How Sportsman Boats Took Control of Supply Chain Chaos

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00:00:05:00 – 00:00:30:12

Hi, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to the webinar today. Excited to have you guys here today. And we’re going to get do something a little bit different, which I’m very excited about today. We’re going to, walk everybody through a customer success story. So on the call joining me is a representative from Sportsman Boats. And today they’re going to talk about how they took control of their supply chain, given all the chaos that has been going on.

00:00:30:14 – 00:00:53:01

So if you’re not familiar with me, my name is Clint McRee. I’m co-founder of source Day and chief strategy officer. Most of you probably know me. I’ve been around the ecosystem for a very long time. Joining me is Cole Wilson. So he is the representative of the Sportsman boats. He’s the systems manager there and has been a source, a user, and his team has been a source to user for quite some time.

00:00:53:01 – 00:01:16:08

So I asked him to come on here and see if we could just kind of talk through a little about his world and how he’s using and leveraging source day to day to control that chaos. So Cole, welcome to the webinar. Excited to have you. Thank you. Excited to be here. So before we we dive into all the Q&A and everything that we’re going to go through, I’d love it if you would just tell everyone a little about sportsman boats.

00:01:16:08 – 00:01:43:00

I mean, it’s obvious you guys are doing boats, and that’s probably super fun. But we’d love to know a little bit more about your business. Please share. So, hi. Cole Wilson of Sportsman Systems Managers club mentioned. We started the company, in 2011 before I got there and, built the first boat in 2012. So we make center console, family friendly center console boats, from 21ft all the way to, 40ft.

00:01:43:00 – 00:02:06:10

And we just started a a, sister Brand and Keenan Yachts that makes, 34ft to, 43ft yacht and, that one’s a lot more custom than sportsman brand, but, both, both make great boats. So, making about, 1500 boats last year and got on track to do about the same this year as well. So definitely a lot of challenges in that.

00:02:06:12 – 00:02:23:13

Nice, nice. We’re until, as you might have said, but where are you headquartered? We are in Summerville, South Carolina, so just, just about an hour outside of Charleston. So not not too far. All right. Very good. Well, probably the most important question I’m going to ask you all day is, do you get to actually test drive any of the boats that you guys built?

00:02:23:15 – 00:02:35:24

I’ve, written on a few of them. But some people get more opportunities than others. But that’s why I try to take most employees out if we can. It’s a lot more than that’s. So that’s not so fun.

00:02:35:24 – 00:02:54:08

What’s your favorite boat that you guys bill. Oh, it’s it’s got to be our first model here. 231. So, our, our 23ft boat, it’s, the first one we ever came out with. It’s it’s the most popular boat that we build. And, it’s just the it’s the workhorse. It’s the one that we sell the most.

00:02:54:10 – 00:03:14:16

And and it’s just the more more price friendly. Definitely. But still have the option to get a, the open model, the 232, which is more fisherman friendly as well. So it’s got more levels. You got more options for the, the hardcore fisherman, too. But, yeah, I love that 23ft boat by small. Sounds like a lot of fun.

00:03:14:16 – 00:03:29:17

I bet it’s a lot of fun to see those boats being being built out there, especially considering, you know, the growth that you guys have had is super exciting. I mean, I don’t go to I’m not around it a lot. I used to be around boats a lot more, but certainly see sportsman boats just it feels like just just everywhere these days.

00:03:29:17 – 00:03:51:12

So super exciting. Well very cool. Well, before we dive into the next question, I or the, you know, the question about your supply chain just for the audience, I’d love to know, for them, on your ERP. So you guys are an informed customer, right? Yes. Love it. Tell us a bit about your ERP. How long, if you know how long you’ve been using it, just so the audience has a sense for it.

00:03:51:14 – 00:04:20:00

Yeah. So we’re, in for sightline, cloud suite. We’ve used it for eight years now. I think 2017 is when we first implemented it. And then, began using source six years ago. So, not not too long after we implemented, sight line here. Very cool. But for the audience, you don’t know. I’m one of the co-founders of source two here, but before, before Source Day, I actually was an in for customer for over ten years.

00:04:20:00 – 00:04:45:12

So very familiar with sight line, very familiar with and for, being around the ecosystem for, for a very long time. Okay. Well, thank you for that introduction. So let’s, let’s hop into it. So, for for the audience, for you, Cole, and for the audience, the supply chain has been in a really crazy state for, for actually a very long time, almost since the beginning of time of Source Day.

00:04:45:12 – 00:05:05:21

Really, we’ve been seeing this craziness. I mean, today we talk a lot about, you know, tariffs. That seems to be the main thing. But if you go all the way back to Covid and you start looking at the timeline, there has been a tremendous amount of, you know, things that have happened in the world that have led to unpredictability and a lot of chaos.

00:05:05:23 – 00:05:25:10

In the in the world of, you know, supply chain. And so I’d love to call if you could just talk a bit about, like what? What’s it been like a sportsman boats during this time. So I actually actually started with Sportsman in March of 2020, which is when the world started to shut down. You, you know, that’s the truth.

00:05:25:10 – 00:05:44:12

And, I think every day for the first year, my, my boss at the time told me this isn’t normal. This isn’t normal. And, it became the new normal. And so we had to adjust and get used to it and pivot. And, you know, I think most people, had planned big vacations in 2020, and they got all their money back, got the refunds back from our flights, and then decided to put their money on boats.

00:05:44:12 – 00:06:02:07

So it it really it blew us up. And so I think the RV industry and marine industry both exploded and everybody want to do something at home. So and it, everything took off and we, we tried to jump up in production as fast as we could. And that was something that, was a daily sight for us.

00:06:02:07 – 00:06:19:23

Yeah, that was that sounds like that was impressive. But what? But what I hear you saying is that while it was chaos for everybody, it was really good for your business. I mean, you guys were drawing during this time of chaos, which is great. Absolutely. So we, you know, we we came out of that, first couple months thinking that, you know, what’s going to happen.

00:06:19:23 – 00:06:38:01

We we kind of started off slow. Said we’re going to start at 32 boats a week. Let’s see what happens. And then had to slowly ramp up to 40 boats a week and ended up, I think, almost trying to touch 45 a week and just trying to do as much as we can. And supply chain couldn’t handle it, obviously, and everybody ran on toilet paper and everything else in between.

00:06:38:01 – 00:06:56:00

But, yeah, we were we were just be a parts in the door and make adjustments and, and it was something that we had to make adjustments for every day. Yeah. So it was a lot of chaos for you guys. Even though your company was drawing. It’s still you have to you know, you have to run a business, then you have to be profitable and service your customers.

00:06:56:02 – 00:07:19:08

So even though you’re growing, it’s it’s complicated. Yeah. Great. Great information there. So another thing that, we want to explore with you. So, this is something that most, you know, customers or companies that are not yet sourced a customer is that when we start introducing this idea of, you know, where where in the world is source safe and where do we fit in your world?

00:07:19:10 – 00:07:52:00

It really kind of starts with this is the main concept, 52% of purchase orders that your company issued. And I say your meaning the audience, it will change. And of those purchase orders that are change, most of them will change on an average rate of two and a half times. So that is the that’s an interesting concept for most companies to take in because they do realize, you know, we know there’s a lot of changes between, you know, my buying organization and my suppliers, but really very few have actually put, you know, pen to paper and understand the magnitude of it.

00:07:52:02 – 00:08:13:02

What’s unique about Source Day is because of our, our solution, millions of purchase orders flow in and out of the application every single year. And so we’re able to see these really interesting trends. And so, a couple of things about about this change, the change that we’re we see happen are the things that you probably think about every day, right?

00:08:13:04 – 00:08:44:04

Price changes, quantity changes. And the most, the most change that we see are the changes to dates. Right. Pulling things in, pushing things out. That’s sort of constant going back and forth. So the other piece of that that’s probably is more important than understanding that 52% of your purchase orders change, which is kind of madness. But what the biggest issue there is that for most companies, especially if you’re not using an application like Source Day, they’re managing all this change outside the system, if at all.

00:08:44:06 – 00:09:08:06

So what that means is your ERP, like, you know, you mentioned coal. You’re running an in for sideline. That change is in somebody’s email. It’s on somebody’s voicemail. It’s in a spreadsheet. And it’s up to somebody to manually go, you know, update the system, if you will, with this change. And for most organizations, that’s can be really challenging to get that data in, all the time because it’s constantly changing.

00:09:08:06 – 00:09:39:18

So we’d love to know from, from your perspective, like, you know, this, this metric here. What was it like for sportsman boats before Sauce Day and handling all this change? I don’t think we did it well. And, just talking to, people that were here before my time. It was it was difficult, you know, it’s a whole process of emailing over PA, waiting for the confirmation, waiting for either an audiology or a sales confirmation something saying, hey, we we agree with your date, we agree with your price, or we disagree.

00:09:39:18 – 00:09:59:06

And then having to figure out, okay, let’s go back and see if that’s going to be good for our schedule. How’s that going to is it going to meet our needs. And so it’s very very, very manual. And and source date changed that for us a lot. I think I think with, with everything that we did, everything became automated, you know, for, for most of our suppliers that are on source day.

00:09:59:07 – 00:10:19:00

And I’ll give you a good example, when I, when I first started trying to have, you know, I, you know, I was the only buyer at the time we had a purchasing manager and, and it was me handling most of everything coming in. So with Covid, we were trying to change orders, update orders, get get more of everything in the door as quickly as we could, to keep the plant moving.

00:10:19:00 – 00:10:35:05

And I missed a couple of the order order acknowledgments kind of put those on the back burner. I just kind of hoped and prayed that. But most people would make adjustments for us and help us out and, missed a couple of orders and, reached out to suppliers that weren’t on Source Day and said, hey, hey, what’s going on with this order?

00:10:35:07 – 00:10:59:22

Where’s it at? And they said, oh, if you would have looked at our order, it automatically sent you when you send the order over a couple months ago, we said, we’re not going to get it on time. It’s going to it’s going to be an issue for everyone. So again, if they would have been on source, they would have been able to see that a lot easier than, than seeing that email when, you know, we’re getting hundreds of emails a day trying to filter through those and make the changes and the volatility of everything is just insane at a time.

00:10:59:22 – 00:11:21:10

So, source, they really, really helped us out with that, I think. Well that’s great. I love to double click into that. So when you had that experience of, you know, these purchase orders were not acknowledged, which we’ll talk about that. So that’s like a, you know, very basic workflow, you know, concept in you know, dealing with your suppliers.

00:11:21:12 – 00:11:45:09

But when that didn’t happen, any ideas of sort of what the impact was for you. Like what what I mean, I’m assuming that you, that you kind of went into fire drill mode would love to know what that was like. There. We we had to explore, start calling other other manufacturers around us. We’re we’re lucky enough that we’ve got, two other boat manufacturers, high volume, that are within two miles of us, and then a couple more within 30 minutes.

00:11:45:09 – 00:12:05:10

And we got a great partnership, said the marine industry. But we were calling them saying, if they use the part, we were looking anywhere and everywhere for the part. We were trying to encourage our suppliers saying, hey, we’ll pay it, we’ll pay expedite fees, will pay 20% more. Just keep the line moving. It was doing what we could to, get the parts here as fast as we could.

00:12:05:10 – 00:12:27:21

So not only did it affect, the cost of the part, but then ended up having to expediting shipping and it just it was a whole mess. So it definitely hurts at the time. Well, yeah, I kind of asked that question thinking that’s probably where you’re going to go with it. You know, again, I have some experience with myself, but dealing with so many customers, we hear that so, so often, about that purchase or acknowledgment.

00:12:27:23 – 00:12:48:24

And one of the things that, you know, just the pause on that for a second purchase order acknowledgments is, is something that is so, so kind of basic to to understand what it is. But so many companies really don’t actually have a good experience with it or just don’t execute very well on it, because it still is a very manual process.

00:12:48:24 – 00:13:06:07

You know, you send a purchase order to a supplier, you ask them to acknowledge it, and if they don’t, you know, somebody has got to remember to follow up. Somebody’s got to remember to make that call or send that second or third or fourth email. And and if you don’t, you have the scenarios where, when, where you, where you kind of write into yourself.

00:13:06:09 – 00:13:27:20

And so really, you know, thinking about ways that you can have a failsafe process to gather that, that acknowledgment, which of course, we all talk about little bit what Sauce Day does is really critical, right? Absolutely. No. And I mean, I think that I think it’s one of those things where you expect a supplier to have the same lead time and expect the pricing to stay the same, you know?

00:13:27:20 – 00:13:46:11

Right. You’re expecting this one to go smoothly and and it doesn’t all the time. And another example of that too, I can give you is when we were sending out updates to suppliers with minor changes and staffing changes throughout the company to send out a oh, 300, 400 plus people. And unfortunately, when you do that, you get blacklisted.

00:13:46:14 – 00:14:03:03

And so we we had a period of time where, nothing was going out to our suppliers, even when we would send a, send an email directly to somebody that we knew and worked almost daily, if not weekly with, they weren’t getting our emails and updates and we didn’t know that till we called them and had a conversation with them.

00:14:03:04 – 00:14:21:12

And they said, we’ve got nothing from you. And so we we had to navigate that situation. And fortunately, everybody that was on Source days and the, 70% of suppliers that we have on source, they, they, they were all still receiving PPAs, they are still receiving updates. And everything was going well. But everybody, it wasn’t we, we we hit a brick wall.

00:14:21:16 – 00:14:46:24

So it wasn’t it was a trying time definitely. Oh that’s that’s a good like good education on business continuity right. Keep the business going. You know, that’s so interesting because, one of the things that, that happens in the world of, of ERP, you know, you guys are using in for sight line, but, you know, really any ERP out there, one of the, one of the challenges you have.

00:14:46:24 – 00:15:12:24

Well, there’s many challenges, right. But one of the challenges you have of their purchasing is, is when you issue that purchase order and you firm it. Right. So you’ve now release it, firmed it, whatever. You know, the terminology you use for it and you email it, you know, email it to your supplier. If your ERP actually doesn’t know that you got blacklisted, or that the suppliers on vacation or that supplier doesn’t work, you know, that person doesn’t work at that supplier anymore.

00:15:13:01 – 00:15:29:24

So even though you you think you’re going to get the part in two weeks, it might, you know, in those scenarios, it might take 2 or 3 weeks for the supplier to even realize, or you do realize that, hey, this kind of fell into a black hole. And so that puts everything in jeopardy. But the ERP doesn’t know that unless somebody tells them, right?

00:15:30:01 – 00:16:05:23

That’s right. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you for that. Good information there. I think, one of the things that so, you know, when we talk about the 52% of purchase orders change, there’s a lot of change happening. And then we talk about the, you know, the data that’s inside of Source Day. One of the things that is unique, for us is because we can see that data, but also it allows us to put together something that we call a supplier, we call a supplier volatility index.

00:16:06:00 – 00:16:49:15

And when you start doing the scale of of the amount of data that we’re looking at. So we’re talking about hundreds of millions of purchase orders going in and out of Source Day. We’re talking about $60 billion in spend. We’re able to measure the volatility across really all supply chain. And one of the things that we wanted to illustrate here is today, sort of the headline on this slide is today, when you look at the far right, under trade uncertainty for, you know, you know, January 2025, we’re seeing the same levels, of unpredictability or, I’m sorry, volatility today that we were seeing back in the Covid days.

00:16:49:17 – 00:17:13:04

And you know, I talked a lot about it. You guys are a little bit smoother right now. But love for you to speak to sort of what your volatility looks like today. Yeah. I think you can see by that graphs for example, back in, in 2020 and all the way till up until 2024 really we had a lot of a lot of suppliers that were we’re updating prices and supply and things monthly.

00:17:13:04 – 00:17:30:03

And I mean, it was it was difficult to keep up with for, for our team, you know, source data that helped us a lot of that. But, it was still very, very difficult. And it finally evened out. It has evened out over the last year or so. But we’re still we’re still seeing a lot of knee jerk reactions to the to the tariffs.

00:17:30:03 – 00:17:51:08

We’re seeing a lot of difficulty with a lot of two. And it’s it’s been a little unfortunate. We do have some suppliers that are a little bit more reliable saying, hey, we’ll wait. We don’t think this is going to be a permanent thing. But but they’re, they’re kind of eating it right now and, and and keeping us in the loop obviously because we’re, we’re not, naive to what’s going on in the world or we’re keeping up with that as well.

00:17:51:08 – 00:18:08:05

But I think it definitely has evened out, a lot. And, and we’ve been able to keep up with that, with stuff. With the help of source today and everything we’ve got going on here. Yeah, that’s that’s great. Well, you know, we we kind of skimmed over tariffs. Right. That seems to be the real big buzzword today.

00:18:08:07 – 00:18:26:08

You know, you and I were talking about this leading up to this, this webinar. And you guys have been able to navigate the tariffs pretty well. It seems like from if I remember from our conversation, you know, because we we wouldn’t be doing a good job out there if we didn’t talk about tariffs. Why don’t you speak, if you don’t mind to speak a little about how tariffs are impacting you or not?

00:18:26:10 – 00:18:45:20

Because I know the audience would love to sort of know what you guys are doing there. Absolutely. So, a lot of that has to do with, I think our buying group or part of a partnership, with the American Builders Association, and they, they help us navigate those, the with those suppliers that are dealing with a lot of things overseas.

00:18:45:22 – 00:19:01:13

A lot, a lot of our parts do come from overseas, but, we’re trying to monitor it. Weekly and, and keeping up with it. And really a lot of, a lot of our suppliers have been great. And they have said that, you know, we’re we’re we’re not going to react as quickly as we as as it looks like we should.

00:19:01:15 – 00:19:20:04

And we’re going to hold off until these trade negotiations truly go through. And that’s where we’ve seen at least delays. And we’ve seen there’s not a 90 day pauses and 60 day puzzles with its current administration. And we, we just continue to monitor it honestly. And it’s some, some suppliers have implemented some, some tariffs here and there.

00:19:20:04 – 00:19:39:15

But I think the ones that have implemented those increases also help helped, help straight into the last two years. So they’ve, they’ve really not, not had any true knee jerk reaction. So I think it’s a mix of both honestly at this point. Yeah. No that’s good. I mean, you know, good for you guys to be able to navigate that pretty well.

00:19:39:15 – 00:20:01:22

Hasn’t been too much of a thing for you. Yeah. Right. We don’t know. We don’t really know where things are going. But at least you, so far, so good. That’s perfect. Well, so, one of the things that I wanted to, you know, share with the audience a little bit, you know, we really want Cole to tell the story about how they’re doing certain things.

00:20:01:24 – 00:20:24:02

Source stay is certainly a part of that story, but we are not the story. In all cases, sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not. But I wanted to just kind of explain sort of where we fit for the audience. If you’re not familiar with us. So when you think about your world, right, you, you’re running a manufacturing organization or maybe you’re a distributor, or maybe you do a little bit of mix and you’re using an ERP application.

00:20:24:02 – 00:20:54:05

And so you invest in an ERP cause company is invested in sight line. So you’ve invested in a, you know, sight line. And the idea there, right, is that we we want one single application. It’s mission critical and we use it across the entire organization, right from, from sales to production to purchasing, apparel, etc., bringing everybody on the same page and really trying to help the stakeholders like Cole run the business in a way that’s, you know, best, most profitable performance for the organization.

00:20:54:07 – 00:21:16:21

The the thing that the reality, though, for most organizations is that there are key stakeholders that are really disconnected. And of course, and this is being illustrated by, this, this graph here or this, this slide here as your suppliers. So you have, your suppliers who are very key to the success of your organization. We all need them.

00:21:16:21 – 00:21:43:23

We need to have them to help our run our business. But they’re, you know, disconnected. And so most buyer supplier relationships are a manual, you know, workflow for them. There’s emails that keep them in communication. There are spreadsheets that go back and forth. There are phone calls, voicemails, post-it notes and all these things. And in today’s environment, it is very, very difficult to keep your business up to date and current.

00:21:43:24 – 00:22:05:23

Keep your ERP up to date and current. When you have a disconnected stakeholder like your suppliers and, you know, an easy example, you know, I’ll just, you know, throw my iPhone up here when we all today can take our phones and use Venmo or Apple Pay or whatever you use, and you can send money directly to your kids.

00:22:05:23 – 00:22:31:13

So here’s $5 allowance or go buy, well, maybe more like $20 today, but here, go buy yourself some lunch. And I know exactly when the money was sent and when exactly when the money was was received. But for most companies who are going to issue millions upon millions of dollars worth of purchase orders year over year, you have this very little to zero visibility into the status of those purchase orders, because you’re suppliers are completely disconnected.

00:22:31:15 – 00:22:58:02

And and that is where that’s where source. Since we are we are the glue between your ERP, your business and connecting your suppliers into the loop, essentially into the loop of communication collaboration, to be able to service them, you get to them, distribute to them, purchase orders, data, information that they can use in order to better service your organization.

00:22:58:02 – 00:23:18:09

And this is exactly where, Sportsman Boats is today. They are and have been leveraging Source Day for, for six years. And and seeing, you know, lots of success with it and so, so cool. I’d love for you if you could, let’s just ask you a little bit about your, your experience, maybe early days with Source Day.

00:23:18:09 – 00:23:35:16

So, you know, for example, when you guys, well, what was the what was the kind of, the main thing that you guys or main things that you guys, decided that you needed to use or stick for your company so that I’m taking you way back? I don’t know if they if you remember that, but if you don’t remember, that’s fine.

00:23:35:16 – 00:23:57:14

But hopefully you did. Yeah. So I think a lot of it had to do with communication. As the story that I mentioned about auto acknowledgments, I think that dealing with those and looking through everything manually as you spoke to, the post, the notes, the the emails sheets, the everything, I mean, it all gets to be a lot and and and doing that beforehand.

00:23:57:16 – 00:24:13:20

Just a pain. I mean, keeping up with it all. Make sure you don’t miss one. Making sure when you, you know, check off an email. How do you maintain your emails? If you delete them, don’t delete two by accident and delete the wrong one and end up losing the acknowledgment. And so that’s that was a big part of it for us was just the easy communicate ease of communication.

00:24:13:20 – 00:24:30:15

And then being able to see the, the consistency and in the platform too, because I think a lot of people are quick to say, no, I didn’t see that. And I said, well, you acknowledged it. You know, you look back through the software and it gives a timestamp. Well, it at 3:42 p.m., you acknowledge that view.

00:24:30:15 – 00:24:51:01

So being able to say, hey, you, you said you were going to do it. This was the price you said it was going to be at. That’s that’s been a huge help to us. So doing everything beforehand and, and manually coming through everything I think was was definitely difficult. But source does help improve that immensely. And being able to go back and say, hey, this is where this is where we were good.

00:24:51:01 – 00:25:10:18

This is where, you can find the people. This is this is what you confirmed. Is that the quality, the price, the data, etc.? It’s it’s been it’s been great. Honestly, it’s helped the business a lot, you know, whether it’s been instead of us covering expedites, having the vendors, suppliers covering that. I think has been immensely helpful for us too.

00:25:10:18 – 00:25:38:11

And not trying to blame anybody, but it’s definitely it’s it’s a nice, that’s a nice having that, that back up when you’re, when you’re looking into something like that. Yeah. That’s that’s really great I appreciate that. So, you know, one of the things that, organizations don’t think about when you think about email, right? Because most, most everybody out on this webinar are they’re, you know, they’re going to be probably using emails to, to manage their suppliers.

00:25:38:13 – 00:25:57:00

And, but what we don’t think about right is in our, in our inbox is a lot of noise. Right. There’s yes, there’s, there’s information from our suppliers, but there might be I don’t know, you might have an invite from your uncle for the barbecue event on Saturday or, you know, your movie tickets or who? I don’t know.

00:25:57:00 – 00:26:28:14

Right. But, you know, the thing is, for a buyer, there’s nothing more important than getting immediate visibility to any sort of change on RPO. You know, some are minor and some are not, and some are major. But the point is, you really want to be able to, you know, know that. And I think that’s one of the things that you were kind of mentioning there is that once you went to Source Day, it was really able to eliminate a lot of that noise and know exactly what’s going on with every single purchase order, with every single supplier.

00:26:28:14 – 00:26:49:24

So you didn’t have any, like gotcha. So is that that a fair statement? Yes, absolutely. And if I, if I had a dollar from any logistics company that reached out to me daily, I’d be a very rich man. And so I think everybody goes through the purchasing world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. How important? When you guys were evaluating Source Day, how important was it?

00:26:49:24 – 00:27:09:07

And I know this was kind of before you so of you might not know this answer or maybe you know what today, like I’m just curious for you today. So how important is it that your ERP has accurate information, you know, like, you know, that you can click a button and source day and it’ll update all your post for you automatically versus someone having to manually go do that.

00:27:09:07 – 00:27:30:08

How important is that to you and why now? It’s immensely important because I think, it’s it goes back to the old saying of garbage in, garbage out. I mean, if you’ve got bad data, then you don’t have anything. And that’s something that was definitely a big part of the evaluation in the beginning, speaking to some of my colleagues that, helped with the implementation, they said that was that’s a huge part of it.

00:27:30:08 – 00:27:49:05

And it’s something that you can, you’re giving an accurate data to, to everybody in the company to, as you said, the stakeholders, the people that are counting on boats going out the door, if you have given an accurate data, they’re they’re also giving inaccurate data to our dealers and to our customers. And you don’t want that, obviously.

00:27:49:05 – 00:28:15:00

So but having right and having correct data coming in is immensely important. And being able to trust you. Right. And I’m so glad you said that. I hear that so much. You know, we, you know, people, organizations invest sometimes millions of dollars in an ERP application. And then you start asking around and everybody’s saying, well, we don’t really you know, the system is fine, but we really don’t trust the data and the system.

00:28:15:00 – 00:28:34:15

And and that’s not an ERP problem. Right? That’s not a that’s not because ERP is bad. That’s just because the people that are feeding the machine, if you will, the ERP, you know, make mistakes or don’t updated. And it’s not accurate. It’s not current. So I’m glad you said that. So you know, source day I mean, do you feel like you can trust the system more now.

00:28:34:15 – 00:28:55:15

Was with source A helping you with that 100% 100%? I think that’s something that we can definitely hang our hat on when we one of the first things we look at when we go back to our system, like, okay, I know it’s sourced a supplier, so we’re good. We’re we can trust that date. And it’s 99% accurate. The ship date, the due date, everything.

00:28:55:15 – 00:29:21:23

So something that’s been very reliable for us, I think was everybody and all the buyers that we have now. And everything that we go. So that’s my awesome. Well, and I didn’t ask you this before, but I’m just sort of curious about this. You know, when you start looking at accurate dates and the do you guys have planners or how do you guys do that when you, when you’re, you know, setting things up for production and scheduling, is that a planner that does that or somebody else?

00:29:22:00 – 00:29:40:02

So we’ve got a schedule that sets the spray dates for everything. For, for all the boats. And it we got reports that feed off, everything else within our company. So we do almost all of our fiberglass parts in house, and we build our consoles, our lids, our, our top frames and just about anything you can think of.

00:29:40:06 – 00:30:13:14

We try to build in house with the cam and so everything cleans off initial spray date. And we have, some things built into the background and some estimated days of build time about each, each. So and everything like that. So everything, everything feeds through into sight line. And once that happens, we’ve got two main buyers that that, run their planning and, and and obviously in for sidelined us most of that work for us that they had maybe a little bit of an analysis make sure everything looks okay and and then place spills.

00:30:13:14 – 00:30:41:04

It’s it’s all pretty seamless and and that’s where we’re sourced obviously comes in once the bills get sent to suppliers. They it since they source they and they get some notification sourced, a notification saying that there’s a API or there’s an update and, that’s where the process really starts between that communication. And so it’s, it’s nice having sourced the most of it for it’s really not now for, for those that maybe everyone else knows, but I don’t know.

00:30:41:04 – 00:31:02:20

So for me as a newbie, a spray date is it’s the it’s the date. So boat is, built backwards from a car. I think most people think of a car when they’re now thinking about that. I don’t know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a car, you know, you’re building from the inside out and, you know, you build the frame first, and then eventually your last step is to paint the car.

00:31:02:20 – 00:31:25:09

Right? So a boat actually starts out with a mold and it’s, it’s what they call gel coat. It’s a different, type of paint, really. But Dunkirk goes on, and it’s built, from the outside and really. And then there’s layers of fiberglass and resin that go into it, and then eventually it’s pulled from the mold and it’s fully assembled into into what you see on the water.

00:31:25:11 – 00:31:36:12

Interesting. Yeah. I had no idea. Of course, it makes sense. Right. You need the actual boat to be able to, you know, bolt things to it. So let’s make it makes makes tons of sense. Well very cool.

00:31:36:12 – 00:31:41:02

So now I’m going to just do a, I want to do a little,

00:31:41:02 – 00:31:43:08

we’re done with kind of the slide piece of this.

00:31:43:08 – 00:31:57:21

I just wanted to just share people sort of where we fit and where you fit what we’ve seen. I would love one of the things that you had mentioned to me, and I think the audience would love to know, is you had mentioned to me that there was a mandate when you started in this role about reducing inventory.

00:31:57:23 – 00:32:17:00

And, you know, doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, everybody has sort of that same goal. Very few actually achieve it. And you guys have we know Source Day was a part of that. And we know we weren’t the only story there. And I think the audience, we get a lot of value out of just sort of understanding, you know, that mandate and then how you guys accomplished it.

00:32:17:02 – 00:32:17:06

Yeah.

00:32:17:07 – 00:32:34:22

So, during Covid, I think everybody up their safety socks and, were freaking out a little bit and rightfully so. We all that know when we were getting everything and, and, in the last two years or so and we’ve, really been, it’s really been put on our shoulders to try to become more just in time.

00:32:34:24 – 00:32:53:19

And we felt comfortable with about a week’s worth of safety stock here. And, that’s something that we’ve really driven home in the last really year. And that’s something that we’ve we’ve accomplished and really gotten to a point where inventory is the lowest it’s been in years. And that’s something we’re very proud of because we’ve been able to to address source data.

00:32:53:19 – 00:33:07:19

And and like you and I talked about the dates that that come through source, they’re very, very accurate. And we’re able to to communicate with our suppliers through source today. And granted, there are some suppliers who aren’t on source, and we’ve been really pushing to get get to that point. But yeah,

00:33:07:19 – 00:33:10:14

that’s something you and I have talked about trying to

00:33:10:14 – 00:33:15:24

kind of encourage the more and, you know, I want to want to incentivize them as much as we can.

00:33:16:02 – 00:33:39:13

Obviously been in the customer with these suppliers at the end of the day. But, now really, really Source Day has streamlined that communication. And as you mentioned, today, that predictability with, with due dates and pricing and all that fun stuff. So, it’s, it’s something that we’ve, we’re, we’re very proud of, encompassed that and gotten down to about a week’s worth of safety talk, some items, you know, a little bit longer lead time.

00:33:39:13 – 00:33:50:01

And we need to extend that a little bit further. But we’ve been we’ve had a lot of success with it. And I think, stakeholders and decision makers at the top of them. But happy with that for sure.

00:33:50:01 – 00:33:55:17

I’m I bet. And when you guys were looking at, you know, ways to reduce inventory, Source Day was a piece of that.

00:33:55:23 – 00:34:07:14

What was another that was or were you guys trying to reduce the amount of suppliers or increase the amount of suppliers or, I’m just curious what other sort of things that you were looking at to do for the audience, you know?

00:34:07:14 – 00:34:21:06

Yeah, it was, we we kept our suppliers the same for the most part. We obviously exported a lot of it, a lot of different suppliers with I think Covid really encouraged everybody to have a backup supplier for everything because, yeah,

00:34:21:06 – 00:34:24:01

if something went down like, I think

00:34:24:01 – 00:34:30:11

it happened in Texas was in 2021 where all the pipes froze down, froze over, and, and it froze a lot of

00:34:30:11 – 00:34:52:15

the resin plants down there from the foam plants as well. So that put a put a strain on the marine industry for sure during that time. So really encouraged that secondary supplier and, really trying to strengthen our relationship with our car suppliers and see if there’s anything what else that we were getting here and there and, and seeing if it was an opportunity to, to, go through our normal suppliers on normal or else.

00:34:52:15 – 00:35:10:24

Because I know a great example was one of our suppliers has a warehouse here in Summerville 15 minutes down the road from us. And they. Yeah, they they keep a lot of our stock there just in case, God forbid something goes wrong or we have, like we said, bad that a garbage data. So so that’s something that system somebody mistyped something.

00:35:11:01 – 00:35:28:00

We, we can get ahead of that. And I think that’s really where our relationships can come in handy, you know, and I think our relationship with you guys has shown through that too. And I think the changes that we’ve made and the improvements that we’ve made has been it’s been amazing in the last, last few years.

00:35:28:05 – 00:35:41:07

Well, I certainly do appreciate that. And look, you know, you know as well as I do, you’ve been doing this long enough and I certainly have as well. We all know fires are going to happen, and it’s really not about, you know, we don’t eliminate all the fires, but it’s about what are you going to do when one comes up?

00:35:41:13 – 00:35:58:15

How fast can you react to it? You know, that’s just that’s just the nature of the business, mind. You might have, you know, inventory on something that you need for, you know, five of your boats. You go to use them and realize their bad quality. And now you have a fire drill, right? That has nothing to do with, delivery.

00:35:58:15 – 00:36:17:18

But, you know, the quality thing. So there’s all kinds of of, things that happen that can, can change the world. So a couple just a couple of quick questions and then, and we’ll, we’ll call it here. But, I would love for you to share, if you know this again, I know you were a little bit later.

00:36:17:20 – 00:36:35:21

But I know today we probably still onboard suppliers for you. So what? What’s the experience like? For you? You know, one of the things that Sauce Sauce Day does is we really try to help our customers with suppliers, right? One of the first questions we always get as supplier adoption. How do I know my suppliers are going to use Sauce Day?

00:36:35:23 – 00:36:42:20

And I’d love for you to speak to Laura about what your experience has been like to help the audience understand.

00:36:42:20 – 00:36:54:14

Yeah. I think that, sauce has made it very seamless to work with suppliers. I know one of the first things that I did initially was asked for a walkthrough of what the supplier side of things looks like because, like we said, there’s going to be a little bit of a difference.

00:36:54:14 – 00:37:22:14

And, at least I thought there was. And I started looking at it and it looks eerily similar to similar. So it didn’t seem. And it was it was good. It was a good thing. And I just wanted to be able to say, hey, I see what you’re looking at if I need to walk through it, but really, 99% of the time I would just refer them to someone at source and say, hey, XYZ, who’s having trouble with, this, this function or this feature and got a response within an hour, usually, unless it was super early in the morning or super late in the evening.

00:37:22:14 – 00:37:40:20

But really, the source that it was was great to help out with, with and provide training resources and do everything that they that would help help a, supplier get this software. So I know I had one supplier good example to us who always complained about source two. She said, I don’t like it. It’s too much work.

00:37:40:20 – 00:37:55:11

And I said, well, what are you looking at? What’s the problem? What’s what? Why do you hate it? There’s no reason I hate it. I said, it’s so software. It helps us out immensely and explained her benefits on our side too. I get that, but this is why I said, well, let me walk to us and look at our side.

00:37:55:11 – 00:38:16:12

We did a zoom call like this and talk to it and she said, oh my gosh, I was doing it wrong. I said, well, yeah, you just got to ask the question because it’s not it’s not that difficult, especially in the world we’re in today. And the support that you guys have was it was it was easy. I mean, you guys were all up on a call with us and and explain what what was going on, how to make it more seamless and ran.

00:38:16:14 – 00:38:25:13

And you know, we did a did a lot of parts for them. So if we had a lot of changes, I got a little upset about that. But that was that was more on us. So we’re gonna have to deal with that anyways for the new Source Day. So

00:38:25:13 – 00:38:30:16

yeah. That’s right. Right. I mean, it’s, it’s it’s we think we think it’s, it’s easy to fall back on our correction.

00:38:30:16 – 00:38:39:15

Well let’s just do this an email but then we lose all the visibility. I mean, you mentioned at the very beginning the the visibility you have to the audit trail

00:38:39:15 – 00:38:42:06

of a Po right of appeal changes six times.

00:38:42:06 – 00:38:55:04

And and you don’t like the resolution for you if you’re if you’re using only email, you’ve got to go dig through who knows hundreds of emails to real to recreate the story of what happened to that Po on source Day.

00:38:55:04 – 00:39:10:17

With the click of a button, we tell you everything you need to know about who did what when they did it. And, and those scenarios, if you if you, if you don’t use a solution like source so you don’t have, you know, that accountability which is super important. So all right. Last two questions. Last two questions.

00:39:10:17 – 00:39:26:08

I never get long here. So we’d love to know what was an unexpected benefit for me, like when you became a Source Day customer today. Like, love to know what what that what it’s been like. And if you see anything unexpected that you weren’t expecting was going to happen. Yeah.

00:39:26:08 – 00:39:31:08

I think honestly, in the last six years, it’s been the improvements sourced has made.

00:39:31:10 – 00:39:49:00

You know, one of the biggest things that it was a big deal for me is, is the digital po. And, it was something that was implemented, I want to say 2 or 3 years ago, I can’t remember exactly when, but for the suppliers that don’t want to use the, you know, they want to call it a portal on their they have that word that’s that’s a bad buzzword.

00:39:49:02 – 00:40:03:11

I mean, everybody, they said, oh, we don’t want to deal with a portal. So that provided an option for them to say, hey, you don’t have to go and do. Anything you have to do is hit this button in the email and it’ll take you to the same. The same screen will still do the same communications through Source Day.

00:40:03:11 – 00:40:22:07

And it was something that was that was highly encouraged by me. And then really now we have the what is it? The supplier, dashboard that we have, the item dashboard was recently adapted to something that we’ve kind of been exploring and trying to encourage our guys to use a lot more. And I just, I feel like source that keeps making improvements.

00:40:22:07 – 00:40:37:20

And we’re we’re very happy with everything. And you would think that we would see a giant price increase for this, and get nickel and dimed here. But it’s something that I know you and I have talked about, something that we haven’t seen, and it’s been a bunch of like, I feel like between the two companies. So it’s been great.

00:40:37:22 – 00:40:38:09

Yeah. I

00:40:38:09 – 00:40:43:14

appreciate you saying that. I mean, we do try to always be innovating and and add that, you know, for our customers to make them better.

00:40:43:14 – 00:40:46:07

And you had mentioned to me as well, like one of the things that you saw

00:40:46:07 – 00:40:55:03

was at one point we were talking about, you know, your uptime of your lines, like you haven’t had any production downtime.

00:40:55:03 – 00:41:04:02

And, you know, again, I’m not saying that’s an all Source Day thing, but I know that you feel like it’s a contributor, so I’d love to just, you know, is that mean that I think I remember you saying that. Yeah.

00:41:04:02 – 00:41:14:09

Something we’re definitely proud of. That, missing parts hasn’t been a a hindrance to the line. The lines kept moving and and we’ve, we’ve been able to adjust.

00:41:14:09 – 00:41:30:22

And source has been a huge part of the, as you said. I mean, without the days that we’ve had and with the updates that we’ve been able to provide to, to our company and to our stakeholders here, I don’t know what we would have done, especially with the uncertain times we’ve had over the last five years. I mean, we we’d be dead in the water.

00:41:30:22 – 00:41:41:16

And I know a lot of companies have experience that they’ve had some people home and they’ve had to make make changes on the fly and I’m sure do the same things we’ve had to do run around like chickens with their head cut off. But, right,

00:41:41:16 – 00:41:44:07

right. It’s it’s not fun. And

00:41:44:07 – 00:41:45:23

like you said, there’s going to be fires all the time.

00:41:45:23 – 00:41:55:06

It’s just how you react. And how can you be as proactive as possible. And so today’s been a big part of us being being proactive. Fortunately for us.

00:41:55:06 – 00:42:13:15

Well awesome. Well I appreciate you saying those things okay. So last question. We know the audience and you know, people out there have looked at source Day before. We’ve talked to a lot of in for customers, a lot of sideline customers, over the years, and also new people who are being introduced to Source Day for the very first time.

00:42:13:17 – 00:42:29:00

And so last question for you is like knowing what you know now, and using Source Day, if you were to meet one of those, those those companies or, you know, an employee at one of those companies, knowing what you know about source day to day, like what would you tell them? What would your what would be your statement?

00:42:29:02 – 00:42:29:06

I

00:42:29:06 – 00:42:45:12

would I would encourage them to do it and go forward with, just one statement or say and say do it and obviously do your due diligence and, make sure it’s the right solution for you. But I’ve, I’ve heard nothing but positive reviews from, from the people, the buyers under me that have used it. And, for everybody throughout.

00:42:45:12 – 00:42:51:00

I’ve had nothing but positivity throughout. So I would definitely do it. It’s it’s awesome.

00:42:51:00 – 00:43:01:06

Awesome, awesome. Well, very much appreciate it. Cole, let me throw up here in this last little slide here.

00:43:01:08 – 00:43:16:06

All right. So, Cole, thank you very much for sharing. Your information with us today. Your work at a really fun place. And I need to come over there some day and see all cloud operations. Come on over.

00:43:16:08 – 00:43:35:11

I appreciate you sharing your story today. For those out there, if you’re interested in learning more about Source Day, if it’s something that you want to explore, you would like to see a demonstration of Source Day or, you know, just learn more. Here’s my email address. Please copy down, shoot me an email. Just let me know you’re interested or just want to have a conversation.

00:43:35:13 – 00:43:52:04

Be happy to, to speak with you. I’m always around as well. I mean, I, I, I get to a lot of the events. You probably see me wearing a green coat, and so I’m pretty easy to spot in a, in a crowd. But anyways, appreciate everybody joining us today. Cole, thank you very much.

00:43:52:05 – 00:43:59:16

Hang on tight for you. You go and, we’ll just say bye to the audience. Thank you guys very, very much. Thanks for sure.