By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
RTA is a fleet management software company that uniquely designs and delivers software to keep fleet managers in control of fleet performance metrics. As a long-time fleet industry leader, RTA is particularly proud to be hosting the ‘Fleet Success Summit,’ a fleet-focused, educational summit from April 20-21 in the Phoenix area.
In an interview with Josh Turley, RTA’s CEO, he spoke about the company and also about the summit. He began the conversation by noting that since its founding in 1979, RTA focused on helping fleet managers keep track of maintenance operations. Today, their innovative software solutions help track their asset life cycles, PM schedules, and more in order to things of that nature, to stay on top of all operational costs.
Says Josh, “We started off as a consulting company, helping companies adopt techniques and tools for process improvement using data and statistics. Our founder – my grandfather – actually authored several books. We were almost a kind of publishing company, but as PCs were just coming into business, we transitioned into a software company.
“Unlike many high-tech companies that disappeared as technology changed, RTA persevered and stayed ahead of the technology curve. We went from MS-DOS – green screens, to Windows, to one of the first desktop apps, to today’s web and mobile interfaces.
“Data collection, data analytics, predictive analytics, data visualization; we continuously adapted and improved in order to lead the way for fleets who faced changes in the dynamics within their shops.”
Technology Driven by Users
The RTA CEO sees that today’s technology is driven by the users and will require fleet management companies to constantly look at user interfaces: “Technicians are more familiar with iPhones and tablets so we must leverage these new forms in more and different ways. For example, fewer people want a laptop out on the road. They want access to information wherever they’re working in as convenient a medium as possible.
“There has been a groundswell of telematics interfaces, for example. How do we take that type of data and put that into a format that’s usable for fleets? The pace of change in fleet especially has been remarkable, and we are dedicated to staying ahead with our software while adding complementary solutions to our all-in-one solution.”
As with many jobs in the fleet industry, Josh sees a new generation with different expectations for technology and data taking charge. “When you pair the need to exceed the expectations for technology with the challenges of today’s automotive complexity, you have exponential change. Mechanics are now technicians. We’ve seen the pressure and have taken action to balance these divergent challenges.”
Fleet Success Summit: The Mission
Because of his long association with the fleet industry, Josh is particularly proud to host a unique fleet-focused educational event: “The Fleet Success Summit being held here in the Phoenix area on April 20th and 21st will bring together twelve notable fleet and business experts.
“It’s two days, one stage. We’ve brought together twelve industry-recognized leaders and pertinent business experts who will help fleet professionals apply leadership, technology, and business lessons that only come from the speakers’ vast experience and successes. Paul Lauria, Steve Saltzgiver, Mike Pitcher, and Ed Smith are well-known fleet presenters. Some of the other featured speakers include Kristen Hadeed, author of “Permission to Screw Up,” Michael Braband, host of “Fleet Management 101,” RTA’s own Jeff Jenkins, Facundo Tassara, of REVVO, Brett Gilliland, Elite Entrepreneurs, Marc Rogers, GAMPAC Logistics, Sam Bradford, Dutch Bros, and I will speak about the need for organizational health.”
Josh continues: “This summit is a personal passion mission for me, because I’m really big into organizational culture. And for a long time at our conferences, I would teach people about things like Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
“I would have a lot of people come up to me after and say, ‘You have no idea. Nobody tells us about this stuff. We don’t get this training. Our bosses’ bosses get to go to this thing, and they learn about it. But, down in fleet and in the shop, we never hear this. Nobody takes the time to teach us how to have a hard conversation with an employee or how to build a really good team.’
“This summit is a step along the way of bringing together all these resources that I’ve been exposed to, and I’ve been very privileged to learn from. I might lose money on this project, but that’s okay. It’s a personal mission of mine now to share it and get it going and hopefully, pay it forward to the fleet industry, that’s been so good to me and my family.”
For more information and to register for the 2022 Fleet Success Summit, visit https://fleetsuccesssummit.com
