Anvil is a ‘Game-Changer’

Panel Says Digitization Drives Dealership Transformation

Four different dealerships: different regions, different sizes, different goals. Two common denominators: All use Anvil to digitize their operations, and all share excitement for tapping the unrealized potential it unlocks.

Meet the Panel

Taking the stage at the JDUG 2022 Summit on Feb. 15, 2022 were panelists (from left):

• • • Lundi McIntyre, process management officer at Hutson Inc. in Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee
    • Ryan Payment, CFO and CIT at LandPro Equipment in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio
    • Brian Marshall, corporate systems director at United Ag & Turf in the Northeast
    • Joe Smith, operations manager at Wright Implement in Kentucky and Indiana

The session covered a wide range of dealership concerns offered by the panel and fielded from the attendees, with a few distinct threads emerging from the discussion.

Handle More Volume

Right out of the gate, the panelists pointed out that digitization increased the volume of deals they could process without adding staff.

“We continue to do more and more transactions every year with generally the same number of bodies,” said Marshall. “But we are able to continue providing the same level of experience in customer interactions.”

McIntyre agreed. “We’ve grown quite a bit over the last 12 months and Anvil’s automations allow us to take on a lot more transactions, a lot more deals in general,” he said. “And nobody’s overloaded because we’ve taken the tedious, repetitive stuff out of it and do that electronically. We can just skip to the part that does take human effort.”

He offered this example: We’ve got one person creating stock numbers and was doing that for 12 stores in the past,” he said. “With Anvil, she’s been able to pick up a lot more volume, but her workload hasn’t changed much — and she now supports 30 stores.”

Find Inventory Effortlessly

Marshall and McIntyre also focused on the efficiency digitization through Anvil brings to locating inventory.

“We now have numerous ways to look up inventory,” explained McIntyre. “Using filters, you can just punch in what you want and then save the searches. They are a lot more reliable and quicker to use.”

He also mentioned demonstrating this feature to a trainee when another rep walked by. Because Anvil consolidates and filters the search information, “I was able to quickly locate the stock unit I wanted in about 90 seconds,” he said. “The rep told us he had done the same search the day before in EQUIP and it took him 40 minutes to find an appropriate stock unit for his customer because he had to search through each piece of equipment manually.”

Find It All in One Place

Payment’s value-added list starts with consolidation and simplification, which quickly drew agreement from the other panelists. “The goal is making it a one-stop-shop,” he said. “We’re trying to bring as much interaction into Anvil as possible, so there is no reason for sales reps to be in any other system but Anvil going forward.”

“It brings together all the equipment information. It brings together all the customer information. And starting a quote in Anvil automatically creates the quote in JDQuote2,” said Smith. “Simple.”

Access Salesforce Power

The Salesforce framework that drives Anvil’s feature array hooked more than one of the panelists.

“Salesforce is the leading CRM,” said Smith. “That was big for me. We couldn’t figure out how to do what we wanted with the technology we had. And the Anvil/Salesforce combination got it done. We haven’t really run into any limitations with Anvil. It is just a matter of how much time and effort we have to put into it and knowing what we want to do.”

“I was very interested in the Deere system,” said Payment. “And we almost piloted it. But a Salesforce rep addressed each of my objections, and then connected me with Anvil. All the boxes got checked. We now have a plan to get all our major concerns taken care of — and we’re down to one system.”

Become a Better Business

Digitizing your business through Anvil makes you think differently about your dealership, according to several panelists.

“We envision this Salesforce-based tool to grow within our dealership,” said Payment. “Centralizing more service tasks and their requests is a subtle, but important, shift in our business. So is marking stock units sold from a quote instead of individually. Now we spend a lot less time managing details, and that has upped our game quite a bit.”

“I’d say our biggest opportunities so far are the great ideas coming from our team,” said McIntyre. “The reporting capabilities and the ability to visualize where things are in the pipeline are going to force us to change behaviors because we don’t utilize the Anvil systems to their full potential — yet.”

“We are doing business in a better way,” said Smith. “Managers now look at quotes before they are sold and started coaching their salespeople on how to close the deal. I don’t think we did much of that before.” He continued: “After the sale they can track the deal in the order-to-cash side and manage it the same way. That’s a game changer!”