10 Lessons in 10 Years
Are you ready to revolutionize your approach to Installed Base selling? Don’t miss this exclusive, game-changing webinar where industry leaders reveal the secrets they’ve uncovered over the past 10 years. Why You Can’t Afford to Miss This: 1. Unlock the Power of Your Installed Base: Proven strategies to maximize Aftermarket revenue. 2. Identify Hidden Opportunities: Learn how to uncover and capitalize on upsell potentials. 3. Make Installed Base Data Work for You: Harness the power of analytics to drive sales. Let's revolutionize the way you approach Installed Base selling. See you there!
You Might Also Like
Hi everyone, good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone who's
joining us today.
We're going to give everyone about a minute or two to get into the room and
then we'll go ahead and get the discussion off.
So go ahead and please stand by.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
[BLANK_AUDIO]
We're going to say we have a few more people joining us, so I'll give it about
another minute and then we'll pick it off.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
[BLANK_AUDIO]
All right, I say let's go ahead and get things started here.
So thanks again everybody for joining us today.
We expect the event to run anywhere between 20 and 25 minutes and then we'll
hopefully have some time for questions at the end.
A little bit of housekeeping is at the bottom of the meeting room.
You'll see different options to interact with us.
Please use the Q&A area for questions to the speakers as we go through them
definitely at the end.
And there will also be a chat button that you can use to raise any technical
issues during the course of the event.
The recording and event that will be sent out to post the event.
And with that being said, let me go ahead and introduce our speaker for the day
It's Vivek Joji, he is the CEO and founder of Entitle.
He has decades of experience working on both sides of the industrial equation.
He's passionate about all things install base and simplifying install base
workflows to give customer facing OEM teams to have an opportunity to do more
with less.
He's also the founder of our industry next community designed to help
industrial leaders share and learn from each other.
With that Vivek, I'm going to hand it off over to you.
Thank you very much.
And every time you introduce me as a guy with a decade of experience, I have to
remind myself that the good part of our decade of experiences that you've seen
a lot and done a lot.
And the bad part is you've seen a lot and done a lot and remember a lot.
And sometimes you have to bring out these stories to make sure we share this
view.
As Colin said, I'm the founder and CEO of Entitle.
I'm excited about some of the lessons I'm going to share with you today.
But a lot of the lessons that we're going to share is not just on the last
decade of being in businesses and entitled founder and CEO.
But really, like you said, the three decades that have been in and around
manufacturing and after market and service really in the equipment
manufacturing companies with global footprints.
And so there's a lot that that we've seen over the years that I think will be
relevant to all of us out here.
So, you know, if you think about after market and services, not like this is a
new concept.
It's not like this is something that we've all had a revelation one day and
decided that this is something we want to go ahead and do it.
You know, most of us being in companies that have had these what I would call
routine business models for a long time.
And what I mean by business model is we design equipment, we sell it, we
install it and then we service it.
And there's a life cycle around that.
And it's thought that this life cycle is again innovative to most people.
We've all been around this for a long time.
What's interesting is this is two things that I think are relevant to this
discussion.
One is these models are extremely lucrative.
I remember decades ago, 20 years ago, when I was at a large industrial company,
I was astonished at how much money we made in terms of operating margin from
our services business.
In fact, and one of our divisions, a couple of divisions, we made 105 to 110
percent of the businesses operating profit just from services level on, you
know, the whole profit of the company.
Very lucrative businesses.
But by the same token because the lucrative is almost that people are afraid to
rock the board and afraid to change what's going on out there.
So it's incredibly maybe static if you may in terms of how these business
models have evolved over time.
But it is clear to us and certainly sitting for the vantage point where we sit
at, which is kind of participants in the ecosystem, but, you know, on from the
outside looking in.
I'm seeing many of you along today who are practitioners today who live in this
day to day.
There's a ton of stuff going on right now that is really having a significant
impact on your businesses and on your, you know, maybe existence is probably
too dramatic about it, but it's really have some pretty significant impact.
And the way we think about it is that just because things work away in the past
doesn't mean they can or should work the same way going forward.
And candidly, I look at many of my customers and look at some of the prospects
we're talking to.
It is very clear to us that, you know, the status quo is really systemally
untenable. You have to do something different.
You know, the question is, you know, what do you want to do? What difference do
you want to do? And really when do you do it?
Now, you know, I have used a slide at another presentation, I've done recently.
And I love it and I really love these two quotes out there because it really
embodies and in my mind about what's happening out there.
Again, I will say this one more time. It's not like you guys are waking up one
day and realizing my God, things are changing.
Right, it's not like one day you guys are working on and say, man, the service
is business after market's pretty amazing.
How do we, how do we do that? We've all known that for a long time.
The question is, what is that pressure that's been building up?
What has the change has been going on behind the scenes that finally makes the
damn burst? Right, finally makes the things happen all at one time.
And I think that's kind of where we find ourselves in most situations. We've
been very clear about most of the prospects and customers we talk to is that,
look, you need to have a clear point of view.
You need to have a clear objective is to what you're trying to do and not one
that damn breaks. You need to suddenly start moving forward.
And what we're trying to do in the session today in the next 15 to maybe 20
minutes or so is kind of share with you.
Some of the things that we've learned over the last last decades, but certainly
I've seen over my last 30 plus years in this business about what works.
And what it doesn't, right? And you know, far a software company, you're going
to start looking at the next slides and say, but we make this not about
software.
That's exactly the point, right? I want to share a few learnings that I think
are universal to all of what you guys are doing out here.
So the good part about this also in addition to our personal experience, my
personal experience.
We've also done this with 50 60 different companies in the titles history.
There's a lot of companies work with that really good that we've not just
worked with them to help them deploy some of the set of technology we've got,
but also make sure that we learn from what they've done well as well. And so
what you're going to see in the next few pages is an encapsulation of many of
those lessons we have out here.
So without further ado, our top 10 lists, right? I mentioned a few minutes ago
that things have been building up.
Pressure's been building up. Something's been going on behind the scenes in
your company.
And then eventually the damper's eventually things happen, right?
Where we've seen companies alter, where we've seen companies not succeed is the
counter of this headlight out here, which is.
There's somebody who gets an idea saying I want to do something in the context
of service and aftermarket to kind of drive it proactively.
Or I want to use data on AI to kind of make a change happen.
What I tell people is like, don't put the card before the horse, right?
Really be clear about the why and the why now of this change because
fundamentally what you're doing is you're committing your team, but the after
market side, but also your company broadly speaking to a change journey, which
is, you know, pretty large and pretty significant and pretty committed, right?
You have to kind of make sure you understand that.
So it could be something, everything from the economic aspect of it, like am I
losing more wallet, I need to reverse that.
Or am I losing too many customers they buy it from us ones and maybe they'll
come back to us and go to third parties, which is kind of the similar thing of
wallet share loss.
You know, sometimes we see when we when many of our customers are companies who
have bought that private equity, right?
And the owner says, no, we have to go build this revenue stream up, build the
line of business.
There could be a majority of reasons, right?
But just be very clear about why and why now it's okay to wait is the point of
the why now as well.
Right? So I think that's the point I want to make out here with the thing. So
that's probably the most important lesson.
The second is when we see what we call a leaderless or headless initiative.
And it really has to be an initiative that's led by somebody, right?
You have to have a leader who's strong.
You need to have a leader that you invest in and you're going to make sure
there's certain resource for success, right?
So whether it's goals, whether it's senior executive backing, whether it's a
visibility and sponsorship,
whether it's progression opportunities for somebody who succeeds.
You know, these all sounds like a very motherland apple pie kind of things, but
these are so important that I almost feel like people forget these simple
things that they need to do.
And having somebody at the as the leader of this initiative as a leader, this
change is really important because at some level, you need to hold somebody
accountable for this time, right?
So accountability is a word that it used quite often in my conversation, the
customers and prospects just as much as they are holding us accountable for
deliver technology and software and data.
I want to make sure they and their teams are holding themselves and the leaders
accountable for the success.
So you need to have a leader who's who's both capable, but also you can hold
accountable success, but make sure you invest in that person to give them
everything they need to succeed.
So again, that's a second point. The third point is I mentioned this earlier,
right?
There's a bunch of things going on in the background that are happening that
are important to start driving change.
There's a bunch of things that are going on in the background, but eventually
that we say that the dams force we need to get in and get on with it.
But I have to always tell people, look, this is not an overnight journey.
This is a multi month, multi year potentially journey, right? And quite often
we used to wind up its customers who wanted to deploy some software and wanted
to deploy technology without the underpinnings in place.
So we started putting together this notion of what we call an aftermarket
journey transformation journey and that's really what it is, right?
Look, whether it's level one to level four or level one to level 10, it doesn't
matter.
There's a series of steps you're going to have to take to make sure your
company, your team and everybody succeeds, but it takes time.
You're going to make sure you're prepared at every stage of the way.
You know, when I was at this big industrial company long time ago, we had the
classic stage gate process.
So between every stage, we had a stage gate checkpoint. We had a milestone
checkpoint and then we would then pass stages and get to the next stage.
So you can use any framework for one, but the main thing in this message is
that it's a journey.
You got to build a plan for it. You got to build a plan that includes resources
and make sure you commit to it, right?
So this is really important. And then more importantly, the equal importance
slide is a fact that you can't rush from zero to four or one to four or
whatever it might be in their in their stage of maturity without making sure
you go through it.
I know it sounds terrible and is in since in his day of existence gratification
, but which you have to go through certain growth stages to get to the ultimate
Nevada that you're trying to get in, right?
So long journey plan on it. The other thing I say to people and this is
something that is obvious to those of us who've been around this business for a
long time, but it took me a while to kind of articulate it the way we are.
Install based intelligence or install based workflows or install based anything
really is a team game.
And what I mean by that is those of us that I see some of you in the audience
today who live this everyday know that install based is just not the province
of services.
Our aftermarket in engineers have to play role in it in the whatsoever ability
data this morning in our product team.
We had a big discussion about a bill of materials feature we're building an
entire right and the bill of materials.
A lot of people look have this information in your systems. There are some
things in P. L. M. systems, which are the ownership of engineering.
You know, ERP or an MRP is so initial manufacturing design, you know, sourcing
also has a role to play in it when they start changing suppliers.
So there's a lot of interplay out here that says look, you can't think of this
as an isolated situation.
You have to consider this as a team. You know, almost every part of the company
has a role to play in this in this notion of building up an install based
platform and install based engine to make you an aftermarket champion.
Right. So coming back to these first three points, you know, if you know the
why on the why now and you got the right leader.
Make sure she's building the coalition around her to succeed. Make sure that
coalition understands that they.
There's a coalition of the team understand that there's a journey they're going
to go on collectively.
Right. Because last thing you need is a disconnected, disjointed out of
synchronization.
Connect community that doesn't know what the other person's doing.
And by the way, we see that quite often. We'd see that the the aftermarket
leader in brings an entire and starts doing something and then.
Suddenly the people and manufacturing like what the heck is this about?
Why are we doing this? All the people and sales like well, I wasn't informed
about this.
Although I know people don't know all the data they need to share with us and
so on and so forth.
And it becomes really a problem as part of this journey that we're talking
about.
So make sure you get the team ready. Make sure it's a multifunctional team.
That's get this thing's going. So that's lesson number four.
Lesson number five is like, okay, so we make why the size of prize and
milestones and stuff for the down the line is very simple, right?
You could put it up front in the planning phase for sure. But I think once you
get the team ready, once you get all this information together one place,
then you can really start saying, okay, now I can really see the entirety of
the picture.
You know, the the all Indian, uh,
Pable of six blind man and an elephant, right? Once everybody's together, you
can see the whole picture.
Then you can start saying, okay, this is an helpful big one. Is it a big task?
Is it a big tale? What if it might be understand that picture at that point in
time?
So when it teams in place, they can collectively help you figure out, quote
unquote, what the size of the prizes.
And you know, hint to those who are in this business. Please don't go to the
second and third decimal place.
It just simply doesn't matter. Get it directly right. Get it. Get it to the
point where you can have a plan that you can build around that.
Because I promise you, those of you who start this journey so far from the Irv
ana,
they're just going to make a long time together. So figure out, as I say,
how do you make the first million by making the first dollar, right?
Same place. How do you get the wallet share up to 100%? Well, get the first
percent out there.
I figured the plan to get there and get going.
So figure out what's good enough. Figure out what the success metrics are.
Same thing stays gate milestones. Whatever, whatever framework you guys want to
use.
Build it again. You're probably saying, we make so why are you telling me this
stuff, right?
Should we plan this? Yeah, you should do it. But believe it or not, most people
don't.
And we have this, we have this realization over time that people have to put
this in place.
It's almost like we need to kind of make sure that collectively in title and
our customers,
we need to make sure we do this thing all the time. So that's kind of one of
the lessons we want to
make sure we share with you as well. So that's the number five. Less number six
is what, you know,
the other title, the title of the slide I thought about is please don't boil
the ocean in search of data,
right? And one of the best things I learned that long time ago when I was in
consulting is data
or the source of data becomes a secondary or tertiary decision. Once you decide
what you're going to
go and do, right? So you figure out what hypothesis you're trying to test out
here. Is it am I going to
reduce churn or if I can do this so I can increase wallet share, whatever it
might be. Once I have my hypothesis,
then I know what I need to go do in terms of analysis I need to do. And
therefore, I then need to know
what data I need to get. Don't again, same thing here. Don't put the card
before the hours. Don't start
drowning in data before you try to figure out what easy to get done, right? So
start with use cases,
understand what the analysis you need to do. Then figure out what requirements
you need to go get
from the data site. Because anyway, you realize that hey, just because I have a
parks and services
catalog, I don't need it today. It's okay. Oh, just because of transaction data
, I don't need bombs
today, right? So on and so forth. I think the point is that you're able to be a
lot more
crisp and clear about what needs to happen once you define these things. Okay,
so that's
lesson number six is data becomes a second order requirement once you figure
out the
the path you're on. However, comma, lesson number seven is almost what we like
to put as lesson number
one. But in this case, it just follows a natural progression here. However,
comma, I will promise you
that what we learned long time ago about the phrase garbage and garbage job is
extraordinarily true.
Right? Every single company worked with the user's terrible quality data. And
the terrible
quality data is because a, it's in the multitude of different systems that are
not really concise.
It does never single social truth. Extraordinary poor quality in terms of
things like data drives,
null fields, spelling mistakes, duplicates, you name it, everything. We've seen
the whole range of
poor quality. So no matter what, once you figure out the data sources, you have
to go invest in data,
sorry, figure out data sources, figure out the data quality. You have to go
invest in that.
Because if there's one one thing we've learned painfully is that in as much as
the bookages you'll get
when you start doing this thing, you'll get an extraordinary large number of
break paths.
The moment somebody sees bad quality data and it's a surest way to lose
credibility.
Lord knows we've lost in multiple times of the customers, even though it's
their data, right?
It doesn't matter. We took on that responsible, we are accountable for cleaning
up the data.
The moment we made a mistake, it's an, it's our issue, right? So we've learned
very painfully
that we have to focus on this upfront and we emphasize this beyond reasonable
expectations that
you have to get this thing to write. And it doesn't mean you go to perfection,
by the way,
but get it to the point where you can do a sufficient amount of, use acceptance
testing,
you can do sufficient amount of buy-in but do it upfront, right? So the lesson
number seven.
What I'd say at the lesson number eight is, you know, as the old phrase goes,
"Rome wasn't built in a day," right? I always sell our customers, like, look,
you may be hungry to go,
change everything, you may be hungry to go and get all the potential upset that
you have in the
marketplace and so on and so forth. But please don't do this all in one shot.
You're going to,
you know, as they say, "The big moon shot, don't do it." It's not going to work
, right? There's multiple
reasons it'll work. The single biggest thing, you're still learning a way, you
're changing something,
going from your reactive mode to proactive mode, you're going from gut feel to
data-driven information,
you're going from ad hoc to process, you're going from order takers to call
makers, right? I mean,
these all just fundamental changes you're doing. You don't know how it's going
to work. So start
doing it. I also tell people that this is probably something that is, it comes
to mind is that you
got to find the person is going to help you win. You know, there's always two
schools of thought,
"Do I go with somebody, can help you win?" But then people say, "Well, he chose
this region or he
chose this person because, you know, you're going to win." Yeah, the short
answer is yes. Or do you want
to go to the most difficult region, the most difficult leader who doesn't
believe in this and want to
convince her to do the same. You know, I always are on the side and I'll get
the wins first, right? And so
find the right person to do it. You know, it's kind of a bit of a go-to-lock
situation. It's like not too hot,
not to call just right. So it's a, you know, it's a judgment out here you've
got to do. But the main
thing is when you choose that person, you're using that to prototype and
experiment and learn and keep
going from there, right? A lot of stuff that can get done, get done in a very
small scale to do it.
Next one is once you figure that out, you now have a template to say, "Okay,
what's working on the
people's side? What do I need to change? What's working on the process side?
What do I need to change?
Do I need to re-engineer the process? Do I need to introduce new process?" And
then make
technology choices. By the way, all of this stuff, what I showed in the
previous pages, it is entirely
not just likely but recommended that you do not use any technology beyond
spreadsheets. I know I'm
the biggest anti-spreach sheet person in the world. But it's okay to stick with
spreadsheets in the
beginning because you're still trying to figure things out. Or in a make-do
with whatever couple
tools you have together, it's okay. Once you get through the prototyping
process, once you figure
these people's processes and tools out in that order, then figure out, "Do I go
customize as
your M? Do I go build a brand new in the house tool? Like many of our customers
do? How many
prospects do? Or do I go find a company like a title out there to go do it?"
That should almost be
like third decision you make. Yes, it doesn't mean you should wait for research
to the end, but
definitely you should never be driving it. I mean, it never will be driving the
choices you make out
here. So that's lesson number nine. And the last lesson I'd say to it is once
you figure that out,
once you process people's processes and technologies defined, once your
prototypes have been
figured out, then you start figuring out how to scale. Same thing out there,
what you said in the
in the pilot phase of product is find somebody who cares to make this work.
That's your next person.
Find somebody who's going to then broadcast your wins to everybody else. Find
somebody's willing to
be a good example of lessons learned and wins that other people can trust and
say, "Yeah, this person
is breadable." These are the things that seem like simple cheat codes that a
lot of people don't
practice. That's like, "Man, don't make a life any more difficult than it needs
to be." So we have
these situations where we have a lot of stuff that's working. And so start
sequencing away to success
with either the people or in the geographies or the views of the products as
you start expanding
this thing out. Right? Again, very simple, very straightforward, but very, as I
say, common
senses not common. Right? The last one, bonus is that they are just borrowed
the slides so we try to
hash out some of these names. Is he got to celebrate his successes often and
early and he
was off-minorally. Right? Some of the most successful customers do this really
well. Either they have,
effectively in downhalls, virtual downhalls, webinars, whatever it might be
where they bring in their
successful people and make heroes out of it. Give them awards, call out winners
, call to the things,
have leaderboards, all these things that matter because you need to make sure
you get in the momentum
going out there and start doing it. Right? You know, if you were to think about
this whole
presentation so far, it's really two things. Right? One is don't put the card
before the horse,
two is about change management and reward is really a big part of the change
management process as well.
Right? So when I think about these things, you notice that a lot of this is
things that are common
part, are normal, what are called normal change management. A lot of people
forget about it. And we
wanted to make sure we kind of highlighted that to you as well. So to recap, my
top 10 list again,
right? There's a lot of stuff that you can do well without technology, start
doing it. There's a lot
of stuff you should do well before making decisions that have second and third
order decisions.
Please do them first and make sure you're getting wins, make sure you're
getting heroes, make sure you're
letting people know about who's doing what, how they're winning and so on and
so forth. Right? So that's
kind of how we've thought about it. It's like I said, you know, people think
about us as a data and
software company, which we are. But all these lessons are really about change
management and about
making sure you transform your companies. And these are lessons that we think
are valuable to everybody.
And that's why we thought that it might be interesting to share this with you
today. So with that,
I think Colin, that was my last slide and I'm happy to open up the fourth
questions now.
Colin, over to you. Yeah, thanks for that, Vivek. So we did get a few questions
come in.
One of them was what do you think the most common why the change to move?
What is the most sorry? What what what really I'm having trouble with this
question. Why why are people
motivated to change like what's the why you talked about that at the beginning?
You know, the most common virus thing I made maybe like a self-selected crowd
is that people
recognize that they're giving up a extraordinary wallet share to somebody else.
And the fastest way
to growth unprofitably is to win back the wallet share. Right. So it's a
fundamental financial reason
that people realize that they should be going after the install base and kind
of getting the wins
going. And that's the most common why the second most common why is that you
know, when you when you
have the situation where we have in certainly in some cases, maybe it's related
to number one.
The last year to have been challenging for certain equipment makers. Right. So
we've talked many of
our customers every time we do a quarterly business reviews or every time I
have conversations.
Now, oh, how's the equipment business doing? And it's clear that for last
couple years, people
have been under pressure on the equipment business side. Right. And so they
turn around and say,
"Gee, I need to grow. I need to grow differently." And maybe years and install
base and go after.
Right. So they're related, but that's typically the reasons why we see people
starting to change.
There's a couple of other things coming in now, Colin, but those are their
first two.
And I think this one correlates with that is when most of these companies reach
out to you,
where do you see them waning on that transformation journey? And then what's
the best way to get
started to move from the earlier stages to the stages three and four? That's a
great question.
So almost invariably with the exception of maybe a couple, most of these people
fall into our one
to three for level maturity curve. Most of them fall in some of them within one
and two. And I know
that's a hard message for me to deliver to people, but that's important and
deliver to them. Because
they invariably they have what they call inside sales seem to be the order-
taking teams or they really
don't use data. They don't really don't have even a CRM available that they're
after market salespeople
or the salespeople are busy selling equipment versus selling parts and service.
So all kinds
of different things going on, but they invariably some of it in one and two.
When you ask them that,
and quite often I tell people, look, look, I think you're you're a two away
from even thinking about
the technology like in dialogue. What I have them go to is first figure out the
as Jim Collins said,
first figure who was on the bus before he started figuring out where the bus is
going and then
when you want to need to put it in place. So always say start with who, right?
Get the people in
place first. Be the leader. Be the, you know, people who have a hunting mindset
and a growth mindset
versus people who've been used to doing business in a certain way. Go fix that.
Go put that in place.
They will be the right ones to design the process that you need to go do and so
on and so forth.
So that's kind of the sequence of things that I see works best for most
companies.
And another question. What's the common obstacle to get a buy-in for updating
the ERP?
You know, that's a common question. These are a difficult question in the sense
that
I always give the answer depends on what your IT governance process is like. So
what I
can tell you is that invariably, the title has gone through the process of
getting the data ready
and so on and so forth. We are almost always the only single source of clean
and trusted data.
All the most clean and trusted data I would say perfection. Then the question
becomes is how do you
then take it back to ERP or how do you take it back to CRM and so on and so
forth? And I think that's
where the IT governance process is coming in. So we do, with a couple of
customers, we do a
couple of things. So one is some people say look the moment in data is within
the entire,
that is our system of record now. And we're going to use that to write back
typically to the CRM.
Almost seldom do people take it directly back to the ERP, but when they do,
there's almost like
there's a quarantine situation where they'll get the data from the entire, see
what difference is
and then move it according to the governance process is back and I did a record
. So for example,
there's one customer we have literally 62 different unique IDs for the same
customer,
the same address. And so then we had to go figure out how to start reducing
that and we were able
to do it and then they took the data eventually to move it to ERP, but they had
to have a strong
governance process to do that. So that's an important aspect and it isn't a cop
out on our side
because we can maintain and hold the data, but you need to do something with it
. So
I know we're at the end of time. What's like that was all the questions that we
had for the discussion
today? Great. Well, we try to do these bite-sized 30-minute sessions because we
know all we feel busy.
I'm hoping that the context and the content we had today is useful and valuable
to you.
Some of you asked questions, we appreciate it. Those if you didn't. We're more
than happy to make this
presentation available to you. As Colin said, we'll share this with you at the
end of the
once the recording is a process today. But if there's any questions, you know
how to reach me at
Vivek.jr.json.in.dot.com or just to simply write into it and for an entire.dot.
com. So with that,
thank you very much everybody. Appreciate your time today and look forward to
hearing from you.