For decades, the problems were invisibly piling up all around the parts and service team, cloaked in the disguises of comfort and familiarity.

It took an outsider’s perspective to point them out.

Gillian Roberts spent 25 years in the automotive industry before she came to lead the parts and service operations at Bay City Electric Works, a Kohler generator distributor based outside of San Diego, in 2022.

Her experience there helped her uncover the problems hidden in plain view, which were eye-opening:

• When a customer called to check on an order status, there was no way to search for an order number in their ERP system – they would have to manually check each one. 
• There was no connection between what they had ordered from Kohler and what was due to the customer. 
• Since there was no visibility into outstanding orders, they couldn’t follow up with customers proactively. 

And perhaps most concerning: It was taking the parts team on average 3-5 business days to quote their customers.

“You could not really help the customer on the spot,” Roberts says. “The customer had to help you help them, which is definitely not an ideal customer service transaction.”

Almost every interaction with customers was manual: Calls, emails, spreadsheets … even notes scratched on Post-its.

Roberts knew it shouldn’t have to be this hard.

“A lot of people that have worked here – wonderful, lovely people – have never worked anywhere else,” she says. “This is all they know. They're just trying to make do with what they have, not even honestly understanding that there are other ways and things out there to make life easier and their work more streamlined.”

So Roberts set out to show them a better way.

Stuck in an Overwhelming Parts Cycle

As a Kohler generator distributor, Bay City Electric Works, founded in 1932, serves California, Nevada, and Hawaii out of their three branches, and are in the midst of acquiring Power Systems West, which will broaden their territory to include eight additional states in the West.

Beyond selling and renting generators, Bay City also services them for end users and sells parts directly to wholesalers, averaging 70 wholesale customers a month they are fielding requests from. 

The wholesale side of their business, where margins are traditionally low, is where Roberts focused her attention first.

Her team includes two wholesale reps, based at headquarters in Poway, California, who not only quote all customers requests – up to $750K in quotes each month – but also handle all ordering, shipping, and receiving of parts for them as well.

Caught in an endless loop of trying to track down all the info to answer customer requests while managing the entire process, the parts sales reps were overwhelmed. 

Technically, there wasn’t enough revenue to warrant hiring a third person to help with the workload, but Roberts saw where this was headed.

“There was no way for two people to continue going down this path and be successful,” Roberts says.

Irritated with how long it took to get information back, customers’ patience was also growing thin.

“I had to take over accounts myself because customers were so upset,” Roberts says. “But that can only go on for so long.”

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