Systems That Enable Customers
Rob Wilson, CEO of Canada’s Stephenson’s Rental Services, talks with RER about software, data-driven decision-making, what AI can do for rental, and more.
RER: What is your company looking for from your software providers?
Wilson: With any software provider, we are obviously looking for stability and ease of use. However, the best software providers are those that constantly seek customer feedback and invest in development to drive greater productivity and data transparency.
What do you do well and what more do you want from your day-to-day operating system?
Over the past 15+ years, Stephenson’s has transformed its decision-making foundation from gut feel to data-driven decision-making. This has only been possible by having an operating system that allows for easy access to the millions and millions of data records, in a way that can be organized and reported to allow for frontline employees to make quick decisions.
What our operating system is missing is the ability to recommend a decision. We have needed to invest heavily in internally developed systems that use data from the operating system to generate recommendations for our frontline employees.
What do you do well in telematics and where would you like to be, what would you like to get to? How is your company performing in terms of predictive maintenance and where would you like to get to?
The same issues exist within our telematics framework as with our operating systems; extreme amounts of data with no clear way to support decision-making for frontline employees and customers. As such, we have invested heavily in transforming the data into providing actionable items for both internal staff and customers.
How do you feel you need to improve when it comes to managing inventory?
Effectively managing the rental fleet of equipment is core to the success of any equipment rental company. While we have done a lot of work to understand our equipment utilization, we continue to develop tools to facilitate quicker decisions on purchases, disposals and relocating equipment between regions. In addition, we are exploring AI options to assist with bulk inventory control/management, freeing up staff time to focus on delivering best in class customer service.
How do you feel you need to improve when it comes to managing delivery or dispatch?
We pride ourselves on providing our customers with exceptional levels of service. A cornerstone of this is communication with the customer and meeting their needs. While we have built great systems to support our customers, this work will never be completed and remains our focus. One missing piece is for our Logistics software to be able to run thousands of iterations in real time, maximizing on-time delivery and internal productivity.
What kind of role is AI playing in your operations; what are your expectations of how you’d like to use AI?
We have many AI related projects underway at various stages of implementation. Our goal is to embed AI into our systems to provide frontline employees with information and recommendations to improve decision quality and productivity. The ultimate goal is to free up time for our frontline employees so they can continue to provide exceptional human-to-human customer service.
How is your company performing in terms of machine connectedness on jobsites?
With telematics on all of our large equipment, we are able to provide back-office and shop staff with real-time information to better support our customers. On the customer side, we have developed systems that enable customers to easily view the status, usage and emissions data for their equipment. However, perhaps more importantly, customers can set up alerts for temperature, humidity, low charge, underused equipment, etc., to ensure their sites are proactively managed. This connectedness is also a meaningful enabler of our sustainability goals; giving both us and our customers the visibility needed to actively reduce environmental impact at the jobsite level.
Any other comments you’d like to make in reference to software and technology?
Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important lens through which we evaluate software and technology decisions. We are actively looking for partners who can help us build tools that make it easier to track, report on, and continuously improve our environmental performance; and to pass those capabilities on to our customers.
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.