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7 Essential Talents of Effective Managers

June 15, 2015 | Posted in Operations & Finance
Forget state-of-the-art IT systems and over-the-top marketing campaigns. Often, the secret to improving a company’s productivity and skyrocketing its growth lies in its people — more specifically, the managers who understand the organization’s vision, motivate their teams and make things happen.
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Kim Schmidt
From The Desk of Kim Schmidt

Is Fraud Impacting Your Dealership?

By Kim Schmidt posted on June 15, 2015 | Posted in Operations & Finance
Can you trust your employees? Better yet, should you trust your employees? During a recent trip to the East Coast to visit a few different dealerships, two dealers told me about problems they had with employees stealing from them. If this was a problem for these two dealers, I wondered how widespread the issue really is.
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A Historical Perspective: Benchmarking Seven Decades of Dealer Data

June 11, 2015 | Posted in Data & Forecasts, Operations & Finance
While Farm Equipment’s special report on dealers cost of doing business, which appeared in its June 2015 issue, covers the period of 1970 through 2014 in 5-year increments, the data actually goes all the way back to 1947. The following charts track four of farm equipment dealers’ financial measurements for the 11 year period between 1947-1957.
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Cost of Doing Business: How Far Have We Really Come?

Tracking financial and operational measures shows how dealers have or have not improved their business performance over the years.
By Dave Kanicki posted on June 11, 2015 | Posted in Operations & Finance, Department Management
Any farm equipment dealer who's been around more than a few years knows how dramatically this business has changed. For one thing, everything about agriculture seems to have gotten bigger: bigger dealers with bigger sales territories; bigger customers with bigger demands; bigger and more expensive equipment; bigger top and bottom lines.

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Cost of Doing Business: What the Numbers Can Tell Us

Comparing Cost of Doing Business numbers to a hypothetical dealership demonstrates how to pinpoint trouble spots in our financials.
By Mike Wiles posted on June 11, 2015 | Posted in Operations & Finance, Department Management
In this part of the special report, the Western Equipment Dealers Assn. (WEDA) provided an analysis of finances and operations of a hypothetical dealership named Brookfield Farm Equipment, or BFE, using the 2014 Cost of Doing Business study for comparison purposes. This particular dealer would fall in the larger group of dealers with more than $75 million in annual sales.
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Cost of Doing Business: How to Use CODB Numbers to Up Your Dealership's Performance

Data collected by dealer associations for more than 50 years is another tool dealers can use to measure and monitor their business performance.
By Mike Wiles posted on June 11, 2015 | Posted in Operations & Finance, Department Management
The year 2015 may well be a trying one for many farm equipment dealerships. Recent record profits and tax incentives have allowed farmers to own a fleet of new or nearly new equipment. In the future, equipment purchases may be severely restricted if there are changes in earnings or tax rules.

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A&I Products

Since 1980, A&I Products has become a leading manufacturer and wholesale distributor of aftermarket replacement parts for the agricultural, turf, and industrial equipment markets. A&I Products' experience and expertise has greatly contributed to the company's reputation as a top supplier of quality, reasonably priced parts. Founded with roots as a small machine shop and repair facility, the company made the transition by manufacturing new parts to replace those that were identified as commonly needing repair. Throughout the 1980s, the company quickly garnered a reputation for offering quality parts at a reasonable price.

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Yetter Farm Equipment

Built on 90 years of expertise, Yetter Farm Equipment leads the agriculture industry in designing effective and innovative equipment for residue management, seedbed preparation, precision fertilizer placement, harvest attachments, strip-tillage, and more.
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Machinery Scope

At Machinery Scope, we believe you deserve the best risk management solutions for your investments in heavy equipment. Since 2013, we have been proud to offer extended warranty, appraisals, and inspections. Machinery Scope is a family-owned business built on our experience in farming and equipment dealerships. We understand your business and provide a personalized and professional level of customer service. Machinery Scope has built a strong warranty product with our customers in mind, offering the same professional level of service from the time you get a quote, through the processing of a claim.
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