales team, is I saw a few early adopters really jump on this. And guess what? We can correlate directly their attitude and their proactive approach with sales results.

And now what we're doing is we're taking those early adopters’ successes and we're sharing that as social proof with the ones who are a little later to come on board with things. So now we're starting to get buy-in from a larger percentage of our sales team and, hopefully as they have success, then you know, the laggards, the people who are sometimes a little skeptical, a little slow to come on. They'll start to see the success everyone else is having and say, ‘Hey, I don't want to fall behind.’ And then they'll come on board as well.

I don't think that's a bad thing. That's just normal human nature and human behavior. And I think, as a leader, you have to understand that and work that system and just kind of, instead of working against human behavior, work with it.

Tony Zakula (22:40)

I'm interested because when we talk about people, talking to their customers, early on in Kodaris, I actually went and talked to our customer's customers, visited them, listened to them, because I had to grow adoption with my first customer. Otherwise, maybe this doesn't work, we're not continuing, right? So I'm being a logical guy, just, how am I going to sell this? So I just went in and sat down and said, so how do you create a purchase order? Logical question, like how would you buy from us?

But you know, as sales folks, sometimes they're afraid of losing the relationship. And we see this across industry. They're afraid they're not going to get paid their commission. And their incentives are based on product sales. And so the reporting is a great idea, because if you could correlate that–and the good sales reps get it. Early on, there was one sales rep. said, the first thing I do is put my customers on e-commerce, because I can handle more large customers, make more money. Like he put it together really fast, right?

For the slow adopters, did you consider incentive programs or making it part of the commission or other things? Because we see it across industrial distribution in all industries who are trying to drive this voice of the customer, tell your customer about the website, tell them what they can do.

And maybe it's educating them to sit down and ask questions, but maybe they really can't talk to the AR person or the purchaser that well because they're used to lines of parts, right? What challenges did you have or what things do you see or others who might be struggling with just getting their salespeople to go do this? Any thoughts, advice on that? But I know there's lots of those people out there.

Jamie Irvine (24:33)

Yeah. Well, Jamie Reid maybe, I don't know if you want to talk about maybe some of the history that you're aware of, and then I can talk about what we're doing today.

Jamie Reid (24:41)

Yeah, I mean, I think it really came down to getting it out in front of people and helping them understand, you know, this is where the business wanted to go. I mean, this is where we are headed.

And to Jamie's point about the laggards and, you know, having a positive attitude and making sure that you're focusing on the tool that we're looking to take us to the next level. I think that was important for us. I think historically, people were definitely used to that older platform. They liked it. They felt comfortable with it. And of course, change was a difficult thing for them.

And this new platform, Jamie Irvine had to spend some time with some folks and help them understand that the platform isn't scary, it works. And it's in a better spot, I think, than where we were. And now it's education and helping them kind of take it to the next level.

Jamie Irvine (25:39)

Yeah, and I think that–salespeople, they're very busy. Especially our type of salespeople, that most of them are in a sales account management role. So they're responsible for a lot of different aspects about the account and they're kept very busy. Sometimes they become mobile parts departments in their vehicles and they also become delivery drivers and they’ve got to do whatever they’ve got to do to take care of the customer.

So I think some of the salespeople were operating on some old information and they didn't realize how much advancement and improvements had been made to this new system over a period of time, relatively short period of time, just a few months. And so I think some of that was a bit of a re-education process with the salespeople.

We also are wanting to build incentives to grow what we call our digital sales channel. So there's been a lot of conversation about the importance of the digital sales channel, what it does for our business, what it does for our customers.

And I think as we move forward, we understand that motivated salespeople go where the incentives are. And so we do know that we're going to have to continue to incentivize our salespeople to put a focus on this. But I also think that as they see some of the shifts and changes in the demographics in their areas of responsibility, they're going to see some of their older customers retiring.

Purchase agents, you know, people who are responsible for making buying decisions who are used to doing it the traditional way, are going to leave. And there's going to be some new people coming in. And it's not just the fact that there's an age difference, you know, it's not just an older person leaving and a younger person coming in. It's actually a productivity issue. And so in our industry, we have demographic inversion. We have way more older people who are about to retire than we do the next generation. And then it gets worse as the age gets younger.

And so what happens is, you might have three or four really experienced people at your customer leave and there's one person now to do all of their work. And so then, even if that person hated digital tools, they absolutely would adopt them because there's no possible way to scale themselves anymore in the traditional way. And so I've seen this all over the country where customers all of a sudden, just like overnight, they just change their whole buying behavior.

And it's a response to a number of really experienced people who were very comfortable in the traditional distribution model leaving and one or two people having to do the work of a lot of other people. And so we wanted our salespeople to be incentivized to get ahead of that curve, and to be ready to very quickly respond to our customers who, maybe themselves are laggards and not really adopting technology. Whenever that switch gets flipped, we want to be ready.

So I understand that for my sales team, we're going to have to build incentives, we're going to have to do training, we're going to have to do coaching and make sure that our sales team is ready to capitalize on those opportunities when they arise, as well as capture the customers who are ready to go today.

Tony Zakula (28:46)

That's really interesting, and the point of you have to be ready is interesting. Because I know early on working with our largest customer, adoption was very slow. But we had to be ready because this is going to be the future. I've heard the CEO of ABC supply in the US say, ‘You’ve got to be ready because when that switch happens, you're gonna lose them for 10 years if you're not ready and you're not there to meet them.’

So it's definitely there, but being ready also takes leadership to say it may not seem like it, but this is where it is. Like, to Jamie R's point earlier, this is where the future is. This is where we're going. And everybody has to believe it, even if they don't see immediate results. We're all looking for those immediate results, but they're not always there all the time.

Jamie Irvine (29:37)

Yeah. And I can tell you a quick story about that, where it happened in real time. So one of my clients down in the States, they're a manufacturer and one of their best distributors was in the parking lot next to them. So buildings were side by side and the previous purchaser for the distributor, he would just walk over and he would hang out with a few of the guys in the warehouse and they were good friends and he would place his purchase orders and pick up all the parts and bring them over. He retires on Friday.

On Monday, they get an e-comm order, and they look at it and it's from their distributor next door. And they've never seen that purchaser step foot in their plant ever, but he places lots of orders on e-comm. So if they weren't ready, when the customer was ready to come on, then all of a sudden that business would go somewhere else.

Now I have another story that's very, very similar. They weren't literally next door, but they were about six miles apart and they lost the distributor because–this is a different client–and they lost a distributor because when that switch flipped, they weren't ready. And the distributor just started buying from whoever it was easiest. And so the salesperson went in and sat down with them and interviewed them. And they said, ‘Come on, like we've been doing business for like 40 years. What's going on?’ He said, I want to do business with you, but I can't ‘cause I can't possibly keep up with the load. So I have to hit the easy button and your competitor has created an easy button, despite the fact that they're like 250 miles away.

So. Yes, geographically we're close. Yes, we have a 40 year legacy business with each other. I can't get it done. What do you want me to do? So I think those two stories are, and those aren't outliers to me, those, mean, those are really great examples of what we're talking about, but that kind of thing principally is happening all over North America.

Tony Zakula (31:27)

Absolutely.

Jamie Reid (31:28)

I think also if we, you know, I'd be remiss to not talk about from a technology perspective or from a responsibility of data, like that is key in order to be ready. And it's one big, I wouldn't say that we didn't know it. We knew it. And a few of us knew how big of a project it would be, but making sure that your data is set up and it is clean and proper will help, kind of, grease the wheels for everything going forward.

We are embarking on a huge project right now to take our data to the next level, to be ready. And I guess I was thinking about it because you said, Tony, but you know, everybody wants the quick fix. This isn't a quick fix. Like we've got, as we talked about, we've got people exiting the business, you know, excited to retire. And they're the ones with all the knowledge. Like they're the ones with all the supersedes and this part goes to this part and this part is only for this application, not this application.

There's a lot of institutional knowledge that is getting ready to walk out the door and we've got a lot of younger people and even mid-aged people that don't understand. I don't understand parts like that's not where I'm at, but it's very important to have the data right.

What is the right description? What are the right supersedes? What are the right attributes? And getting that voice of the customer, that when we sat down with them to be able to give them that shopping experience, to give them the right attributes, to be able to pick a break drum and go through the size and the pilot diameter and the number of holes and kind of that experience.

We wouldn't, I mean, some people knew that shopping experience, but we needed to convert that into data and enable that experience to happen online so that your purchaser could then click a few buttons, zero in on the stock order that they want to order and click buy. And so I think that's the connection of that data technology and people and process that we kind have to put together.

Jamie Irvine (33:41)

My mentor in parts used Cardex to manage inventory. And if you don't know what Cardex is, it's literally a card with the part number and you write down, I received 12 today. And when you sell one, you write on the card, minus one, now I have 11. That was what my mentor, that's how he grew up in the parts business, right? I grew up in the parts business where all of our tools were on premise.

And now we have moved to online, but even more so than that, the younger generations aren't going to memorize things. They're going to learn how to find things. And so if you have good data, you can use tools to find the answer very quickly. And I know as someone who's built most of his sales career in heavy duty parts on not necessarily knowing everything about that part, but knowing where to get the answer quickly. This is going to be one of the skillsets that is absolutely critical.

My niece was at our house last evening and she was doing homework. And she was really struggling with biology and it was just a single PDF and they wanted them to identify a bunch of the parts. And she just uploaded the PDF to AI, the AI filled in all the boxes for her. So does she need to memorize that or does she need to know how to get the answer? And I think that illustrates the mindset of the younger generations. And it's just going to become even more prevalent as generation alpha enters the workforce. So, uh, where are you going?

You have to have really robust, solid data and you have to own that data. You have to be very careful of, as a distributor, it's very easy to just say, hey, manufacturer, give me your data, but you don't own it. So you gotta find ways of building that data internally so that you control it and you're able to provide your customer with the best experience. So that becomes a differentiator in your value proposition to your customers.

Jamie Reid (35:31)

And just on that, you know, sometimes we've reached out to our vendors and they don't have the data. So that's even worse. And then you've got to build it yourself. And it's surprising. It's surprising to see that people don't have proper descriptions or worse data than what you had. So anyway, it's been a learning that we've had to go through.

Jamie Irvine (35:51)

I got a great one on that one. So, I worked with one manufacturer and they had two different production lines and unbeknownst to them, they were producing over a hundred parts identical on the two lines. And they had no idea because one team had crossed it using one original equipment manufacturer’s data and the other team crossed it with someone else's.

So a hundred parts are going down this production line being manufactured and they're identical, and they're just under two different part numbers. And when we uncovered that in my consulting time, that manufacturer was just blown away. They could not believe that that had happened. So when I tell that story, people just don't believe me, but it's true. And it's a good illustration of what Jamie Reid's talking about when it comes to manufacturers and the quality of their data.

Tony Zakula (36:38)

Yeah, think data and process, one, you're right. On product data for sure. I think what we see in the industry is also your pricing. Data and process, right? Your pricing has to be right. You have to have your customers’ pricing right. And it can't be that you're fixing it when you invoice them. It's got to be upfront, real time.

Even when you're looking at what people expect now online, your inventory, was it up to date? Are you receiving all throughout the day, is your receiving happening, are your lead times there? Because a customer will make a real-time buying decision, I don't need it tomorrow, and they're going to have it tomorrow, I need it next week, I'll go ahead and buy, because I can wait on it, or I can't wait on it. All those things that we do internally, operationally, now the customer expects to see our operations up to date, real-time. They want to make the decision.

Margaret Kelsey (37:35)

We were talking about trying to implement change within the organization–the crawl, walk, run model– and it seems like both Kodaris uses that, but I think Parts for Trucks does too. So can you guys talk a little bit about the importance of that, of starting small? It seems like you even did that with the customer, with asking your customers and talking to your customers where you went out and did a little pilot before you actually rolled it out internally.

Jamie Reid (38:02)

We've actually, I would say we do that for basically everything. You know, letting change kind of happen a little bit at a time, it obviously is much more palatable to end users and to customers or whoever,

But, I like to use that mantra a lot, you know, crawl, walk, run for if I'm putting out a new report or we're putting in a new system, you know, really getting it right and not, and I think Jamie might've said it right at the very beginning about spending a lot of money or investing in a platform and not fully understanding it or being prepared for what change is being brought into the organization.

This kind of helps you step into that and finding, how do we bite this off into little pieces, if possible. You know some platforms you can't do that but, what I like with the Kodaris platform is that you can kind of grow with it. So you can take this piece, you can put it in and then you can move to the next piece and let your end users and your customers absorb the change and slowly kind of bring them into the fold instead of just kind of hitting them with shock and awe.

Jamie Irvine (39:16)

Yeah. And if you remember, I mentioned when we started doing the voice of the customer, you know, we validated some of our assumptions, but we also learned some things that were a little unexpected. And, if we hadn't taken the crawl, walk, run approach, we might've been in the run phase spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and all of a sudden find out that we have to stop back up, take a left turn to get back on track.

And in my years in consulting, that was actually when, most of the time, we got hired was at that exact moment. When someone had gone too quickly, spent a lot of money, it wasn't working, they weren't sure how to fix it. And then they would bring us in to look at their system and try to help them make a roadmap. And more than not, I had to say to them, we have to do a large-scale reversal of everything you've done

And the looks on people's face when–you could see the magnitude of that sink in like, we just spent $250,000, what do you mean? That's something that I was so grateful for when I joined Parts for Trucks, to see the approach that they were taking, because I knew that this was gonna keep us on the right track. And if we do have to make a change, it's not so major.

Margaret Kelsey (40:34)

Yeah, it's like putting the emergency brake on a high speed train, right? And then saying, you're not even on the right track. Like, where are you going? Probably expensive to bring that train back to the right switch. That metaphor is going a little long, but you get it.

Jamie Irvine (40:51)

And how do you quantify not only the cost to your customer relationships, but also the morale of your team and the faith and confidence and trust of your team? So then you come to them and you say, okay, we fixed it. This time it's going to work. And they're like, really? Cause you couldn't figure it out last time. Why would I believe you this time? Right.

And especially on the sales side, if your salespeople have invested some of their social capital with their customers, and they've gotten burned by that, it's hard to come back from that. So you lose a lot of credibility with your people as well, not just your customers.

Margaret Kelsey (41:23)

Well, and you mentioned the 250k number of like, what does it take to really innovate or what does it take to really invest in technology that your customers are actually asking for?

So companies that aren't, let's say, PE-backed or aren't huge conglomerates of companies that have a humongous tech budget to be able to actually maybe even create their own technology to provide the experience that the customers are starting to ask for.

Do you have any advice for companies to be able to crawl, walk, run into even technology investment?

Jamie Reid (42:00)

Well, I mean, some of the things that we've done at Parts for Trucks is not necessarily going out and buying a big enterprise platform–or, you know, going for the Cadillac, I guess, if you want to use that analogy–but using what you already own. And I kind of always say, learning how to do long division before you get a calculator.

And that really is kind of for me, how do we just use what we own? Let's draw it out. Let's figure out how it works. And it's not going to be perfect. And sometimes I think that some people get disappointed about that. They're expecting that silver bullet to come in and they want this fancy tool to get done.

But I think there's a lot of value in leveraging that. I feel, you know, responsibility really is looking after IT. That it's my responsibility to, I guess, use the dollars the best that we possibly can and to not over invest in IT, but to use what we need in order to enable the business. And without the business, there is no IT. There's no need for IT to be here. So we have to be good stewards of that spend and help people leverage what we've got, squeeze the juice out of it.

And today it's expensive. Moving from an on-prem system that we were on, which probably paid for itself 15, 20 times over. We're now in a system where we are paying a monthly fee. We got a Netflix subscription and you could end up getting too many service subscriptions and get too much cost and get out of control really, really quickly. So that's why I think it's really important, going back to your question, to step back, figure out what we do own, how can we make this work with what we've got and let's grow into a bigger platform that might work for us.

And let's make sure that we've got the revenue to offset the cost. Let's make sure that, you know, as a business, we're doing this the right way. And I think that's important from an IT perspective to collaborate with the business leaders within the business and sit at the table and say, okay, do you guys realize that this is not just another $20 a month? Like this is an expensive endeavor here that we're going down.

Jamie Irvine (44:22)

And I would say that, one of the things we learned in the voice of customer work, but something that I had experienced also in the years that I was consulting is that, the operational side behind the technology solution is actually where the business is won or lost. So you can have the fanciest, nicest looking website in the world and you can have total business failure.

Or, you know, for the automotive people, there's a website out there called RockAuto and let's just face it, the visual appeal of that site is not particularly strong, but they have a very, very strong business. And so if you can get that operational piece right, and if you can introduce technology slowly and then reinvest the profits, then you can build over time. And so oftentimes where the issue actually is, is just in the time horizon.

And a lot of times people like the…they do want that silver bullet and they want it right now. And you have to maybe change that perspective a little bit and say, you know what, we're going to put a one, three and five year plan in place here and we will get there. And because operationally we're very strong and we're reinforcing that at every step, the technology will work. We'll get the return on investment and then we'll have the means to be able to go to the next step. So sometimes just changing your perspective a little bit and elongating that timeline a little bit.

It's hard for some people to do though because they're very fearful of how quick things are changing and that's not without merit. But at the same time, you only have the resources you have. So you have to put the best plan you can put in place and do the best you can.

Margaret Kelsey (46:03)

I feel that deeply. I feel like, at TUG last year, 2024, every single presentation was AI based, right? And Tony and I went there and kind of rolled our eyes a little bit about like, you know, we're going to see where this technology is best used, but it's not to slap everywhere.

It's just like, let's be thoughtful about it. Look at the business process first and use it as, is this a tool that could validate making a business process more efficient or faster or save us money or whatever it might be versus there's new technology let's use it everywhere right.

Jamie Reid (46:43)

I think there's also a hidden cost, just to talk to the technology folks for a bit, that when you do implement a solution, there's this recurring maintenance and support and the life cycle and everything that comes along with that, that's just gonna continue to follow you for years to come. And so you really have to think about it before you put something in, is this really the right tool for us?

Jamie Irvine (47:08)

Yeah, I mean, we've, we've incurred a new cost center around this, because we're building trainer content for our outside salespeople. So now we have video production costs that were never in the original technology budget, but it's a real cost we have to absorb to implement and execute on our plan and get the results we're looking for out of the platform.

Margaret Kelsey (47:29)

When I even think of the more platforms or the more point solutions that you bolt together, there's also the maintenance cost of making sure that those integrations stay up to date and the data is flowing correctly, to your point, Jamie R. about–it kind of always comes back to the data, right? And making sure that those things are actually flowing correctly is sometimes somebody's full-time job.

Jamie Reid (47:53)

And that's one thing that I find with the Kodaris platform that I would say I'm very thankful for is the direct integration with the ERP. There's not a third party middleware in between that we have a separate contract with, a separate engagement that we now have to pay them on a monthly basis to make sure that the errors are being looked after or that the data is flowing.

To me, it's...I give Tony a call and say, what's going on? It’s easy to deal with it. And it's more responsive and quicker and obviously better for the two of us.

Margaret Kelsey (48:30)

Is there anything else that either of you would want distributors in your positions or maybe there are six months behind you in terms of adopting technology or commerce or whatever it might be?

Is there anything that you would want them to think about and know as a takeaway?

Jamie Reid (48:48)

I would say, you know, don't underestimate the level of effort that it's going to take to put it in and make sure you have clean data. Or at least enough data to get there and I guess to go back to the crawl, walk, run. Make sure that your data is at least somewhat at the right level so that you can get things moving, but know very quickly that you're going to have a data project afterwards to get going to get it to where you want it to be. And that's when you'll start to really see the rubber hit the road.

Jamie Irvine (49:21)

Yeah, and I would say that you need to really thoughtfully plan for a lot of time and effort to be spent in human-to-human interaction. And we're talking about a technology play here, but the reality is you're to have to talk to your customers. You're to have to coach and train your salespeople. You're going to have to work with your management team.

There's a lot of effort and time put there that isn't obvious on the surface when you're just looking at the implementation of technology in your business to open up that digital sales channel. So don't underestimate that as well.

Margaret Kelsey (49:56)

And candidly, the technology salespeople are probably not adding that in as an item on your roadmap of implementation, right? So I think that is wonderful advice. So thank you both so much for being here.

Tony Zakula (50:10)

Well, thanks for joining us, Jamie and Jamie. I know we've made the joke. I'm not sure if we made it on this show, but maybe this is the Jamie and Jamie show going forward. We'll see what happens.

But thank you for being part of the Kodaris community. This has been a ton of fun, tons of insights. I can't wait for some of our listeners, customers who I know will find this information valuable as well. So thanks again for joining us and we look forward to doing it again very soon, hopefully, because there's certainly a wealth of information we can share with each other.

Jamie Reid (50:43)

I want to thank you, Margaret and Tony for hosting the session. I think it's great to sit down and talk about some of this stuff and to share back to the community, I guess, and let them know that it can work. It takes a bit of effort. It's exciting and it's fun to implement.

And I think the one thing that is good is rallying the team and getting them on that goal and making them excited about where we're going and building out that roadmap and you know engaging directly with Jamie and his team and making sure that IT and business are working well together that that's where it's at.

Jamie Irvine (51:23)

Yeah, and Margaret, Tony, thank you so much for having us on and just giving us the opportunity to share our experience. Our sincere hope in today's episode is just that we can, you know, provide a little bit of assistance to the community. And if we can open their eyes to a couple opportunities, or if they just learned one thing, then we did our jobs today. So thanks for providing us with a platform to accomplish that goal.