Are you or your team struggling to manage your construction equipment? Many construction manufacturers and dealers face this dilemma. This article will review three strategies that you can use to effectively manage your construction equipment and improve your aftermarket profitability.
Regardless of who your customers are or where they’re located, one thing is sure – their heavy equipment and machinery will need to be maintained, serviced, repaired, or overhauled.
Parts wear out, need upgrades, and at some point, they eventually break. Moreover, with continuous engineering improvements to machinery and equipment parts and the assemblies they belong to, supporting customers with part numbers or any information can be extremely challenging. Regardless of any obstacles, these are parts, you as a manufacturer or dealer, need to be able to assist with.
Below are three strategies you can use to improve your aftermarket profitability.
3 STRATEGIES YOU CAN USE TO IMPROVE YOUR AFTERMARKET PROFITABILITY
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Rethink Your Documents
Fact. Employees use valuable resources as well as time, to create, manage, and maintain company documents. On average, one worker can take up to 12 hours per week (30% of their workweek). If one employee works 50 weeks a year, they’re spending up to 600 hours a year documenting your information.
To put it into perspective, if there is a change to a part number for a bolt that exists in 1,000+ different assemblies, one of your employee’s is required to update those 1,000+ entries.
Don’t you think there’s a more efficient way of spending their time? We certainly think so.
That’s why we recommend rethinking your documentation processes with a publishing tool that can generate parts catalogs dynamically from a central database. Essentially, this gives your employees the ability to format from pre-built templates that can update existing documentation with 100% accuracy.
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Improve Your Online Experience
Have you ever searched for an OEM replacement part online and noticed that the first page of the search results was filled with one of your competitors? It’s awkward.
We are here to tell you that the first place your customers and potential customers are going to look – is online. This means they’re researching and comparing prices with you and your competitors.
Stop using PDF documents with list parts to grab your prospects attention. Instead, enhance their experience with a highly interactive user interface that can display catalogs and other support documentation to attract and retain online buyers.
A web-based catalog gives your customers and prospects the ability to view, shop, and learn all about the construction equipment you are trying to sell.
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Reduce Customer Downtime
Just like the employees you rely on to keep your documents up to date, your mechanics and technicians can also spend a majority of their workday looking up information. Whether it’s related to repairs, procedures, or identifying and ordering parts or supplies – every delay in this process leads to a delay out in the field for machine downtime and lost productivity on a site.
Reduce your customer downtime and improve your support operations by giving your employees accessible and accurate equipment documentation with a digital parts book and authoring system. Doing so, users can look up detailed diagrams of parts and assemblies, view up to date manufacturing revisions of parts or other product data, accurately assist with support questions, and help customers order the parts they need.
What used to be ineffective and take up a considerable amount of time can now be productive and improve your aftermarket operations. Learn how you can effectively manage and deliver construction equipment to your customers in their time of need!
