Cooper Equipment Rentals Partners with Data Specialist
Cooper Equipment Rentals Limited has entered a strategic partnership with Rolando Blanco to spearhead the company's ongoing data and integration initiatives. The Cooper-Blanco partnership brings together deep skills in business and technology strategy, analytics, technology integration, and organizational change management to help support Cooper's accelerated growth.
Blanco will be responsible for executing the unified data strategy across the company to further leverage its considerable data capture from the various rental life cycle transactions and systems. He will also be responsible for strengthening the CER’s technology stack to deliver a seamless and technology enabled customer experience, and for advancing the company's predictive analytics and machine learning telematic initiatives.
"Our significant investment in technology solutions has enabled us to capture relevant data throughout the customer journey from many different vantage points which allows us to analyze and continuously improve the experience and outcome for our customers," said Brian Spilak, Cooper Equipment's senior vice president. "With Rolando's track record in data, analytics, and integration, we believe he is well positioned to spearhead the advancement of these critical areas for Cooper."
"I am passionate about the opportunity to work with the Cooper team on these initiatives,” said Blanco. “Both Cooper and their customers are increasingly adopting technologies to fuel their business transformation. Never before has data, integration and machine learning been so vital to a business, and I am very excited about the opportunities in front of us."
Blanco holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Waterloo, Canada, and has extensive experience in data management and systems research. Most recently, Blanco was with SAP for eight years as technical lead in SAP's HANA Database Platform Columnar Store Team. Blanco holds more than 15 patents in the area of database systems and data management and has published in top database conferences including SIGMOD and IEEE BigData.
"We are delighted for the opportunity to support the high-growth strategy of Cooper's leadership team and to work with Rolando on their data and integration initiatives," added Nabil Kassam, chairman and CEO of Texada Software – Cooper's ERP software partner. "We have supported Cooper throughout their growth with Texada's software platform and look forward to our respective teams working on the exciting initiatives that lie ahead".
Established in 1972, Cooper is the leading independent Canadian full-service construction equipment rental company, servicing contractors throughout Ontario and in parts of Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada. Based in Mississauga, Ontario, Cooper is No. 24 on the RER 100.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.