John Deere Africa | Jacques Taylor | Awards Ceremony

I'm Jacques Taylor and I'm the managing director for John Deere Sub Saharan Africa. We are at the awards ceremony tonight. From a John Deere point of view, we very much focus on our product and our brand. But we sometimes maybe just forget that the people behind the brand and those are the guys that we wanted to recognize here tonight. Some of our dealer personnel that was here tonight doesn't really have the opportunity to engage with us as John Deere at senior leadership. And for us it was really just a small token to share our appreciation for the work that they're doing in dealing with our joint customer on a daily basis. I think yes, our product is important, yes, our channel is important, but ultimately it's a personal touch that bring the customer back to us. So from my side and on behalf of John Deere, a big congratulations to our winners. Starting off with our parts expert of the year, the winner, Jako Wessels. Second run up Danu Kassara. And then Dion Britz in third place. And also then for our technician of the year winner, ATI Bester. Second runner up is Gert Groebler and May back to Brain in third place. Congratulations guys and thank you for your hard work. My name is Arthur Baester, come from Bethlehem. One of the key drivers for us is distinct customer service and distinct customer experience. And that's around our dealer network. It's around the dealer personnel that the farmer engage with on a daily basis. And part of this initiative is really to encourage, to give the credit and to create that excitement within our dealer network that ultimately would serve our customer better.