Cashman Equipment Looks To Help/Systems Training With High Hopes

Cashman Equipment Company is one of the highest rated Caterpillar equipment dealers in North America and one of the largest privately owned companies in Nevada. Headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, they employ over 600 dedicated team members of various professional and technical backgrounds. Nationally recognized by Caterpillar for outstanding sales performance, they are a full-service dealership, providing new and used equipment for sale or rent, as well as high-quality parts and service to construction, paving, mining, logging, truck engine, and power system industries throughout Nevada and California.

Don Erlanger, Manager of Information Technology for Cashman Equipment, explains their software and hardware environment, which includes a mixture of Windows servers and Power Systems™ running IBM i (System i®). “Like most Caterpillar dealers, we use a software application called Dealers Business System (DBSi) with our System i. We also have a Windows environment that supports our file and print services, e-mail, and other business applications. On the System i side of the business, I have been working with various Help/Systems products—Robot/ALERT® [system event notification], Robot/SCHEDULE® [job scheduling and batch job management], Robot/CONSOLE® [message, resource, and log management], and SEQUEL ViewPoint® [System i data access and analysis]—for about two years.”

Don explains their push for training. “Recently, we relicensed our Help/Systems products. The new licensing came with two free days of training and consulting services—a great value. Before we purchased Robot/ CONSOLE, we had several conversations with our Help/Systems Regional Sales Manager—she was great. So, when we wanted training, I contacted her again to find out if she could recommend the type of training and a trainer to help us set up Robot/CONSOLE and upgrade from Robot/SCHEDULE version 9 to version 10. Some of the other Caterpillar dealers told us that they had heard good things about Robot/SCHEDULE 10 and its new graphical interface. We’re not System i experts and the new interface sounded like a good tool to use for both Robot/CONSOLE and Robot/SCHEDULE.”

Don followed the recommendation and was very pleased. “On a scale of 1 to 10, our Help/Systems trainer was a 20. She really knew the Robot products and helped us with Robot/CONSOLE, Robot/ALERT, and Robot/SCHEDULE. She gave us pointers on migrating Robot/CONSOLE and Robot/SCHEDULE with the System i and our DBSi application. The training gave us insight about things we wanted to do. We are currently upgrading our System i server, and the commands and techniques we learned in class have been very helpful—we definitely got great value.”

As Don sees it, “If I can pick up one or two solid points during training, that’s a strong session. The trainer made a number of very good points that really stuck, and she helped us learn. What we came away with was extremely valuable—we even had meetings immediately following the sessions to make sure the suggestions were implemented.”

Don prefers on-site training because, “It’s more interactive, which adds a lot of value. When you’re in a room with three or four other people, it’s easy for everyone to understand and interact. Plus, you can stop, step back, and review what has been said and how it applies. And, on-site training can be tailored to your needs to meet your expectations. The on-site session we had provided great value. Our trainer knew we were System i novices trying to learn the basics we needed to know on a day-to-day basis. If we ran into problems, we could always contact Technical Support. But, one of our goals was to learn how to fix things ourselves. And, that’s exactly what happened.

“The trainer was on-site for two days. She actually arrived the night before to help us with the upgrade from Robot/SCHEDULE 9 to 10. During that time, she did it all—training [Operations 101], implementation [Robot/CONSOLE], and product conversion [Robot/ SCHEDULE 9 to 10]. In our new facility, we set up a conference room with a projector and a white board. That was our classroom for the two full days of training and implementation, including configuring Robot/ CONSOLE. One reason we purchased Robot/CONSOLE was to reduce or eliminate the errors in our nightly processing. Sometimes, our batch processing and our system would actually stop running. With Robot/CONSOLE managing and handling those problems, we figured we could minimize or eliminate that downtime. So, we had multiple training goals and the payback has been excellent.”

Don really liked the flexibility and thoroughness of the training. “Our trainer was very agreeable to whatever we asked. We didn’t have a set curriculum, so she touched on key Robot/SCHEDULE points and showed us helpful tips and techniques for Robot/SCHEDULE and Robot/CONSOLE. While the trainer was on-site, we worked with Robot/SCHEDULE on our production system without an issue. We feel a lot more comfortable now using the [Robot] products. Once we were shown how Robot/ALERT, Robot/CONSOLE, and Robot/ SCHEDULE are integrated, we were a lot more at ease setting up software, configuring alerts and notifications, and answering messages. In the future, I’d like to have some more on-site training for SEQUEL and ESEND.™ We currently have only one person who is proficient in SEQUEL, and I’d really like to have more.”

Don sums up the training experience succinctly. “I’ve had plenty of training over the years and Help/Systems rates in the top 20% of any on-site service we’ve ever used. We had a huge need and high hopes, and the trainer really helped us. It was great training—a very valuable experience.”