Great West Customer Success Story

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Future-Proofing Your Dealership by Leveraging e-Emphasys Service Management Solutions and Best Business Practices

Great West Equipment is a full-service heavy equipment dealership headquartered in British Columbia, Canada. With a focus on construction, forestry, and mining, Great West is a leading dealer of Volvo equipment amongst other OEMs including Sennebogen, Terex, and more. Over the past 18 years, Great West has experienced enormous growth and now has 11 branches
throughout British Columbia and the Yukon.

Great West Equipment’s VP of Parts & Services, Paul Lawrence, said, “Our vision is to sell quality products and support them to the best of our abilities; to provide our customers with the best solutions in the industry for construction and forestry.”

Great West Equipment

Headquartered: Vernon, British Columbia, CA

Founded: 1986

Locations: 11 Locations across British Columbia and the Yukon

Industries: Construction, forestry, and mining

OEMs: Volvo, Madill, Sennebogen, Metso, Morbark, Azfab, SDLG, Terex, Dressta, TimberPro, CMI, Genesis, FFE, K-Tec, and more

Challenges

Great West Equipment had been with their previous legacy system since 2004. With limited reporting capabilities and lack of accuracy of information, they knew it was time to make the switch.

As President and CEO, Ross Davidson, explains, “We know we are coming into an era of greater needs as far as technology is concerned“. He continued, “We felt that this was the company to take us into the future and be able to advance the way we want to and provide our customers with the service that we want to.”

A major concern facing not only Great West Equipment, but also the industry in general, is the decrease in skilled laborers over the next 10 to 15 years. In critically looking at their projected numbers, Rintoul quickly realized the shortage they would face, “In 10 years is there going to be enough people to fill the jobs? I don’t think so. We need technology to fill those gaps“. That’s where e-Emphasys came in.

Solutions

Great West was looking for a modern partner, one to support their growth and carry them into the future. It was important for their partner to be knowledgeable about the heavy equipment industry with a solution that reflected that knowledge.

Davidson explained that Great West was attracted to e-Emphasys because it is a cutting-edge solution. Additionally, 24/7 support, a platform tailored to the heavy equipment industry, and an integration with Volvo were what made e-Emphasys stand out to Great West.

The big question on Davidson’s mind was around ROI. Once implementation was complete, he only had this to say, “I know full well that I’m going to get my money back, and I’m going to get it back in a hurry.”

Benefits & Results

One of the great benefits of selecting e-Emphasys for Great West were the best practices tool. Rintoul explained that “It allowed us to actually learn a little bit about the business as well. What we thought was efficient wasn’t necessarily efficient.”

They weren’t just a software team. They weren’t just ‘Here’s our software, plug it in and let’s go.' They understood how it worked and that made us a lot more comfortable too. So, it made the transition a lot easier, too.

- Rob Rintoul, CFO, Great West Equipment

For ERP Project Manager, Jayne Davidson, the ease of use in implementation and cut-over impressed her most. She shared that for her and others, “This was the smoothest cut-over I’ve ever experienced. It was such a fun and rich experience.” She also raved about the increased visibility and efficiencies across the board.

Since their ‘go live’, Great West Equipment has experienced major improvements in the efficiencies of their daily tasks. Lawrence explained, “It’s so many time saving things, especially for me, when I do things like service contracts. Monthly service contracts used to take me half a day. They now take me 30 seconds each.”

The efficiency to which data is shared throughout the organization and the single source of truth that e-Emphasys ERP provides has allowed Great West to make faster, more informed decisions and has resulted in cost savings.