Tri-Lift Industries is a family-owned and operated materials handling equipment dealership with locations across North Carolina and South Carolina. They have been with DIS since 2004.
While their team may be spread out, they still work closely together. They pride themselves on a consistent customer experience across each of their dealership branches. We chatted with Kevin Bond, Vice President of Information Systems/Fleet Management, and Brent Belton, IT Support Specialist on Kevin’s team, about how they leverage DIS to stay connected and consistent across locations.
Kevin Bond: “I kind of split my days into fours. A portion is dedicated to Charlotte operations, a portion is dedicated to IT, a portion is dedicated to rental, and a portion of it is dedicated to the lump sum of all the mini-tasks that don’t technically fall all within one department.
Brent is a part of the division that I run. He helps tremendously; he does a lot of project management for the IT department, implementation, training, and design for our infrastructure.”
What has your experience been like working with the DIS team?
Kevin Bond: “We deal with software vendors every single day, whether it comes from IT managed services, GPS software, or any sort of outside software that we have to coordinate. Everything nowadays is subscription-based. Gone are the days when you just buy equipment and put it in the house. You must deal with the training or support teams somehow.
I can say that whether they’re from the support team, sales, or anyone over at the DIS office—the team has been absolutely phenomenal. There’s never been a moment where I’ve ever had to question what’s going on or wait for a response. They are more than happy to help, whether from an email, phone call, or even the DIS User Conference. To spend the amount of time to not only make sure that you are taken care of as a customer but also to make sure you understand how to navigate the system and to continuously offer you a better way of operating the system rather than what you might be doing now is recognized and appreciated.”
Brent Belton: “I 100% agree Kevin about the support. It’s amazing how quickly they can respond to a ticket and then get you resolved. They offer instructions to make sure that you understand what the issue is and how to solve it. They’re not just fixing your issue; they’re teaching you as well.”
Kevin Bond: “The people who make up the backend have decades of experience. So, it doesn’t feel like it’s an answer to try to get you off the phone. It feels like an answer that comes from their experience.”
How do you leverage your DMS to create a lasting customer experience?
Kevin Bond: “Whether it be people within the industry, adjacent manufacturers or suppliers, or customers, it’s a new world of data mining. People want information, and they want to be able to dive deeper into that information. While DIS has rock-solid, normal reports built into the system, some customers want a higher-level view of that. We have a lot of bigger customers who are looking for a fleet management portal. So, we set up not only Analytics but also My Portal.
We see a big value in it because we have a lot of reports that we’re looking to run, especially in parts, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, that we want to start diving a little bit deeper into. How often is that happening? What are people coming across? What’s the turnover ratio, the turning of parts, and each individual department, even by van? So, we’re looking to dive much deeper into the actual specific information of what we have as a company. It benefits everyone internally as we’re adding more people to the company who are looking for that higher level of information.
It also helps customers because everyone wants to know what’s going on within their fleet. They want that free flow of information to do what’s best for their company, and that’s why we’re going that direction.”
How does DIS help your team stay aligned across multiple branches?
Kevin Bond: “You can find that as you expand into multiple branches, it gets harder and harder to corral each branch to follow in the same way. There are always 1,000,000 reasons why they won’t do it. Customers are different here, or people are different, or it’s a different climate, or whatever it is; there’s always a reason why an individual branch wants to do something different. So, DIS obviously helps corral the central processes, all the shops, and everything we use to standardize the process for everyone.
So, if everyone is not working on the same sheet of music or does not have access to the same information about how it all should flow within the system, there will be inconsistencies in billing and customer support.
DIS and its middle-tier products have helped bridge that gap by ensuring that each branch works together to achieve the same goal and that all customers are taken care of in the same way at every location. That’s why fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s or Bojangles look and operate the same every time you enter a restaurant. I mean, there’s true value and consistency in making sure people have the same experience wherever they go.”
What makes DIS different from other dealership management software?
Kevin Bond: “People don’t realize that when you start a material handling dealership, and you go out into the market to find an ERP or dealer management system, you’ll realize very quickly that there are very few options that do everything curtailed specifically to material handling. Usually, you have to buy add-on packages or additional services. Very few products in the market are fully designed, developed, and implemented for material handling. So, when you find those companies, you can start diving into the intricacies of what separates those products from the others.”
Brent Belton: “I don’t use it every day, but the times that I do use it, it is very, very simple to get through. Once you kind of figure it out and once you’ve done it a couple of times, it becomes second nature.
You can roll it off the top of your head and go through it.”
Kevin Bond: “From what I’ve seen, they all do similar things, right? I’ve seen multiple systems where there are a million different fields and things you have to click on to navigate your way through. But DIS just guides you through steps one through 30 to get to the end goal of what you need, and I love that simplicity. A lot of systems nowadays almost isolate people into certain things they do, certain tasks, whereas with DIS, I feel like you truly understand what it means to work the role you have.”
I think every system has its own challenges and rewards. When you spend time learning it, you find out all the facets and benefits. But the beautiful thing about DIS is that it’s rock-solid. You know how it operates. It does exactly what you need it to do.”