Digital Transformation with Jim Jung of Trico Corp

 

Today's episode covers Trico's journey from a product-based company to one that now heavily integrates services, particularly through digital ecosystems such as IoT and data analytics.

Jim explains how Trico has developed sophisticated tools for monitoring and analyzing equipment performance, emphasizing the importance of early detection of issues through oil analysis and other predictive maintenance techniques. The conversation also touches on the challenges of educating customers, managing digital transformations, and the evolving roles of different personas within customer organizations, especially in B2B settings. The episode concludes with a teaser for part two, which will delve deeper into data analysis and artificial intelligence. Highlights include:  

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[AI transcribed]

Welcome to Beyond the Cart, presented by Lightburn. My name is Nora and this is a podcast all about e-commerce and customer experience. Today I'm delighted. We're joined by Jim Jung, the president of Trico Corporation. Trico is a fourth generation company that's really progressive in the way they think about digital transformation, both for themselves and their customers. Jim and I had so much to discuss. We're going to break this one into two parts, so let's dig into part one right now. Welcome, Jim. Thank you for joining us. 

History of Trico Corporation

Nora: So tell me a little bit, give us the history of who Trico Corporation is. 

Jim: Yeah, so Trico Corporation, we were founded in 1917, which actually originally was called Aero Fuse Company and there was a conflict in name, and that was actually in 1916, and then when he had to rename it, it became Trico kind of as the third, as the story goes, the third kind of career or job that he had in his professional title.

Nora: I always wondered where the name came from. 

Jim: Yeah, so we've had a long history. Where we're at today is we really provide services and products for maintenance departments inside of major production facilities in industries like pulp and paper, power generation, chemical processing, oil, refining, those types. So it's pretty much centralized around rotating equipment and specifically we focus a lot on the oil. 

Nora: Yeah. Let's talk about just the digital ecosystem that you have today that Lightburn has participated in as well as what you have going on outside of maybe Lightburn's participation. It's a long list 

Jim: Kind of high level. We have a IOT ecosystem or any kind of environments in which all the data that comes from our sensor devices, cloud-based stuff is stored a lot of ways in which we're manipulating data, transforming data, analyzing it, and running algorithms and things like that. So we have this whole kind of element to the IO ot. We have the portal in which they can log in to visualize and view all this data. We have the same thing essentially for our lab, but it's again, another independent piece because not all of our clients necessarily participate in both monitoring techniques. We have looked with the more recent sense, a revamping and adaptation to accommodate our latest sensor. Looking at how we do bring more of this together from both sides when there are customers that are using both. Then we have our mobile application and the data that we collect as a part of companion data to these other two systems. 

So our mobile app assists in both setting up these devices on the IOT network as well as it's got a section that's usable for if you're drawing oil samples and collecting information, how you took a sample, where you took a sample, what kind of oil is in this equipment. There's a variety of different attributes that we'd like to understand. So you've got that kind of whole element that's rolled in and actually served into both of the other environments so that they're each, it's us to each other so that it's usable information for comparison and analysis. And then you've got our website, which really kind serves as the showroom and the resource center for information that might be relevant to what we've actually measured or recommended through some of the other systems that are based on the condition monitoring. And so how do we make that as kind of integrated in a way that we can get you to the right place to look at the right solution, to have access to some of the resources that we have within there and continue to develop and really kind of bring those things all together and kind of this harmonious ecosystem 

Nora: Easy. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get that done next week. 

Jim: No time at all, right?

Nora: There's a lot going on. It took Lightburn, I think a while to wrap our heads around the products, the services, the data that you're collecting, where were there some milestones in the history of Trico that really led to the service side and kind of where Trico is today? 

Jim: So really going back to around 2003, the service side came in through acquisition. And so that became a strategy in the early two thousands to grow through acquisition. And we had acquired a small service company in Toronto, Canada, and then in 2008 we had gotten into the oil analysis piece. So prior to that, it was really all manufacturing of products and mostly sale to directly through distribution or to OEMs. And so this really changed things for our business as we were starting to get into more of the kind of feast or famine of services and working with organizations that were looking for how to improve based upon practices and training and that type of thing. And then that eventually led to getting into the oil analysis, which was a huge culture shock for us. You were dealing with a ton of chemistry and working more with end users and looking at how do you break down what types of problems we're seeing within their samples that would give them a better indication about when they would perform maintenance. So it did take us a number of years really to look at that integration. And at the time, this was an out-of-state acquisition, so we were struggling with some remote management, a whole different business type, different customer. 

Nora: I was wondering, did it bring a lot of new customers or did you have some overlap there? Well, 

Jim: It really changed our customer base since we were going primarily through distribution and OEMs with products that we produced to start to have end users that are your main customer for that segment of the business was very different. It was a level of engagement at the end user for where your products or services end up, and that was somewhat strategic in the early two thousands. We really identified those end users as ultimately the customer that we wanted to focus on in terms of their needs versus who was paying our invoices, being the distributors or the OEMs. But really the final use and design of our products or services was intended for end users, so it was very different. Yeah. 

The challenges of customer education

Nora: There's an education piece in all of this too. There's a lot of education that you do with your customers. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that fits in? 

Jim: Yeah, that's a huge piece, especially on the chemistry side, the laboratory side, the report interpretation side. So as we receive these samples, there's a lot of specialty testing that goes on through instrumentation. Obviously in our lab. These results all end up with a specialized and trained analyst who puts everything together to really kind of make a determination. And then there's ultimately a rating that's put on these. And a vast majority of the market, I think really kind of looks at the stoplight that the red, yellow, green in terms of the overall rating of the equipment or the lubricant from these, the quality of how worried should we be about the quality correct, rather than how did we get to that and what's all going on? Can I investigate this further independently myself? And for us, there's a significant benefit to the customer understanding because the solutions we hope we can provide by way of products to improve what we're seeing there.

Bringing new tactics to an old service

Nora: It's always been a very genuine interest in serving the customer's needs in the best way possible. You've always spoken really passionately about catching those problems earlier, how early in the process of storing oil, transporting it, and then maintaining it within equipment, how we can catch problems earlier, how you can surface information to customers so that education is so important that they realize the value of that early sampling, that early warning signs, right? 

Jim: Yeah, that's exactly right. And so we've definitely, I think brought some new tactics to an old service. Oil analysis has been around for a long time, really came out of a derivative of military process in terms of Air Force and other military branches looking at how do we maintain and predict early failures of defense equipment and other types of assets. And so there's a lot of education and discussion that's going on around preventative maintenance. We would relate with that as I take my car in every 3000 miles to get my oil changed. So I do that preventatively, 

Nora: Don't wait until the oil light comes on to get your oil changed. 

Jim: So it's a matter of, yes, I do something preventatively, whether or not it needs it. 

Nora: What is the cost of some of these failures that might happen if they aren't doing this analysis and being proactive? 

Jim: It can vary by industry, but you can be at thousands of dollars a minute, you can be at tens of thousands of dollars an hour. We're talking fortune 500, fortune thousand companies that are in these industries where there just are no small players. And so they're at a grand scale and comparatively to the costs that we're talking about in terms of deploying systems or performing oil analysis or things, it's a fraction. I mean, it is one or two failures that more than offsets the investment, the cost of investing.

Nora: Sure. This all makes a lot of sense. I think, I mean, I understood it when you first explained it to us, the broad concept of wouldn't it be great if we could know earlier when there is a point of failure or a contamination possibility and start solving those problems earlier, be less reactive to problems. It sounds like historically in the industry, it's a more reactive approach. It's the oil's already there interacting with the equipment, and you're sampling it there. And so it's a little sometimes too late almost to realize that all makes sense. It's so complicated to get it all into a story to tell. What was the process like to develop some of that synthesis of the data into something consumable for your audience? 

The importance of cross-selling services

Nora: It's so complicated to get it all into a story to tell. What was the process like to develop some of that synthesis of the data into something consumable for your audience? 

Jim: The first kind of process was really between looking at how do you source opportunity for product sales and kind of cross-selling from the information in the lab. And I think for everybody that doesn't have familiarity in this, always kind of thinking back to that medical correlation is the best way to do it. So if we're taking the blood work of the equipment and really looking at what are we maybe prescribe in terms of a medicine or the comparable, an exercise regimen, whatever. 

It's all about the data

Jim: Lots of different things there and that you kind of lead in well, because it became more and more sophisticated as we began to one look for opportunities, we started to uncover more knowledge and insight that was available. And then that ultimately became the inspiration for, geez, where else could we start to produce data that could help us in ways that are traditionally very difficult to understand? And that being kind of day-to-day stuff that happens inside of these businesses. What type of stuff is happening? If you can think of blood work or these oil samples, how often are you at the doctor getting your blood work done? If it's once a year, maybe it's kind of a similar process in terms of oil analysis. So if we have a relatively frequent customer that would send something on a quarterly basis, that would be really good sampling, pretty good sampling volume for us. But you have kind of this 90 day blackout in terms of we have no idea what happened from last sample to this sample. And so when you're working with a doctor, they can ask you questions, we can attempt to ask questions, but you don't always have such an open line of communication necessarily with your clients that especially if they're testing 50 or a hundred assets or whatever, tell me what happened in this 90 day window. 

Nora: Well, in the line of sight for who you have a relationship with to who is actually taking the sample or interacting with the oil in maintenance is just they probably don't know what could have happened.

Jim: Right, and that's a good point. These different kind of personas as we would talk about them inside of an organization, oftentimes who's responsible for executing on the oil analysis program inside is not the one that's doing all of the sampling and maybe the activities on the equipment. So there's limited amounts of information. There may be historical work orders or things like that, but when you start getting into asking for this kind of information so that you can do a deeper kind of dive into what's going on just so that you can simply help a customer in a more robust way, it's a very kind of lackluster response and the transparency isn't typically there.

Nora: Yeah. I know some of the challenges, just getting those samples in at all. You said sometimes you'll have a contract to get that quarterly sampling done, but that's reliant on people actually taking the sample and sending it in and labeling it correctly. There's a lot of points that there could be failure in that process. 

Jim: There is, and it is really critical that we have a little bit of information around it. Typically, there's a label that is filled out by a customer who would take the sample, and typically it's the person that's actually drawing or extracting the sample from the equipment. So it's a dirty process. It's oily these labels, whether or not they have the information, like the amount of hours that this lubricant's been in service or that this equipment has been operating. Oftentimes we don't get that back. So it's limiting us. You just cross your fingers and there's some information, we'll get back date and the oil type and those types of things, but it's fairly basic. So there really has been a challenge for us to overcome this hurdle of that additional information and how could we get it extracted so that we can provide a greater analysis and value service back to the customer. 

The value of a mobile app

Nora: And make it as easy as possible for them to get you the information you need with as little effort. Right, right. So what are some of the ways that you've been able to accomplish that? 

Jim: Yeah, so first and foremost, I think we went forward a few years back with the development of a mobile application, looking at how do we bring technology into the fold that could help provide us more information and make it easier. And so we were looking at how can we utilize cameras for scanning QR codes and getting to assets quicker within this kind of digital environment? And then can we prompt and train our clients in terms of the information that they're going to need to provide in order to move forward? And could we make it simpler than the dirty process of, Hey, I got to write this on the label. The label's gotten all oily where my, I'm writing it on the cap. I'm not necessarily giving you the best information that's going to help you in terms of the interpretation. So moving towards that digital process of looking, can we incorporate this in a simple way that's becoming more and more familiar to people just in terms of all aspects of their life and using mobile applications and that type of thing, could we develop some kind of companion app that would assist in that? 

Data visualization

Jim: So that was really step one in terms of this data collection. And the other big part of it was kind of looking at the ease of interpretation and looking at how do we recraft our user portal that they would come into in order to display the visual information so that they can really take the most away from it without having to really understand maybe all the chemistry side and all the methods and ways to really distill it down for someone that we got to those ratings or to these areas of concern. So yeah, that's been a couple of the places that some of the digital development that we've done and done together has really been streamlining and making a more robust process and service product there.

Complex personas in B2B

Nora: Yeah, I think that's a great example of, I often talk about how you've got your customer's needs and then your business needs, and they're usually pretty well aligned. You've got some sort of relationship, but they're not exactly aligned, and so how do you get them closer together? And I think having that app so that it's easier to accomplish the task of the collection of the sample is an example of you're kind of meeting people where they're at and you're not asking them to do more work. They want to take the sample in a broad sense. They're not opposed to it, but maybe they don't value it. The person doing it maybe doesn't value it as much as their boss or as you do, and so how do you make it very simple for them to accomplish this maintenance task? 

Jim: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly, it really is a kind of robust evaluation of looking at who are these different users of your service? And that was probably one of the biggest hurdles that we had to overcome was looking at, are we developing a product and service that's really tailored to each of these individuals? Because you're absolutely right. The person that draws these samples is not the person that looks at these reports.

Nora: And they're not the one who really has to pay the bill if the machine breaks down. 

Jim: Nope. More and more of these things as you get involved always have a little something that kind of leads to some other part of something that Trico does. And so when we talk about digital, it's easier and easier to make those connections naturally than it is when you're just trying to do it through sharing of messaging or something else, maybe in marketing terms. 

Nora: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about customers, those personas. That's a big part of what we're trying to talk about here. So I think it's a unique, well, it's not unique, but it's especially a challenge for B2B, your customer is a business, but customers are people, the persona is a person, and so there's multiple layers. When you're thinking about the customer experience for the business relationship, how do you wrap your head around all of those customers? 

Jim: Yeah, it is a challenge. We have a very good understanding from a long history of working with maintenance professionals in various roles that are commonly found inside of these organizations. So maintenance managers, they have reliability engineers, sometimes maintenance supervisors. Really understanding where maintenance falls in the overall hierarchy inside of an organization is also an important part because maintenance reports to operations. And that's really the key piece that the business is concerned about is are we able to operate and perform as expected? 

Digital Transformation

Nora: What's the cost of doing business? It's coming up to those higher level. In the end, it's all about are we being efficient? 

Jim: And so as we've developed into a company that offers more of these services and some of the digital aspects that we've migrated into, it has changed these personas and who we need to be in tune with because we mentioned it. We definitely talk about a lot higher level management. When you get to the commitment of moving forward with a technology like we've developed here, that's not going to happen. Typically just by the decision of a maintenance manager, somebody is going to have to see the overall value, or oftentimes, as I mentioned before, the corporate initiative that's been identified for by the customer already is really the greatest place to kind of enter for us because they're aware of it. We're not trying to convince them around what benefits we can bring with it. They've already seen that that's a way for the future. That's where things are going.

So it has definitely expanded this whole thing. When we talk about some of the service deliverables directly, that too has changed as well, because while the core value out of some of the products or services that we've been talking about here may be for maintenance, there's all these kind of byproduct elements that can be used by other people inside of the organization. And so oftentimes these big companies have environmental health and safety directors, and they definitely have upper level management that's looking at p and l and all sorts of different types of managerial reports. There's a lot that can be derived out of the information that we measure and maintain for other purposes. They may be looking at how do we reduce energy consumption? 

How do we end up making determinations about performance comparisons of different brands of equipment that maybe we're evaluating? Can we look to some of the data that helps us make different decisions in that way? And so that's a place where I think nearly every company out there, regardless of the industry that you're in, can benefit from moving towards more of this kind of digital model is just how much maybe isn't readily, it's maybe not readily identifiable or maybe hits you first as the core benefit. Obvious. Yeah, it's not as obvious, so it's not as obvious for these companies to see what the benefit is. But we too, again, have to try and pursue different ways of presenting some of the benefits for these different personas just through some of the development that we're doing in web applications or our portal and looking at, Hey, how do we introduce some things that may not be, what's the traditional measurement of maintenance? But you put it there and all of a sudden it kind of becomes something that grabs people's attention and they start to watch it more closely. And so I think that a lot of people's business have diamond diamonds in the rough there that you can expose if you haven't thought about it in terms of what does a digital transformation do for your business? You 

Nora: Took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say how much, obviously you have the industries and probably size of company that is your ideal customer when we're talking on the business level, the company level, but then you probably have that ideal persona of the actual boots on the ground people. How ready are they for digital transformation? How difficult is it to sell that in? Or is it kind of nice for you to have maybe less digitally mature customer and you can knock their socks off? 

Jim: Yeah, I think my experience has been ones that are more aware and ready for it tend to be the ones that we have more success with.

Nora: You don't have to make a case for the value necessarily. 

Jim: Yeah. I think you can go through a really strong kind of presentation of showing what's possible and really knock somebody's socks off. But inevitably, when you walk out of the room and the discussion pursues internally, I think that the question becomes how difficult is this really going to be to implement and are we ready for it? And does our process support having this kind of data? Do we have people in place to use and consume it if we're going to measure it, if we're going to pay Trico to come in and roll out this kind of network and all this monitoring. So who's responsible for which parts of the data.

Nora: You got to have a data strategy doing really? And you as Trico may have a data strategy, but your customer needs to be able to have that as well. Right, right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jim. It's been a pleasure having you. 

Jim: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. 

Nora: There's so much more to talk about, but for now, I'll leave you hanging for part two where we'll get even more into the world of data analysis, including the hottest topic of all artificial intelligence beyond the cart produced by Light Burn.

Our episode today was produced and edited by Staci Tischer and recorded at Independent Studios. Our music is the song Let's Go, Go, Go by Tiger Blood Jewel. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can always learn more about CX and e-commerce at Lightburn.co. Thanks so much for listening to Beyond the Cart, and I hope you'll join me for the second half of this interview in our next episode.