Episode 164: The Cost of Doing Nothing: Why Delaying an FMIS Hurts Your Fleet

This is the Fleet Success Show dedicated to helping you and your fleet succeed using the experience of fleet professionals and Hall of Fame fleet legends. The show that explores how the pillars of stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture, resource efficiency, and risk management all combine to lead your fleet to success. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into the show. Hey, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show with your hosts, Josh Turley, Mark Canton.

How you doing, Josh? Good.

Good to be back in the studio. We're very bright and festive today, I feel like.

Yeah, I like that shirt.

So I will tell you, so we started a tradition here in the office, which is Hawaiian Shirt Fridays. I gotta thank my good buddy Ryan for this. Yeah. He started this. He just does it on his own.

Yeah.

'Cause it's like a fun feel-good Friday thing.

Yeah.

And the ET wasn't picking up the hint. So for Christmas, he bought us all our own Hawaiian shirts. And so now every Friday, it's Hawaiian Shirt Friday at the office. And so now if you see us in Hawaiian shirts, is because we recorded on a Friday. Exactly.

You know what day of the week we recorded?

And I will tell you, I was telling everybody, like, I actually love this shirt. Yes. I look at it in my closet, I was like, oh, I want to wear that, but it's not Friday. And so I look forward to Friday just so I can wear the shirt because of how it fits.

I gotta tell you, uh, I told him this, I said, I gotta find out where you bought that shirt. It's like the most comfortable shirt I've ever worn.

Sunday Swagger. Oh, look at that, we're gonna sponsor— this is like our first promotion, unpaid promotion.

Come on Sunday, give us a call.

I think it's called Sunday Swagger.

I think that's what he said. It's, it's Awesome. So I'm like, I got to go over there and buy like 10 of them.

Yeah, that's, that's— sure, I like it. I like it a lot. Um, so today, you know, as just a little background on, on Mark and I, uh, so I'm the CEO over here at RTA Fleet, 20+ years serving, you know, government fleets, trucking fleets, building and designing FMIS software, uh, for fleet managers. My background's in technology leadership, and so you're going to hear me talk a lot about that stuff. Change management is going to be a topic today. Mark, you've run public fleets, you've been at higher ed, you've run that, you've been a consultant, you've seen the data, you've done a lot of FMIS implementations.

Yes, sir.

You've been around the block 30-plus years in fleet.

About, yep.

So we know a thing or two.

We'd like to think.

Yeah, at least we stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

And I saved 50% on my charges.

Your car insurance, yeah, right? It's so easy a fleet manager can do it. So one of the things that we wanted to talk about is we talked to, you know, industry publications and things of that nature. Um, you know, we were specifically talking with some of the people over at Bobbitt, and they said, you know, one of the things that the industry struggles with, you know, all these, all these people have content, they're putting out stuff, and hey, here's why this FMIS is great, and here's why you should do this telematics solution. But the big question on that usually doesn't get answered right, on everybody's mind that doesn't get answered is, why now, right? Like, where's the sense of urgency other than just how amazing things are or how it could be? And so what they usually stop with is, well, it sounds great, but I don't have the time, or I don't really, you know, need that right now, or they know they should do it, but it's just not important, right? And so from your perspective, when you hear that, what are some of the things that kind of go through your mind, or what have you seen in the industry that, that kind of tells you, yeah, that sounds about right.

Kind of liking it too. And hopefully, you know, the fleet folks will get this, right? Like, imagine you're trying to take a wheel off and you walk up to the lug and you try to turn that nut with your hand, right? That's what not having a system is like, right? That's what not leveraging anything— you're literally just bootstrapping the darn organization and trying to force-feed, make it work, right? You have no insight, No ability to cap, no efficiencies. I mean, I, I can go on and on and on and you know, and then you might grow a little bit. Maybe you get a wrench and you say, all right, I'm gonna try to move this nut with a wrench. And you know, that might be something like, uh, using a little maintenance module on maybe your telematics or your ERP or your asset management tool, right? You get some help, but it's not really changing the game for you in the operation. And then maybe there's some things in between there, like a ratchet. You know, it's one, you know, hey, it's much more efficient, I can get a lot more done. You know, you get the, the big bars that come in your— keep messing up this word, what's it called, um, the crowbar with the, um, you know. And now, okay, you can get on that thing, and if you're a big guy like us, jump on it and it's going, it's great, right? But then you get to this point and you're trying to move faster, you're trying to be better, and You could get an air gun, right? And now the air gun, boop, done, right? That same process that took you a really long time, especially if you're on a big truck with 8 or 12 lugs, right? You're in seconds, you're, you literally have that, you have that wheel off, right? Um, now you made the point, I had brought up this analogy once before and you made a great point, the difference between that is you got, now you got this really great tool that's going to help you and it's going to be efficient, but it does take some investment, right? You need, you need, uh, you got to have a compressor, right? You got to have electricity, you got to have a place to put all this stuff, you got to run air hoses, right? Exactly. So that's kind of, you know, my feeling, and we'll get a little bit more into that. You know, most folks don't do it, whether it's fear of change, out of habit, you hear all kinds of reasons for it, but it's, it's— I, I think part of it is really stepping back and appreciating what a change this is going to make in your organization and truly transform, transform your organization. Let's start with if you don't have anything at all, just go get something. Right.

Like, as far as like an FMIS, right?

Like, you know, whether it's us, a competitor, like, you know, I'm here to tell you, you need an FMIS system.

And FMIS stands for Fleet Management Information System, right? NAFSA would call it a Fleet Information Management System.

Yeah, they would reverse the I and the M there.

I've got opinions on that, but we call it an FMIS. That's my, my computer information systems background. Comes through.

Right, exactly.

So fleet management information system. So if they don't have anything right now, paper, they're putting stuff in file cabinets. Right. That could be you, right? And I feel sorry and feel bad for you.

Yeah, if that's still you.

That's the equivalent of you're walking up to that lug and trying to loosen it by hand.

Right.

Eventually you'll get it, but your fingers won't work anymore. They'll actually be quite raw. You might be down to the bone, I don't know. But it's very difficult. It's hard to get anything out of it. You're definitely not doing anything from an efficiency standpoint.

Right, exactly.

And so our take is at least get something.

Get something, right? At least put a wrench in your hand, right? Or a little more than that, because a wrench, that's maybe like, oh, look at this beautiful spreadsheet I built in Excel or Google or something like that. And yeah, now you can track some things.

And probably the better example would be like a lug wrench, you know, like a tire iron.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can do 4 different types of lugs with that, but that's it. Like, you, you've now reached the limit of what that can do.

Exactly. And it's only going to get you so far, and And it's ultimately still utterly manual, right? Any insights, any, anything, any process improvements or efficiencies that might be gained from using the software, they don't exist. It's just a different place to put the information, right? Other than writing it on a pen and paper essentially, right? So, you know, that's kind of what that is, right? And maybe that ratchet set, and you know, we'll get more into this, but that might be that module. You know, if someone convinces you, oh yeah, you know, we, you know, you know, we're this routing software, or we're telematics software, and we're SAP, you know, we're SAP, you know. Yeah, exactly, you know.

And Munis, yeah, go use our, go use our deal, right? Like an ERP type thing.

Yeah, exactly, you know. And, and, and we get it, you know, people use it. And, you know, yes, tracking something in there is better than pen and paper, like there's, there's no question there. But again, you still don't have a, a purpose-built software for your trade, for your function, for your you know, industry. And if you think about it, like, it's in 2025, what profession does not have a purpose-built software for the work that they do every day, right? And so there's a lot that comes with that, right? You know, we're very proud of our BHAG numbers. You know, we've talked about it before, won't get into too much detail, but you know, we can prove we've saved you a lot of time and a lot of money and a bunch of trees too, you know, by using our software because we can prove how it speeds things up for you essentially. Right? Um, and that's true. I mean, it's, it's simply true. Now, when you get a purpose-built software, those softwares are in, in any industry, right? They understand what the work of that profession is, let's say. Right? And for those that have been around a while, like we've been over 40 years, and, and there are others, right? It, it's not, it's not only about us. There are, there are insights almost, let's say, embedded into the software of how best to do things, right? Because we've been there, we've done that. We've, you know, we've worked with thousands upon thousands of customers. So especially if you're new or newer or you're trying to, let's say, uplevel your organization, right? You want that. You want that there. That's not coming in the beautiful— you could be the best Excel writer on the planet, right? And I've seen it. I've seen people who are so good at Excel, right? Where it's basically software, you know, but most fleet managers and their IT departments don't have those skills. And even if they do, they don't have the bandwidth. And even if they do, I don't think it's tenable, right? It's not sustainable long term, right? It's going to break. It's, you know, you can talk better about that than me. Right.

Yeah. And that's usually what we've seen is, oh, this one guy wrote us this Access database application.

Oh, right. Yeah, that's a good example. Yeah.

Or Excel or whatever. And but he retired 5 years ago and nobody knows how to make this thing work. Right.

Exactly.

Yeah. No, that's not a sustainable solution. You need something that's purpose-built and, you know, and any of the big ones, you know, if you're in a municipal fleet, It's us, Faster, AssetWorks, right? Not in that order. It's just, you know, like you find what fits for you. But we're all 40-some-odd-year-old companies who've been doing this a long time with lots of customers in your space. And it's going to teach you how to run a fleet in addition to— yes, doing the job itself.

Exactly. There are literally cues within the software on how to get better at doing your work.

Right.

So, so, so I think that's, you know, a really key piece to, to, to understand, you know, and that's when you start talking about you know, that air gun, right? And obviously when you look at that air gun, air gun technology has even changed quite a bit over the years, right? They used to be these big, massive, heavy things that, you know, you were two hands and down on one knee, right? And now you can use— seeing very similar torque in things that, you know, my 14-year-old can hold, right? Kind of a thing. So, you know, there's obviously even differences within the air guns, right? And you got to find the one that's really best for you. Nonetheless, you need to be at Airgun.

No, but, or, you know, and now this is coming out, hey, let's go electric impact, right? Now there's like, everything's very electric these days.

Yes, yes.

Uh, we're going to find an electric FMIS, right? But I think that's, you look at those type of things, you'll compare, you know, Craftsman to Milwaukee to, you know, uh, whatever other stuff. And the idea, Ingersoll Rand, um, the idea is you try to find the one that fits for you, that, you know, works in your application. Well, we don't do any, you know, 1-inch stuff or 3/4-inch stuff. It's all half-inch. Uh, you find what you need.

Perfectly great analogy. Yeah, exactly. You know, what, what's the one? And you'll see that, right? You'll see that different ones designed to work with, let's say, ranges of sizes. And, and yeah, exactly right. That's exactly it. And the same is true within the software, right? You know, as you point out, at its core, especially some of those competitors you mentioned, we have a lot in common, right? But you know, where— what you need to look for are You know, what's around the edges there, right? What are my precise needs? What are the things I'm focused on that maybe this software does a little better?

Yeah. What do I want out of a— out of the company itself?

Yes. You just read my mind. Yes.

You know, because I think that's something else. I remember this is back before Craftsman got bought out, but one of my favorite things about buying Craftsman tools was even if they broke, I would just go down to Sears and I get a new one.

Right.

That lifetime guarantee meant something, right? You know, and the company stood behind it.

Right.

And then they sold out. It was completely different company. But the idea behind that was I knew what I was getting. And even if it wasn't the best tool, right, it wasn't a Snap-on, it wasn't, you know, one of the other brands, but I knew what I was getting and it worked and it worked really well. The same thing is true for an FMIS is you really do need to understand, you know, what's the company about? What are their long-term plans? How are they going to help me in my job, right, with my job to be done? Because it does go beyond just the software. You know, we're not a lug wrench, we're not a tire iron. We are, you know, we're the whole system, right? We are the compressor to the impact, and we're going to make sure that you lay that out right and you don't try to wire that up to the wrong type of outlet. And what's the right way to route the hose so that it works best? And, um, the great companies will do that for you, whereas the other ones are like, here's the stuff, good luck.

Exactly right. You know, and then you need to know where, where are you on your let's say, your maturity, you know, journey, you know, you know, if you got all the resources in the world and you have 12 seasoned system administrators, right, you're going to have a different set of needs than someone who can't even afford one or can't find one on the market, right? Those sorts of things. Do you need, you know, SMEs? One of the things we're very proud of is, you know, we have a whole army, frankly, of, you know, really seasoned professionals, award-winning professionals, Hall of Fame professionals. Who can come in and we don't only then teach you your system, we, we help you manage your fleet. How do I leverage this system and how do I manage my fleet better? Right. Some companies, that's, that's not what they're selling. That's not what they do. Right. To your point. So, you know, where's— what do you need? What is that balance? Right. It's everything, right? Yeah. So that's kind of the analogy I had in my head. I figured, you know, it's like, you know, it really, I think, works if you think about it.

Well, and coming back to the original question, which is why now?

Yeah, why?

Why do I need to do this now? Why is this important? Right. Because the alternative is you just wait and it's usually some type of objection, like there's something in your head that's causing you not to want to do this and you're not recognizing the benefit of, hey, yeah, I know I can keep— I could go and upgrade and go get myself an air gun, but I really just want to keep loosening these by hand. And that's honestly like we put it in those terms because we want you to see how silly it sounds when we talk to people that don't have any system at all. They're like, I know, but it's going to take too much time. And I was like, really?

Yeah.

How much time are you wasting doing everything manually with pen and paper?

Right.

Um, you know, that's the exact same analogy of you're choosing to loosen that lug by hand right now. That's how— yeah.

How many vehicles are you getting done that day? How many tires? How many cars are you rotating their tires that day?

Yeah. Versus with the gun? So it's— the answer is, trust me, you do have time. You just need to stop spending it on that stuff, right?

Exactly.

But let's say, you know, okay, well now what do I want to go do? You know, do I just upgrade myself and go get that ratchet set and then start there? Yes, but we would just tell you is be mindful of limitations. You'll get to a point where it won't work or it'll break, and it's not right, a great solution. We, you know, invest, spend the time on yourself and invest in yourself so that you can get that time back later, right? We've shown, and I know the other competitors can do the same thing, I don't know if they can show it the same way we do, but the principles are all there, is we are literally saving years I think right now the latest stats that we've shown, um, is as of today— what is today, you know, mid-January— we have saved 876 years since I took over the company in 2017.

Exactly, that's the number.

Now if you go back to 1979, like that number goes— we were measuring it, but since 2017, mid-July 2017, yes, we've saved 876 years. 876 years. 7 years of time.

In 7 years of time.

And so a good system will do that. Yeah, right. You just think about how much time you're spending loosening that lug by hand and now hit it with an impact and see how fast that goes.

Exactly. And that's how you really have to think about this.

Yeah. So what else— why else would people say, nah, I don't really want to implement a knife on my ass right now?

Yeah. And this is like all going to fall under the steam of something you've said a lot on this show, but it really fits is work on the business, not in the business. Right. And this really falls into that. So, so you hear that, right? And you hear things like, you know, so you have the timepiece Um, you know, well, it's going to be, it's going to be too difficult. Well, why is it going to be too difficult?

And then you kind of get a subset of my technicians will never use this.

Yeah, right, exactly. You know, um, it's like, well, that's what training programs are for. And once you can, you know, they're a stakeholder, and once you can show them the value add, you know, to their work, right, they'll, they'll, they'll change. It will, it will be slow going at first sometimes. For some folks, they— human beings, we resist change. The key is displaying and emphasizing and showing, hey, this is the value you get out of it.

What you don't want to do is put the impact in their hand and not hook it up to air.

Right, right.

Because I've seen people do this is the allegory, the allegory, right? But, you know, hey, here's this tool and we don't give you the training and then we don't supply it with what it needs. And now they're sitting there. So instead of loosening that lug by hand, now they're trying to loosen it. You know, they're using the impact like a ratchet, but that's not working. And so they're just using the socket by hand, right? That gives them a little more torque, but Right. Still not super effective.

Right.

And I'm like, this thing's a piece of junk and they get rid of it and it's like, but you never hooked up the air, right? You got all this stuff and you never did it.

Right. It's a good point. Implementation is key and that's implementation training is obviously a part of that, you know, configuring the system, getting it ready to go so that it's exactly what you need.

But I think if you do that, if you can show them what it looks like when it is working, right, if you can show them what's in it for them. Every time I have a problem with change management, it always comes back to we didn't do a good job with what I call WIFM, right? What's in it for me, right? If we don't do a good job communicating with them, we're going to fail, right? And so we really have to, in order to get their buy-in, we have to hear from them, we have to talk through it, and we really have to get clear about what's in it for them, right? And so for like an FMIS, we could be, well, you're going to get better, you know, it's going to do a better job taking notes. So the next time that vehicle comes back in, you're going to remember that, right?

Um, you're going to track your time, you're going to check your time, right?

You click a button and you're done, you go, you don't have to sit there and like try to remember it or write it down on a paper, right? It's click and click, right?

It's exactly what parts you issued or you requested. Uh, you know, you're going to be able to find that instead of sitting in a book or in some other—

it's going to show you what parts you need, right? If they're in stock already, you can request them and the parts guy will bring it to your bay.

What's the part I used last time on this vehicle, right, when I had this problem, right? These are all kinds of things that, you know, I'm confident many systems do, but we certainly do, right? That's exactly it, you know. And, and what you're getting at here is, look, as much as possible go with the— go with the carrot, right? Show them what's in it for them. We, we will hear fleet managers, well, I had to go with the stick, right? Because— and, and we get that to a degree. Obviously a little bit of a balance of that. Most psychological studies show mostly carrot with a little bit of stick is kind of the way to go.

Um, so being a good parent— yeah, well, you can't use sticks anymore, they don't like that.

Yeah, we're out in the desert. But I think that's a really big key. Show them what's in it for them, how's it gonna make their life easier, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe, just maybe, if you have built a good culture and your techs and other staff for that matter appreciate sort of thinking about the organization as a whole, which I think there are many fleets out there who can say that, you can also show them what's in it for the organization, right? How does it win, right? Hey, by doing this and using this properly, you're gonna give me the things I need to better ask for another mechanic or another bay or air conditioning in my shop.

We're going to be able to show how much value you guys are creating so that I can go and fight for wages and fight for raises because of what you guys are doing.

Exactly right.

Like this, you're going to arm me with information and information is how we're going to win.

Exactly.

So that's a great whiff.

Yeah, it really is.

What other obstacles, like what are other things that people are going to say? I I don't want to do that right now.

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Well, there's a few. One of the— one that kind of makes me want to bang my head against the wall just a little is when they say, well, you know, It's just going to be so hard to convert and clean all that data. And I just want to pull my hair out like, wait a minute, wait a minute, folks. If what's stopping you from either getting a system or changing a system is your concern about the quality of your data, it's crazy, right?

It's like, I don't know. All my stuff that's etched on stone tablets, I don't know if that's going to work anymore.

Yeah.

No, no, it's not. Oh my goodness.

It's actually double, triple, quadruple, 100 times more the reason you need to do it, because that's the best and fastest way to help you solve your data problems. So I cannot stress that enough to you, right? If you are worried about your data, if you think you have bad data, you need to get on the fast train here, get into a new system. And frankly, sometimes you just need to let go of old data. That's bad, right?

Yeah, we've gone through that a couple of times. We had a client that they're insistent. They wanted to bring over all these old work orders. That, you know, 5 fleet managers of history, they all with different standards and different coding methodologies and all this in the '60s and '70s. And they're like, why isn't this making sense? Why don't these reports match up? And, you know, they blame the old system. And then they brought all that crappy data in our system. They're like, it's no better. And I'm like, no, it's no better because you brought the data over. We told you not to do that, right?

Garbage in, garbage out, right?

And so there's ways to go through. You can clean it up. Don't bring it over, you know, roll it up and summarize it. We like to do that kind of stuff all the time. But ultimately, okay, so maybe you don't have time to go through and clean up the data. You know you don't want to bring all that garbage data over. You don't have the time to do it. We've said it on this podcast before. One of my favorite principles from a guy named Dan Martell, who wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time, is buyback principle, right? And the buyback principle is this: 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome.

Yeah, right, exactly.

And so even if like, okay, I'm going to outsource it, they don't know my fleet, they don't know this, they're going to get 80% of the way there. Now, I'll tell you, the best ones will get 110% of the way there. They're actually going to do a better job than you would.

Right.

And it's not going to be that much more expensive because they're going to do it faster than you would have because they're dedicated to it.

They're dedicated, they're experienced in doing it.

Yes.

Right.

You know, you're paying— it's like paying that electrician. Yeah, it's going to cost you $1,000 to have them come out, wire it all up, but it's going to be done right. It's going to be done the first time versus you. You're going to sit there and try to do it and then you're going to cause a fire and then you got to go back to Home Depot 50 times because you didn't get the right part. And now all of a sudden you're like, crap, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, you're right. You should have just paid the professional, right? So if you really don't have the time and you probably don't, you're right, then pay a professional, have them help you clean your data so you do have a good clean start and you can start getting insights from your system right away instead of waiting for years for that old data to kind of like, right, make its way out.

Exactly. And I'm jumping ahead here, but, you know, if you're doing a bid, that's a great time. Include it, include it in the bid, right? You'll get quoted on it. Don't get me wrong, you know, implementation is organizing data, pulling it in, maybe some level of cleaning. But if you think you need that deep dive, like Josh is saying, pay for it, get it in the bid. Now's the time. It's a one-time thing. You get it clean and now you're good to go.

But make sure that it's an expert.

Yes, that's the key.

Because what you don't want, especially in our industry. Exactly. What you don't want is some, you know, junior data analyst getting in there who has no idea about fleet.

Right.

Or, you know, it's some rookie CS person, right? Customer service person. And we've seen that. We've had people try to do that here. It's like, no, this ain't working. So we go out and we hire the professionals, right? And we bring them into the company. We're like, this is what we want you to do. And they're like, got it.

Yeah.

But, you know, check the resumes.

Yeah, you have to. And listen, we acknowledge this is hard to find, right? To find— finding legitimate data analysts, easy in today's professional world. Finding legitimate data analysts who have spent a nice chunk of time focused on fleet analytics, much, much more difficult. Yes. Yeah. And we get that. But they do exist.

We happen to have 3 of them.

We happen to have probably 3 and change.

We got more.

Yeah.

Yeah, we got at least 3 dedicated analysts.

Yes. Yes. And they're probably among the top 3 in the country.

So we love you guys.

But in any event, you got to go down that route, right? You got to get that done. So that's a common one. That's the one that's like, okay, I get it. I understand it's overwhelming. I do understand it. In all seriousness, I understand it's scary. I empathize, um, because, you know, you just, you do an export and you get thousands of rows and thousands of columns. Um, but there's help out there. Don't let that be a hindrance. In fact, that should be a motivator. Um, but I kind of, um, forecasted the other thing I, I think I hear a lot, and I'm sure you do too. But the, you know, people are, they don't want to go through the bid process, right?

No.

Yeah, more often than not, depends on the type of organization you are, but if you're going to spend over a certain amount of money Right. You have to do a formal RFP or some sort of bid process. And that intimidates folks because all they see and hear is more work, right? I got to figure out all the specifications I need. And then, you know, then we got to put it out and then I got to evaluate it and watch, you know.

Well, and that taps into another obstacle usually, which is I don't even know where to start. There's too many options to go through. And so you do an RFP and now you've got to evaluate all these guys and oh man, that means demos and that means sitting there looking at pricing and that means this. And at some point, you're like, psychologically you just shut down because you have, you know, analysis paralysis. And so you decide, you know what, forget it. And you make no decision. Not realizing you actually just made a decision, which was no decision. You choose to continue loosening the lug by hand.

Yes, fundamentally that's what it is.

I had a post last week about choose your hard. This is that moment. You get to choose your hard. You can keep doing it by hand or you can invest in the air tool. So going through the RFP process itself is a bit of choosing your hard.

Yes.

It's not a terrible hard, but there are ways to make that less hard.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, going on Sourcewell, NASBO.

Yep.

You know, buy boards, things of that nature. If you've got a statewide contract, purchasing off of that.

Very simple.

You know, and that is a way to kind of— somebody else has already done a lot of legwork for you.

Yeah.

And they've done the evaluations and this is the one they picked. So, I mean, you're going off of some trust.

Yeah. And honestly, between those couple of options, 99.99% of the people should be able to find a solution out there. But even then, you know, piggyback your, your neighbor, your, you know, if you're a county, piggyback the county next door to you that, you know, there's just so many ways that you can get it done. And, you know, it just, you know, the thing is, is that I think there's a, there's, there's an underlying unspoken gorilla in the room there, maybe. And I— and people don't say this one to me as much, but I think it's there. There's also a little bit of a fear of sort of exposing yourself, right? Because as part of that process or part of any big buying process, right, if you need help, if you can't do it all yourself— and we keep saying a lot of what we're saying is rooted in go get some help, right? Let your procurement department help you and— or let the data. But to do that, you got to be an open book. Yeah, right. And I think that's also embedded. What are we going to find out that maybe I don't know, or maybe I don't want people to find out?

I don't want to know.

Right.

Let's keep those skeletons hidden in the closet.

Yes, exactly.

If we're going to start measuring this, we're going to realize how, you know, how bad our productivity really is. And I don't want to do that. So there could be totally like an avoidance of truth.

Yes.

And I don't want to face it, so I'm going to stay in the Stone Age.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's there a bit. That one's tough. You know, you got to have some confidence. You got to understand that Rome wasn't built in a day. And, you know, you know, number one, maybe some of that is on you and maybe some of it isn't. But, but by bringing it out and bringing it to the forefront, that's, that's actually step one in doing something about it. Right.

And improving. First step in, in the process is admitting there's a problem.

Right. Exactly. You know, so I do think that's in there quite a bit. If I could be honest. And I think that probably goes beyond just FMIS systems. But, you know, to your point, the, you know, the data is the great gigantic closet. You know, it's the closet and the attic and the crawl space in the basement all built into one. Everything is there, right? So, so that's, that's another one that you, you know, that you hear.

Well, and I think you hit on one, you know, one side of that is I don't want to unbury the skeletons, right? The other side is I don't want to be— I don't want to look like a fool, right? And going back to analysis paralysis, there's also some ego is like, what happens if I pick the wrong one?

Well, yes, yes.

And so now there's a fear of failure of, you know, there's so many options and I don't really want to pick the wrong one. So again, I just kind of shut down and go back to nothing, right? But nothing— it— I think you have to, in order to get through that, you have to recognize nothing is a choice and that is the wrong one. Like 100%, that's the wrong one. Any of these three solutions would have been better than doing nothing.

Yeah.

And so if you can reframe your decision-making that way, that's a great way to get over that mental hurdle of getting off the couch and getting into the game.

Yeah.

Right.

And again, we don't love that excuse. You know, um, we'll certainly, if you request it, we'll give you a test system. Um, we have a, at least one competitor who will let you get a couple of, uh, users for free. You can test theirs. Um, I'm sure, I'm sure at least a handful of our other competitors would do the same thing like us and, and give a test system. So that's one way, you know, get in there for a few weeks, a month. Do a pilot is another one. You know, and then even beyond that, like, you know, frankly, we generally like to focus on at least a year, right? Because we think that's how long it's, you know, between your implementation and so forth. We want to make sure you've given yourself time to get value out of it. And I'm willing to bet that most of our competitors are similar. There might be a few that go month to month, you know. What's the worst case scenario, right? You picked one and it was the wrong one for you. Think about how much you will have learned from that. Yeah. If so, first off, simply by If you can identify and say, you know what, I picked the wrong one, embedded in that means, right, you know now what you need. Yeah. Right.

Or at least what you don't need. And you can start filtering them out.

And you can start identifying now all of a sudden you're really well positioned for the next time you make that buy.

Yeah. So, which just happens to be right now because you picked the wrong one.

So exactly.

You don't have to stay committed to it. Well, that's something, you know, as you're thinking about evaluating different options is the type of subscription or the type of license you're buying.

Right.

You know, if you're buying a perpetual license, that could be a more significant upfront investment versus a SaaS license like we sell, which we've tried to shift the risk from the consumer back to us. And so it's up to us to make sure that we're providing value every year. And if we're not, then you kick us out and rip us out and you— You move on. Yeah, it's like it's sunk cost at that point. You don't have to keep committing to a system that doesn't work for you just because you spent $1 million on it instead of $20,000.

Yeah, and let me dovetail that a bit too because we've really taken back a lot of the risks. Will we sell you? Implementation programs that include things like onsite training and so forth? Yeah, we will. Because what we have found is many customers want that. So we're more— but to your point, you know, we offer free monthly online training, right? So you could even— we've taken back so much of that, right? You can do that. You can go through that process, you can buy it.

And frankly, like, and I don't know about other competitors, I don't know what their policy is, but I— if you're not happy 3 months in, I don't want to make this keep going.

Yeah.

I have done— it hasn't happened often. I think I might have done one in the past 5 years. We'll refund it.

Yeah.

You know, now I've seen—

I've seen— I was here for the one and I've seen him do it. He's not BSing. I've seen him refund someone.

So, you know, and it's— yeah, it's obviously like we'll look at all things like, oh, we sent a trainer out or something like that. So it might be prorated or less services rendered kind of thing. But we absolutely like— we don't want to end this on a— we don't want you out there badmouthing us. So let's make this right.

Yeah, we would rather you be happy and say, you know what, this wasn't the right fit. We acknowledge, by the way, we know we're not the perfect fit for every fleet organization out there. We'd like to think that we're a great fit for the— for a great many, if not the majority.

Specifically like municipals for sure.

Sure. K-12. Yes.

Public agency. We're big on that. But, you know, we really do try to be clear about who we are fit for, who we're not. If we're not doing in-house maintenance, you know, there's 2 or 3 competitors I would recommend that are not us. Right. If you are doing in-house maintenance, there's 2 or 3 competitors I'd say look at us, but then also check them out. Yeah.

And we've— and I've seen you do that.

Eyes wide open.

We coach our sales folks to do that. You know, hopefully other folks in the industry are doing similar things. I know, obviously, I know a lot of folks from various, uh, you know, competitors, and, you know, I can, I can spout off one-offs from those companies who might do something like that. But what are we getting at here? The point is, it's not, not about us. We're not trying to sell you our system, Fleet 360. We believe it's a great system, but what we're trying to say is there's someone out there who fits all of these concerns that you have and that you can make it work. So don't let, you know, no, to your point, right? No paralysis by analysis, right? Don't let fear be the blocker here. You know, it just is not reason for it. We, you know, someone out there fits you, fits your needs. Go get this system. And in the long run, you're gonna save yourself a lot of time and money.

But if you're still not sure, talk to your peers.

Yes, yes.

Because they use these systems.

Yes.

Go see it in action, right? You know, see how they're using it.

Yeah. And get demos, obviously, you know, but get as many as you can. Get on YouTube, right? You know, they're still going back to this, like, well, why now?

You know, like, I can— I know how I can go through the whole process and do all that stuff, but why should I? Why couldn't I wait? You know, like, next year feels like a much better time to go implement this. Yeah, I'm busy right now. So why, why is this urgent? You know, like, what's the urgency for people? If, if we could wake them up and be like, hey, like you have to do something, right? What's the statement that we say to people to get them to snap out of the stupor?

That's a good question. I'm trying to summarize it in one sentence, but we're kind of saying it like, why now? Is because when are you going to have time, right? You don't have time today. Do you think you're going to have more time tomorrow? I don't know about you, but in my life I get busier. I don't get less busy. I don't all of a sudden have time I didn't have. I haven't retired yet. Maybe one day I will feel that way, right? And ultimately the answer for why now is because in Every moment that goes by that you haven't done it, again, you're actually costing yourself time and money. Again, this analogy, right? Think about how long that nut is going to take you to undo by hand. It's kind of— if you can undo it, right? So you're, you, you're actually burning money. You would literally be better off putting money in a fire pit, right? Uh, and sells off of your life, right? Like you, um, by waiting. So I don't know how else to say it. You know, the answer why now is because it's stop wasting your time. Time is the most precious resource we have in life. You got something you say, well, stop wasting it.

You can always make more money. You can never make more time. Exactly. You know, and well, and I think as you say, you know, like burning money and all that, but what you're really doing is you're delaying the reward.

Yeah.

Well, you know, let's say, okay, so you're going to install it next year, right? But like the reward that comes from doing the work you're just putting off the reward of it. Yeah, you're putting off the pain, but on the other side of that pain, you know, we like to say everything great is on the other side of hard, right?

Right.

You put off that, you know, pain, that means you're also putting off the gratification of having the system.

Good point. Realize you're going to achieve, right?

We talk about, you know, the amount of money you're saving. So you're saying, well, you know, like, hey, you're literally burning money, but it also is like there's a side when you get to the other side of that where it's less stress and it's more peaceful, you know, and like there's more work, sure, but you have better insights, better confidence. You know, we used to talk about all the time the mission at RTA before we got really clear was like, no, our purpose is to help fleets succeed. You know, we had another mission statement which was, you know, we wanted to bring clarity, confidence, and peace of mind to fleet managers. And that's what you're putting off if you're not doing it now.

Great point.

You are literally putting off clarity, you're putting off confidence, and you're putting off your own peace of mind. I don't know, is that worth it in any world? Oh, and we keep saying this, like, you don't have to go pick us. I'm not telling you to pick us. I'd love to give you a demo, you know.

Yeah, but yeah, we hope you have us, but just go find something. Yes, go get something. You know, you make this great point. The confidence is a piece, right? Maybe our audience can relate to this. Um, you know, you get— your boss calls you or someone important. Hey, Mark, I don't know, how many vehicles are due for replacement? Next year, just to pick something out of it. And, you know, I remember having a, uh, uh, I'll get back to you, you know, that one, this one.

Okay, this one, carry the one. Yeah, right, like move that cell to this cell, put this in Excel, right?

Or hold on a second, Josh. Yeah, we got 86 to do. Done.

I mean, do you want to know which ones and how much it's going to cost you?

Yeah, exactly.

Let me dump this out to the Excel sheet for you, and here you go.

22% of those are backlog, the rest are on time, you know.

Yeah, here's the status for each one of them.

Correct. This is how many years on average we're behind. Uh, you know, geez, man, like the, the peace of mind, the, the confidence, the lack of stress, I guess, is what I'm going for here, right? The, the stress reduction that you're going to get out of having that insight and having that information available at a finger, you know, on your fingertips, essentially. Man, I, I don't, I don't know how you put a dollar on that. Like, it's, it's It's serious. That's how transformative, especially if you're going from none to a modern system, that's how transformative it is.

Now let's, let's take this from a different angle. Maybe you are using one.

Okay.

But maybe you're not happy with the support. You're not happy with your fees. You feel like you're paying too much, right? It's still work to go through and there's hidden cost as you go through and try to implement or switch systems, right? But again, the same thing holds true.

It does.

It really does. If you don't feel confident If you don't have clarity, if you don't have peace of mind, why wait?

Yeah, exactly.

If you know you need to make a change or you feel like you should make a change, then evaluate and make the change.

Exactly.

You know, like good old Michael Jackson used to say, just take a look at yourself and make the change.

Yeah, it's— can't say it any better than that. It's like, that's exactly it.

You know, I feel like we should end on that note.

All right, sounds good.

Take a look at yourself. Make the change. Talk about the man in the mirror. Have a good one, everybody. That's going to do it for us. Thank you, everybody, and we will see you next time.

Bye-bye.

We hope you enjoyed the show. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on LinkedIn, or leave a review. Want to learn more about our fleet management software Fleet 360? Check us out at rtafleet.com. If you want to learn more about having your fleet evaluated by our consulting team, go to fleetconsulting.com. Com.