Reproduced with kind permission from T&A TyrePress.
Digitisation has been an extremely important trend in 2020, to say the least. Due to the restrictions implemented by global governments to combat the spread of Covid-19, the use of technology to perform all sorts of basic business functions has never been as widespread in its usage. While tyre fitting businesses have been spared enforced closure with their rightful designation as an essential service, the implementation of solid digital systems to assist operational and marketing functions has been vital – more so than ever before. Tyres & Accessories used one digital system with which many are now intimately acquainted – Microsoft Teams – to speak to the commercial director of tyre business software systems provider CAM, Steve Daly, about how the company has supported this increased digitisation, as well as the general growth in companies employing CAM’s solutions, such as e-jobsheet and Fitter-Force.
While the pandemic has generally been a catalyst for take-up of digital services, it has not been a straightforward charge towards a brave new world. Daly tells T&A how certain projects CAM was working on delivering this year were delayed as tyre businesses assessed their needs. On a practical basis, the take-up of furlough schemes meant that the relevant people were simply not available to deliver projects to. Economically, businesses have been forced to choose carefully how to allocate funds – Daly recognises that there is a balance to strike between investing in new systems to ensure businesses are fully prepared to make the most of market conditions, both in the current climate and when economic activity recovers. He adds that large projects will be taken up in 2021. All this said, there were businesses taking up CAM’s digital offer during 2020, with increases in e-jobsheet subscribers.
As you might expect, CAM was well set up to move more of its operations onto digital platforms. “We already had the infrastructure…to support remote office operations,” Daly says. The company’s workforce is largely locally based around its Gloucestershire head office anyway, and he points out that people generally want to work alongside their colleagues. When the company was forced to lock up the office, however, “there weren’t any technical shocks for us – we had the phone system and coms in place. And actually, the really pleasing thing, with evidence from our customer base, is that our support function has, if anything, improved.” Daly identifies the reasons for this as being related to the way in which teams need to take a more structured approach while working remotely. For similar reasons, product development has also continued at CAM.
Business Development and Account Management
There were more fundamental changes to doing business this year, as many companies in the automotive distribution chain will have experienced. While the tools that have been practical to conduct these business functions this year have enabled CAM to offer its customers similar services via video conferencing, Daly believes that they will not ultimately be a full-scale replacement for in-person contact. “We’ve had to find new ways to have interaction with customers on a scheduled, structured basis.” These sorts of sessions have been “very practical,” Daly adds. They have been good for addressing customer service points, which have largely been the focus this year, rather than the strategic planning of projects. New business, therefore, “has been hampered,” since interacting on a face-to-face level is a preferable form of communication for coming to such agreements, Daly adds, but CAM has managed to start accounts this year too. Perhaps beyond the current period, a hybrid form of business communication could be oriented along such lines, with the advantages of both digital and in-person communication harnessed more effectively than pre-2020.
So how is CAM looking to the future given what has been learned this year?
“We are looking at more digitisation and more online services,” Daly tells T&A. CAM’s e-jobsheet system is a good example of a service ecosystem set up to help customers increase digitisation from the start. An important part of this process is customers’ ability to understand and use the tool they have subscribed to and downloaded in an efficient manner. “We think a lot of our customers just want something off-the-shelf that they can get on with,” Daly says, and CAM continues to work and invest in providing this. “Covid-19 has had a lot to do with articulating that for us,” Daly adds. “If you look at e-jobsheet, it plays in a space where our commercial and fleet service providers have been busy throughout the pandemic.”
CAM has seen subscriptions to e-jobsheet increase this year “to the tune of about 150 subscribers.” Daly acknowledges that this growth is at odds with some of its customers, who supply services to industries that have struggled during 2020, though the situation is changing rapidly. “For the right digital service, there has been continuing, if not upgraded, interest,” he continues. Recognising that there is likely to be some continuation of anti-viral measures in the near future, Daly says that “we’re going to have to find a gentle, self-service way for new customers to join us through an e-commerce or digital medium.”
Virtual training
The process of communicating how to use digital products with customers, helping them to acquire the skills they need to make best use of digital systems, has been given a new focus by CAM’s own internal experiences. Working remotely can mean the disconnection of teams, and digital platforms give companies an opportunity to counter this if used in the right way.
“A lot of the industry talks about connectivity, and as soon as you talk about connectivity you’re talking about integration and systems that are, by definition, becoming more complex,” Daly says. He says that CAM understands the need to ensure people can help themselves as much as possible in making new systems work for them.
“Our customer base don’t have to have degrees in computer science to be able to run their operations, and we need to cater to that. We need to make the seemingly complex sound as simple as possible. That’s not easy to articulate verbally via a Teams session. So we’re investing in painting a picture that is as self-explanatory as we can make it… And if they want to know a little bit more, at least they’ve got some information up their sleeve, and they can approach us on that basis. And that’s the way it will continue to go into the new year.”
While this insight has been clarified by pandemic conditions, this is an example of an aspect of business that can reach beyond 2020. “We will have to invest in the tools and the platforms which allow us to communicate and engage with all of our customers and prospects,” Daly says. The experience will also lead to innovation, he adds, which will affect the full tyre supply chain. “The more digitised we as a software provider can make our offerings to customers, the more that’s going to sink in with what the industry, from the manufacturer down, is demanding of their dealers – who also happen to be our customers. The more that we can produce that is tablet-oriented and the more information, the more decision support that we can provide to our customers, the more appealing it is to them.”
Daly adds that CAM recognises that not everyone is as comfortable with using technology in certain ways as others. It is natural for there to be a degree of digital scepticism among people who have conducted their business offline for many years. Openness to digitisation is not necessarily dictated by age, of course. “We have around 1800 fitters in the UK using e-jobsheet,” Daly continues. “The irony is you will have someone who is my age [Steve is in his 50s] saying that the fitters will never take it on because of their [supposed] fear of the technology.” CAM recognises that part of “the challenge” in supplying digital systems to the industry is overcoming the business-owner’s scepticism “about his user community” taking up the technology, without being confrontational – even inadvertently. And the best way to do this is to have a system that allows the business-owner or manager to immerse themselves in the technology while continuing to understand it.
“You’re asking them to make these leaps into all of these new technologies, and invest in it,” Daly says, in addition to ensuring their employees can use it properly. Being able to offer the most simple and user-friendly ways to utilise the technologies, as well as explaining in clear terms how the technology will assist them, goes some way to overcoming trepidation surrounding new systems. The fact that CAM has seen business’ investment in digital services “stay pretty stable” during this year shows that “people are thinking about these sorts of things.”
The increasing uptake in digital services, as witnessed this year, has ultimately been instructive in showing systems providers the value of being able to pick up the technology from a standing start. The broad range of technical abilities among user bases – with many users forced online by isolation for the first time – has proven a catalyst for digitisation. How well suppliers of such systems can capitalise is in part down to how well they help customers to serve themselves – this is true of business-to-business systems as much as it is of those targeting consumers.
CAM’s Commercial Director Steve Daly