A joint initiative between ASB Bank Ltd and Ranqx to provide an industry benchmarking programme was announced by Ranqx founder and chief executive officer, Dave Lewis, at the October Road Transport Forum conference held at Bay Park.
To get the initiative rolling, ASB Bank Ltd will provide 175 free one-year licences to members of the transport associations under the Road Transport Forum (RTF) umbrella.
The idea behind the initiative is to allow the transport industry members of the RTF to compare and improve through real-time data comparison.
ASB Bank Ltd has been a trade association member of RTANZ since March 2011 (member # 47175), and it has a team of asset finance specialists supporting the association’s local and regional branches nationally.
The bank says it is always looking to find ways of adding value to its relationships: “be it our customers or intermediaries”.
Lewis says Ranqx and ASB are focussed on delivering the added value to all members of the RTF, including Road Transport Association NZ, NZ Trucking, and National Road Carriers.
“To achieve a win/win out for transport operators and the industry we need as many forum members to participate as we can get,” Lewis says.
“Members of the forum and its associations can obtain a free one-year licence through their local association, or they may contact Ranqx directly,” he says.
Lewis says he is a passionate brand strategist, and that the benchmarking/ customer feedback programme provides insight into how a business is performing, and how it can add value to customers.
Ranqx provides both industry benchmarking and customer feedback live 24/7, so forum members can join online and input their own financial numbers, or connect with Xero or MYOB to download numbers from those portals.
According to Lewis, the financial information is securely held in The Cloud, and anonymous, and forum members would be able to compare their performance with industry peers, and may also opt for customer feedback and rating.
“How do you stimulate growth?” Lewis asks. He reckons that NZ business grows on average around 1.8% per annum.
Finding, building and keeping profitable customers is the key to growth, according to Lewis, so he asks ,“Why would they choose you?”
Lewis holds the opinion that through technology, data doesn’t lie, and transport operators need to understand that when managing real-time performance, the game is shifting because of data.
“Simple data can help you make simple changes to perform better,” he says.
Lewis commented to the RTF conference that Peter Drucker — the world’s pre-eminent management thinker — predicted The Knowledge Society in the 1970s.
“Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are costs,” according to Drucker.
Lewis says the benchmarking programme supported by ASB Bank will allow transport businesses to connect with customers, improve its business efficiency and show how it is performing relative to other market players.
“Adopting technology is like learning to surf,” Lewis says of the cloud-based Ranqx website.
“The more people who use it, the more detailed information we can provide, because we are trying to help you make comparison with your industry peers,” he says.
“If we can do that comparison in real time, we can tackle issues before they become too large.”
Lewis says, “This is a tool to provide more levers for a transport business to utilise to its best advantage, but we’ve got to get as many of them on board [as possible] for the initiative to work successfully.”
