Although Andrea Brugger (LinkedIn) isn’t technically in the IT department for United Rentals, she has been instrumental in helping the company bring more tech to its employees and customers. Andrea was part of the team that created mobile apps to help workers – both in the office and on job sites – do everything from rent equipment, locate prospective customers, and keep track of all their certifications and licenses… all with just a few taps.
On IT Visionaries, Andrea explains how UR looks for ways to make platforms that can bring more efficiency to the workplace, and also what it takes to translate those applications into customer-facing tools which help users in their everyday tasks. She also talks about where technology might be moving in the future – including the ways she sees AI and machine learning having an impact in the construction industry.
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation.
Technological innovation within the construction space:
In the construction industry, there are ample opportunities for new and innovative technology to be put in place – both from the sales side and on job sites. For Andrea and United Rentals, being customer advocates has been a main focus.
“With our customers, it’s all about job site productivity,” Andrea says. “They’re building great infrastructure and doing great things, so it’s about ‘how they can drive efficiency on the job site?’ We’re always trying to think about the questions: ‘how can you rent less and do more? How can we drive technology to make them more efficient?’”
Andrea singles out drone technology and machine learning as some of the emerging technology she’s excited about introducing on more job sites.
How to build a mobile experience that works for UR customers:
Andrea explains that the construction industry is still just catching up to certain aspects of the technological revolution.
“In our personal lives, we do everything on mobile,” she says. “You would expect it’s that way in the business space, but it’s not. Especially in construction, I think we’re just catching up in some areas.”
When they started rolling out mobile phones to their field of customers just five years ago, many were still using flip phones. UR had to get people used to using their mobile devices as more than just phones – and then introduce and help them adopt applications that made their jobs easier, such as renting equipment on the go. The strategy was to give their sales team the tools first, and then allow them to teach their customers how to use it, as well. UR was playing around with single-use apps and is now trying to find a way to combine those into one experience.
How mobile has led to an increase in speed and accuracy for customers:
The major benefit of moving to mobile is that a lot of what a mobile app is doing is taking the place of interactions that used to be done through phone calls. Providing self-service creates more bandwidth to solve bigger problems, because you’re not having to use up so much time on the phone calls that could be automated experiences.
“It’s been an evolution. First it was ‘get the base level of adoption where people are using the tools’ and now it’s, ‘How are we driving usage that results in revenue growth for us?’” Andrea says.
Andrea uses the Dominos pizza delivery technology as an example: If you can track your pizza’s route to your house, why can’t you track the status of your rental equipment? There is a way to build that technology already, so now it’s about delivering it to customers and helping them with the adoption process.
To hear more from this interview, click here.
