Investing in AI Provides Dealerships with a Strategic Advantage

Ole MacDonald has a farm AI AI Oh! 

You hear it everywhere. AI this and AI that; Artificial Intelligence will change everything. Will it? 

Well yes and no. It is already demonstrating its power to synthesize vast amounts of data and enhance many business processes, but it is not able to pull an 11/16” wrench out of a toolbox to fix a hydraulic leak (although it might be able to tell you where to look for the leak).

As business leaders of equipment dealerships or OEM organizations, I am positive you are wondering what impact AI will have on your business and how you should leverage this new tool. I know a bit about leveraging technology.

As CEO of the DOT Power Platform (acquired by Raven now CNH), I worked alongside inventor Norbert Beaujot who had a vision of how autonomous machines would reshape field work on the farm. Before that, I was the founder and CEO of the AGRI-TREND Group (acquired by Trimble, now PTx Trimble with AGCO) where we worked to connect agronomy to data to machines such as DOT. In both cases, we accomplished a lot and yet we could have done more had we had the ability to harness the power of AI.

Please let me explain what this has to you with YOUR dealership.

When you are thinking about AI integration in your business, it must be a “strategic decision” and it’s not about the AI…it’s about the data. The ability of AI to truly unlock benefits for your business comes from figuring out how you can tap your many “filing cabinets” of unstructured data to provide fast, accurate and meaningful results. Unless you approach the idea of AI integration from a truly long-term strategic approach, you might be disappointed with the outcome. 

Recently I attended a tech conference where a keynote showed that only 5-7% of businesses will be successful at building and implementing their own AI system. That is because whatever AI you work with has been layered on top of data and integrated into your business processes to provide more than artificial intelligence; it must provide “specific intelligence”.

We were first to the market when we launched our platform visorPRO® AI solution in early 2024, and the recent release of AI Assist by CNH is the latest example of an OEM seeking to leverage this technology to improve the equipment industry. Both visorPRO and AI Assist provide an AI solution in the service department. CNH looked to AI as a solution to improve efficiencies in the aftermarket part of the business even ahead of whole good sales. Like CNH, we too see the opportunity to drive more profitability through the service side of the dealership.

Here are some examples of the pain points being addressed by the customers who have adopted our AI solution:

• Service department satisfaction – where techs need to get quick answers
• Customer satisfaction – where response time has become critical
• Employee burnout – where the quality of life of the service team is stressed
• Tight labor market – where recruitment and retention are an issue
• Better training – new technicians benefit from accessing specific information easily
• Tight service margins – dealers are looking at maximizing their profitability

I am sure that CNH is seeing the same results that we are.  By implementing AI, dealers are reducing their search time when they need to find out how to do a repair, improving their service team satisfaction and are increasing their aftermarket profitability through increased parts and service sales and general workorder throughput. 

Dealers are also using AI by layering it over their service departments’ work order history, to get quick and accurate answers of past repairs, the average hours that it takes to do a repair, and the parts typically needed for that repair.

It should be noted that adopting AI in the service department to enhance profitability and enable superior user experiences requires a relatively low effort. Dealers have shared with me the horror stories that their staff have incurred as they have moved to a new business system. Contrast that with an AI platform, specifically made for the equipment industry, that can be rolled out reasonably quickly, even if the dealership has a small budget. 

Where you will see huge benefit is when AI solutions, such as visorPRO are connected to your business systems to unearth “treasures” that have been buried in your legacy data. 

The visorPRO vision has been to be dealer centric, short-line friendly and colorblind and our team has very closely collaborated with our dealer partners and we are excited to be extending these conversations to OEM’s as well. 

In our conversations with CNH, I wish to commend them for understanding that dealers can consider 3rd party AI platforms to meet the unique needs of businesses that carry several product lines designed to meet the specific needs of their market. Collaboration like this is in the best interest of the industry and ensures the dealership can take care of their customer, no matter which brands the dealership needs to service.

We heard at Farm Equipment’s Dealership Minds Summit in August 2024 that five years from now a dealership’s success will be measured by what level of AI they are implementing in their business. This is a mature industry, so embedding intelligence into core capabilities is critical for continued success. 

Dealerships have already made significant investments into their existing business capabilities and adopting AI is the next logical step. Those that do, will enjoy a superior market position by delivering the expected value to their customers, and a sustainable strategic advantage against their competition.