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On this episode of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast, brought to you by Ag Express, we catch up with Layne Richins, chief technology officer for 24-store John Deere dealer Stotz Equipment.

Richins shares his journey from technician to leader of a 30-plus person precision team for Stotz Equipment and explains the keys to delivering excellent service across 8 different states.  

He also dives into how his team is embracing AI both internally and in the field with farmers. Richins discusses the creation of “Stotz GPT,” an internal AI tool, and shares how the dealership uses data analytics and software development teams to make life easier for employees and customers.

The Precision Farming Dealer podcast series is brought to you by Ag Express.

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Full Transcript

Noah Newman:

It's time for another edition of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Ag Express Electronics. Great to have you with us. As always, my name's Noah Newman. Today, we're catching up with Layne Richins. He's the chief technology officer for Stotz Equipment, a 24-store John Deere dealer with locations in eight different states out west. We're going to learn about Richmond's journey from technician in 2004, all the way to leader of a 30 plus person precision team now for Stotz equipment. He'll share the keys to delivering excellent service across those different states. And also Div into his team is embracing AI, both internally and in the field with farmers. He'll discuss the creation of Stotz GPT. It's an internal AI tool, and he'll also talk about how the dealership uses data analytics and software development to make life easier for employees and customers.

Layne Richins:

Yeah. So my role at Stotz is I'm the chief technology officer for Stotz. What that means is I cover all of our precision teams. So Precision falls under this umbrella, but also I have our internal software and hardware stuff. So I have customer facing, which is my precision side of the business. And then I have our internal side, which is our software team, our network team, our data and analytics team, all of that. So it's kind of like a combo. So I kind of handle anything technology, whether it's customer facing or internal. So that's a little bit about what the CTO role is at Stotz, does any technology, that's what I kind of do. So a little bit about the team on the precision side, I have Justin Murray. Justin Murray's been with us for about two years and he runs all of our precision team.

So that team consists of ... We have a north manager, a north region manager, that's Clayton, and he runs all of our stores basically from NeFi North. And then Omar is our south region manager and he runs all of our stores south of NeFi. And then we also have our golf, our precision golf manager. So that person kind of manages all the precision golf stuff. And then on the whole precision team, there's roughly about 30 precision specialists across the company from Idaho all the way down to Arizona and California and Wyoming and Colorado, New Mexico, all over the place. So that's kind of how the precision side is structured. But we also have a precision data and analytics team. So our precision analytics team is led by Justin Childers. Justin's been with us for about a year. And on that team, we have two just data analysts, and those guys just specialize in precision ag data.

So they are focusing on trying to figure out how can we create reports and analytics to help our customers be more efficient and utilize the data that is being created by all these machines. And then so they kind of work hand in hand with Justin Murray. So those two guys work really tight together to try to keep the products that we're offering similar across all the boards. And then I have on the business side, I have a team of hardware and network people, so they kind of help with all of the security and stuff on the dealer side and all of the computers and networks and all of that stuff. So they kind of manage all of the licensing and security framework and all of the computers and all of that stuff. So I have three guys there that cover all the whole territory. Then I also have a team of software developers that just focus on our own internal business.

Those software developers are mostly based here in Arizona. We have one in California, and those guys are just focusing on how do we create tools and generate things that are going to help make our internal people's lives easier. And then we also have a team of business data analysts. There's three people that just focus on our own business data, trying to figure out how can we use data to try to improve our efficiencies and performance inside the dealer business. So that's kind of short and quick. What my role is, is kind of guiding all of that.

Noah Newman:

That's all encompassing. A big precision team you guys have. How much has that grown in the year since you've been there? Is this a recent development where you've expanded so much or has this been kind of incremental year over year over year?

Layne Richins:

I started at the dealership on 2004 as a technician and I was a technician in Arizona for a while in Utah. I started in Utah and was in Idaho for about eight years, and then I moved to Arizona. When I moved to Arizona, I was a technician in Arizona for a year or so, and then went into service management. And then as a service manager in about 2015- ish is when I took over the precision team. And at the time there was just basically three precision specialists across our whole company. And so we kind of changed the way that Precision was run. I mean, there was an article in Precision Farming Dealer years ago about all the different things that we do, but our team basically in 2015 was like three or four people. So we've kind of grown that over the years. And it's been pretty steady for the last few years at around that 30 mark.

So we've definitely grown it since 2015. Our focus is really trying to ... When I took it over, we really wanted to try to focus on customer needs. And the customers have a lot of equipment and we're an equipment dealer, so we wanted to try to figure out how can we use the equipment data and help customers get into the operation center and utilize the technology that they purchased and provide value in that.

Noah Newman:

Yeah. So you were on the ground floor of growing this whole Precision team. And I did look over that article a couple days ago to get some background information. And you talked about in that article how important training is and internal training. So maybe just bring us up to speed on that. What's your approach to training? And when you have such a big precision department, how do you get everyone on the same page when it comes to this training or getting together? How does it work? Is it like an annual get together, semi-annual or ... We have

Layne Richins:

Biweekly calls and once a month we have a call with all 30 guys jump on a call and we just kind of go over everything. So we do a lot of stuff like spoonfeeding, like drip feeding, if you will, like trying to keep everybody up to speed on a biweekly basis, here's what's going on, here's what we're working on, all of those kind of things. But we also do try to get everybody together, at least the whole team. We usually try to get that done once a year, but it gets hard and expensive because we're spread out across eight states. So it's not like we can just bring everybody in quick and easy being a spread across eight states. We have to fly. So it gets kind of pricey, but we still do that once a year generally, but we also try to do smaller, more regional.

So the North guys will all get together more frequently than the whole group, but we still try to get the whole group together as well. But there's a lot of communication being done on teams and it's a really good group. They all know that they have a whole bunch. They have 30 specialists that are all experts at different things. And so if they're running into something, you'll see on our Teams chat, it's always going of different things that people are working on or, "Hey, I got this problem," or, "Hey, I need one of these. Does anybody have one?" And so it's all done on Teams a lot, but we do a lot of virtual stuff too. So I feel like in this day and age, you kind of have

Noah Newman:

To. Oh yeah, absolutely. We're the same way here. So a few years ago, a Precision Farming Dealer Summit, you shared an interesting tactic about starting with a blank PowerPoint at one of your training presentations. Is that something you still do? And can you, for people who aren't familiar with that tactic, kind of explain what it is?

Layne Richins:

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what we try to pay attention to what's ... At the end of the day, I don't know everything. They're the ones that are boots on the ground. They're the ones that have the customer that they're talking to the customer and all of that stuff. So at the end of the day, yeah, getting together and then whiteboarding ideas and whiteboarding different topics, I mean, yeah, we're still definitely still trying to figure it out. I don't think we have it figured out and it's always changing. As soon as you think you have it figured out, then the whole world has changed.

Noah Newman:

Yeah. Well, especially with AI now, it seems like we're hearing a lot about AI. How is Stotz embracing AI and what have you noticed with your precision teams in terms of how AI is changing the game for you guys?

Layne Richins:

One of the things that we did really early on is we partnered with a company called Mainstreet AI, and they just helped guide us in our business and try to give us some safe AI tools. At the end of the day, we all know that AI is awesome, but you got to use it responsibly. You got to use it in a way that's safe and conscious of where that data is and where that data's going and all of that stuff. So I think there was a lot of hesitation initially, but when we partnered with Mainstreet AI, they were basically a consultant with us and trying to help us understand what we could do, as well as what tools we could enable for all of our users and make it quick and easy for them to start utilizing AI in a safe manner. And one of the first things was just getting, we called it the Stotz GPT instead of ChatGPT.

And it was our own ChatGPT kind of instance we allowed everyone access to and we connected it to all of our internal documents and all of that stuff. So it had business knowledge about Stotz equipment so people could then start chatting in there and asking questions. If you wanted to know anything about insurance benefits or you wanted to know about a process or whatever, it was connected to our data. So then we were using those language models to try to figure out how can we become more efficient and how can we utilize it in a way that's going to help us? And Mainstreet AI was really the key to helping us figure that out.

Noah Newman:

Stotz GPT, I like it. That's very catchy. That's a great idea.

Layne Richins:

Yeah. Yeah.

Noah Newman:

Are you also using that? Are your technicians using that when they try to look up a service manual paragraph or something? Or how else is it being used?

Layne Richins:

So Deere has a lot of those tools available to us today. So we're just trying to make sure that people are utilizing the tools that are available to them. That's one of the hard things is tools change so frequently from Deere and from our own internal stuff, it's really tough to keep everybody up to date and utilizing the latest and greatest stuff. I mean, there's so much coming at these guys every day of all the different pieces that are changing.

Noah Newman:

No, I know what you mean. It is. There's a lot of tools out there. It's hard to even keep up with what's even available to use, especially when it comes with AI.

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Obviously, we wanted to dive more into the analytics that you guys are doing, but you mentioned it earlier, but can you kind of expand on how you're doing the analytics for your precision customers or how does that work?

Layne Richins:

Yeah, so Justin Childers is really working on providing us or helping us get the right products in front of our growers. We've been doing it for a long time, providing different solutions and different reporting and different things like that, but at the end of the day, it's always kind of changing. Some of the things that we've been doing for a long time has just been trying to help our customers understand where they rank versus their peers. So we've been doing a lot of benchmarking and we've been doing that for quite a while, trying to help our customers just be more efficient. And a lot of times these machines put out a lot of data. So how do we put that information and do the analytics for the customers so that they don't have to spend all the time in front of the computer trying to wrangle all this data?

We want to try to summarize it and find those wins, find those opportunities where a customer could save some money or find a better product or whatever that is. And that can range from fleet optimization, fleet sizing, different operational efficiencies. Are you operating, what's the holdup or do you have the right sized support staff? What's causing all of that? Are you running your machine optimally?

And we're also doing some agronomic stuff too, like helping customers do trials and try to understand the data that comes out of those trials using different John Deere tools and other software tools that we have access to. And obviously AI is all in a lot of those spaces. And one of the things that we've just been working with is just trying to figure out how can we safely connect different data sources to AI so that we can have AI do a lot of analytics for us. So we're experimenting with a lot of that stuff.

Noah Newman:

Interesting. And to get the data analytics, is that part of a service plan a farmer would have to sign up for? Or yeah, just kind of give us an idea as to how that works. Yeah.

Layne Richins:

So I mean, at the end of the day, we charge for that. It does cost us money. We do have people that are specialized in it, and so we do charge for those services. So there's a multitude of ways that we run it. So sometimes it's through a data package, sometimes it's a reporting package, sometimes it's an analytics package. So there's all kinds of different ways that we can do it depending on what the customer's preference is and what the customer's appetite is and what they're trying to learn. So we have some customers that are on a full all- inclusive type where we do basically everything, but then we also have some that we're just doing some analytics and some reports for them and delivering them weekly reports or monthly reports or progress or different things like that. So we have an a la carte where you can just get pieces of it and we also have it high level or we can do all of it and the price varies depending on what you're looking to get.

Noah Newman:

Interesting. So yeah, so lots of different levels to the analytics.

Layne Richins:

Yeah. We're working on standardizing it a bunch, and that's one of the things that Justin Childers is really trying to work on and focus on is trying to ... It is kind of hard for us because we're not just corn and soybeans. Most of that stuff is fairly easy when it comes to corn and soybeans because deer spends so much time on it, but most of our customers don't grow corn and soybeans. Most of our customers are growing different stuff. So especially in Idaho, it's all sugar beets and potatoes and small grains. So having to try to figure out how we use the data and what matters to our customers versus a traditional roll crop.

Noah Newman:

Yeah, that's a good point. It's a different ballgame where you guys are. Here where we are in Wisconsin, it is all corn and soybeans.

Layne Richins:

Yeah. And I mean, it is pretty tough for us as a dealer group, but just because we have so much going on in all different aspects. You've got cotton in Arizona and potatoes in Idaho and everything in between, but there's just no corn and soybean.

Noah Newman:

Moving on to the internal software developers that you mentioned, if you could maybe expand a little bit more on that, or what are some tools that they've developed for you guys or some that maybe they're working on right now?

Layne Richins:

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, we've had a team of software developers for a long time, and part of that was just to try to help us figure out ... You'll have a dealer business system, but it's never going to fill all of the gaps. There's always going to be things that we want to do different or we want to experiment with or we want to add pieces to. And utilizing AI today, we're trying to figure out all the different ways that we can utilize AI and automate and build upon all of the things that are out there for us today.

We've just recently switched over to the JDDO business system, and we're starting to realize the gains that can come from that, from automation and the ability to use AI for automation in those places. There's some things that are simple, such as just doing accounts payable type stuff where you're using OCR to find the invoices and extract the information off the invoices, and then trying to automate some of those everyday processes that happen on a daily basis that consume people's time. And at the end of the day, we're really trying to focus on making our ... So at Stone Equipment, we're really focused. Our vision is to be the best equipment dealer in the world, and our purpose is to create a better life for our families, our communities, and those connected to the land. Well, our precision team is focused on helping our customers have a better life and make their life easier.

That's what we're always trying to focus on is making our customer's life easier. And so on my software and my data and analytics team, well, their customers is their coworkers, our internal customers. So their focus is always being on how do we make their life easier? How can we make this process less painful? How can we use AI and technology to make that process easier and less painful? It's the same exact theory on the customer side. There's a lot of data for a customer on a precision side to wade through. How do we make it easier for them to make decisions? So on the internal side, we're taking that exact same approach. We're really trying to make it easier for our internal folks because it really helps us live up to our purpose of creating a better life for our families, communities, and those connected to the land.

Noah Newman:

Yeah, absolutely. Well said. So the internal business data analytics that you guys do, do you guys have one-on-one meetings to go over those or big company-wide meetings? Or how do you take that information and apply it to everything?

Layne Richins:

And it kind of goes hand in hand with the software development team, but we have our own internal website where most everything is housed. That's where we have all of our financials and our analytics or everything is able to be accessed there. But we have a lot of different Power BI reports that are managers. Our organization is very data hungry, so they're always trying to find different things and try and find different ways and opportunities to make their business run better. Every store is its own business and they want to try to make sure that they're running things optimally. So we have a lot of ... And we're constantly evolving different Power BI reports and different analytics and different ways of getting data and trying to figure out what's the real value here and how can we help the store become more efficient and more profitable and what's missing?

What's the difference between this location and that location? What do they need to work on? What does this one need to work on? Yeah. And it's all just really kind of tied to having the data to make the decisions that you need to make today. I mean, I think at the end of the day, we're really just trying to focus on back to our purpose, how do we create a better life for our families, our communities, and those connected to the land? And we want to make your life easy. So that's whether that's our internal people or whether that's our customers. And in this day and age, AI is constantly evolving and we're just figuring out how do we utilize it? How do we modernize and utilize all the AI that's available to us? And yeah, at the end of the day, it really comes down to trying to make living up to our purpose, creating a better life for our families, communities, and those connected to the land.

Noah Newman:

That'll do it for this episode of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. Big thanks to Layne Richins for taking the time during busy planning season to chat with us about how they're using AI and data analytics. Really interesting stuff there. Also, thanks to our sponsor, Ag Express for making this series possible. Until next time, for all things precision farming related, head to precisionfarmingdealer.com. I'm Noah Newman. Have a great day.