The Access Group rental sector is composed of Du-For in Quebec, Steeplejack in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Michigan, Hydro-West in Alberta and British Columbia, plus two Hydro Rents in Virginia and Colorado, who report directly to Hydro Mobile.
All in all, there are 13 equipment rental centres, 10 in Canada and 3 in the USA, to facilitate access on construction sites.
The rental of access equipment, such as scaffolding, mast climbing platforms (Hydro Mobile), suspended platforms (Winsafe), scissor lifts, and articulated boom lifts requires to:
• Care about site safety for our employees and our clients’ employees during the installation and
dismantling of the equipment;
• Make sure that the operators receive appropriate training;
• Present technical solutions requiring engineering expertise on many sites to ensure a safe installation,
and allow customers the increased efficiency that will help them maximize productivity and thus,
profitability;
• Supply the right equipment at the right time to avoid any delay on the site;
• Appropriately manage our inventories, on the various sites and in our yards.
The rental market is very competitive. We must be ready to compete against very large Canadian and American companies such as United, Hertz, Safway, Fraco, Klimer, Aluma, Simplex, Falardeau, Échafaudage Plus, Échafaudage Fast, Danaco, etc.
• How can we measure up to the competition without limiting ourselves to a price war that would eventually
deplete our profitability, or eat away at it in such a way that investors might lose confidence?
• How to avoid being seen as a “Me too” product, that is, how to appear as being different from our
competitors? How to ensure that our clients perceive us as a nice to deal with, efficient, effective, and competitive company?
• How to develop our own trademark and approach in our sector, to become a “DIFFERENT” and
“INNOVATIVE” company such as Apple, Mc Donald, Dollarama, who succeeded in achieving that in their
respective sectors?
We have decided to convert business units into companies focused on a commercial sale approach, where clients are at the heart of the organization: “CUSTOMER” oriented companies rather than “OPERATIONS” oriented companies.
Such a change in corporate culture is quite challenging, considering the different corporate cultures of the business units, as well as the fact that three of these business units, up until 2010, were not part of the AGF Group.
In order to successfully achieve such a cultural change, we must ensure that all the General Managers of each Business Unit are willing to commit and adhere to the concept. We also need the commitment and full adhesion of all employees so that together, we review, adjust, and modify our current operational procedures for more efficiency and effectiveness, ALWAYS keeping in mind that “the Client” has to be the winner once all the changes are implemented.
Of course, our commercial sales approach must be reviewed as a whole, on the one hand to understand the expectations of our various customers and on the other hand, to ensure that our sales reps understand and can explain the values of our organization adequately. Both our sales reps and our operations must understand the message and how to convey it, so the “value” delivered to our clients truly meet their expectations.
To achieve this, we have put in place a four-step approach:
• Implementation of a commercial sales approach – Solstis Project;
• Implementation of “Sales Force” as a sales management tool, to be eventually linked to the upcoming
operations management application (ERP);
• Training of the Sales Reps to improve their sales techniques (Tremplin);
• Implementation of a tool to generate “prospective clients”: Reed Connect.
Even though a company must always renew itself to remain a “leader”, we aim to put in place in the upcoming months the essential of the previously defined approach, in order to achieve our objectives. There is still much work to do, but after numerous meetings with the personnel involved, I am confident that together, we will become an innovative and effective company, on a permanent basis.
