Even the heavy machinery industry is not immune to the e-commerce revolution. Distribution businesses have been particularly affected, with customers increasingly tempted by internet-based sellers of spare parts and third-party service organizations.
One company was determined to halt the shift: CTE, which supplies Caterpillar Inc. construction equipment, spare parts and servicing to customers across Western North Carolina. To inspire loyalty among its construction clients, the company needed a game-changing competitive differentiator.
CTE realized that its historical sales and service data could contain valuable insight into equipment maintenance, costs and operations. If the company could analyze the information and offer it to customers in services such as cost comparisons, this value-added facility could bind them closely to CTE and help reinforce loyalty.
At the time, CTE ran three separate business systems, inherited from previous acquisitions and earlier corporate history. Precious data was effectively trapped in these system silos, which depended on legacy technologies not able to support modern app-based ways of working. To complete tasks such as financial reporting and operational planning, employees spent considerable time manually extracting data from each system, collating and validating the results before being able to present accurate reports. The time and cost of merging data from the legacy systems presented a significant barrier to CTE’s ambitious plans for customer-centered information.
Matt Nazzaro, VP and Chief Financial Officer, comments, “The environment for maintenance suppliers and dealerships like us is changing, and CTE is determined to stay ahead of the curve. As the internet threatens to disintermediate many distributor or ‘middleman’ companies, we must look for ways to add value to our services, to continue evolving in a challenging digital economy. First we needed a solid financial infrastructure on which to base this evolution.”