Connected Podcast - Chris Walsh - Rediscover Reynolds

Greg Uland, Vice President of Marketing: I am Greg Uland with Reynolds and Reynolds, and this is Connected. Today, I'm really excited about the conversation that we're going to have here. I'm talking with Chris Walsh, the newly promoted president of Reynolds and Reynolds. We're going to talk about his promotion and the plan for the future. Let's get connected. Hey, Chris, how are you today? Thanks so much for hopping on.

Chris Walsh, President: I'm good Greg, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Hope you're doing well.

GU: Yeah, absolutely, doing great. So, Chris, exciting news. A couple of weeks ago, you were promoted to president of Reynolds and Reynolds, and at the same time we announced another promotion as well. So can you talk about your promotion a little bit? And then also the the additional promotions that we announced a couple weeks ago?

CW: I think it's certainly an exciting time for me, but I think an exciting time for the entire leadership team. I was joined obviously by Willie Daughters being promoted to chief operating officer. And I think it said in the announcement, the phrase they use was rounding out the C-level executives that they had with Sheri Robinson being recently promoted to chief financial officer and a little while back, Eric Edwards was promoted to chief technology officer. So the great thing for me is that I don't have to learn new people. I've worked with all of these people for over a decade. So we all know each other really well. We know how we think. We're all experts in our areas of responsibility. So there are people that  I certainly trust implicitly. I know Tommy does, and the organization should feel really good to have people like those three running their areas of responsibility.

GU: Well, I said to one of the most youngest looking collection of a hundred and thirty five years of experience that you'll find anywhere.

CW: Well, thank you, Greg. It's really nice. We do moisturize pretty frequently. I think that's a big help for us.

GU: Yeah, for sure. Now, congratulations. It's a great opportunity for us. The company is so glad to have you in the role, and we're really excited internally. But can you talk a little bit too about why dealerships should care and what makes it matter for them?

CW: There's a couple of reasons. We've been going down this path of improving how we do business with our customers and removing some of the friction and that existing customers buying things from us and just having a business relationship with us. And the numbers tell us that it's been working. We're retaining more customers. We're acquiring more customers. So the things that we're doing are the right things to be doing. And I think Tommy saw that and thought, you know what? We need to do more of those kinds of things, and I think our customers have seen it. So the message that this sends is that, hey, Reynolds is really committed. If the person that they've asked to help improve the relationships they have with the customer has moved up to the role of president, then they must really be taking this seriously. So I think it's a little bit about a proof point of what we've been doing. I also think it tells customers that they really are laser-focused on us as customers, and I think we need to be laser-focused on our customers in every way that we possibly can. And I think that looking at the executive team, customers should feel really good about the people that we have making major decisions by any organization and the fact that most of those people have spent, if not most, all of their entire adult life working for this company and or working in the automotive space, we all know it really well. We live it, breathe it and we have a really deep understanding of the way that our customers use our products and interact with us and how we can make that better.

GU:  Yeah, definitely. Chris, one of the things that I've noticed in the short time that you moved into this role is a real clarity on where we're going as a company. Could you share share that with us? Where are we headed in 2022?

CW: Sure. 2022 and beyond, our our focus is going to be expanding our footprint in automotive. And as I talked about at the pit stop for the announcement, that means that we're going to go acquire more customers from our competitors and we're going to keep more of our own customers. So when we talk about expanding our footprint, that's really what we're talking about. And when we do that, we think that it really helps us to give us additional opportunities to sell some of the other amazing products that we have. Whether it's our digital retailing and Retail Anywhere suite of products. Whether it's Advanced Service or docuPAD. Or our eContracting and product booking and rating solutions or Naked Line or KeyTrak. All those things are a bigger market, gives us more opportunities to sell those things to our customers. And I think the other piece would be to be really focused on helping our customers to achieve even higher levels of profitability than they have today.

GU: Those are great overarching goals. Share, if you don't mind, the plan that you have to help us get there and help our customers get there too.

CW: It's really based on three pillars. On the first pillar would be our products, right? And a big part of our products is the Retail Anywhere strategy that we have. And we do believe that we are uniquely positioned to help others to retail anywhere with their consumers. And that means equipping them with the products and services to actually do that, to retail anywhere without sacrificing the control of the sale, or the profitability of the sale, or the accuracy of the sale, and things like Gubagoo play a really, really big part of that. And all the people that came with the Gubagoo transaction to really understand that consumer experience side of things. docuPAD Remote and DEALsign are important pieces of Retail Anywhere and that all fits into the Retail Management System platform, which is the engine that really drives everything. So that would be the product pillar that we're really focused on. The other one would be our customer success. And I talked a lot about helping them to achieve higher levels of profitability, but we're doing other things to help our customers be successful. As an example, Daughters has implemented the customer success services department, which is really an attempt for us to take the the current installation and training processes that we have, merry those up to the sales department a little bit better, so we understand why customers are buying things from us. What are they trying to achieve so we can really focus on those things when we go to onboard that customer? And I think that's going to have a huge impact on dealerships, and we really want to present one Reynolds to customers. It's not just the sales initiative. It's really everybody who touches our customer out there and you have an opportunity to demonstrate how we are different, how we are evolving, how we are laser-focused on a customer's success. And it doesn't matter whether you're a sales rep or whether you're someone on the retail side of things or someone in our support organization or you are in the finance or accounting department that's interacting with the customer. Everybody has the opportunity to show how we're focused on their success. And then lastly would be industry relations. We live in an automotive ecosystem that is really, really large. In fact, it's one of the largest parts of the United States economy that exists. And when you look at our 150 plus year legacy, we have so much intellectual knowledge within the walls of our organization. And I think that we have long been too silent. We have been in the shadows, in the organization, in the industry, and people haven't heard our voice like they like they should. And I think the industry overall would benefit greatly from what a lot of our people have to say, what we're doing, where we think things are going and what others can do to be successful. And so we're doing a lot there. We think about the industry, and we're going to be focused on things like state associations. So the Ohio Auto Automobile Dealers Association, who have a lot of influence on dealers and that state and there's a state association like that in all 50 states. So how can we work with them differently than we do now to expand the contributions we make to what they do to help dealers be successful? And there's lots of organizations like that. So we have hired a director of industry relations. His name is Shawn Liebold, maybe a familiar name to many people who are listening now to this podcast. Shawn was with Reynolds for a number of years and held lots of important positions. And we're fortunate enough to get Shawn back, so he is going to lead the charge in that third pillar just to give us more of a voice in what's going on in the industry.

GU: Yeah, good recap. I can speak for myself and I think I can speak for pretty much everybody else, that we're very excited about the plan going forward and how we're going to really help our customers in ways that we've always strived to, but we're excited about how it's going to go here. So, Chris, what are you just taking a step back? What are you most excited about with your new role? What are you looking forward to the most? What excites you?

CW: What I'm looking forward to most, I really like to connect with our customers, and I really like to understand what we're doing well and areas that we can improve. The excitement that I'm getting from customers when we talk about what we're doing is the opportunity to kind of rediscover Reynolds, like us and our products and some of our people. But we're a new company now and how we are going to do business with our customers and with the industry. So I think the opportunity for our customers and for our prospective customers and maybe customers that left us years ago, the opportunity for all of those segments to rediscover who we are, what we're all about, and what we can do to help them meet the challenges that they're facing today and be more successful than they already are. That's a really exciting time for me.

GU: Yeah, definitely good stuff. All right, Chris, well, hey. Thanks so much for hopping on. I want to be be respectful of your time, but again, congratulations on your promotion, and I think we're all excited about what lies ahead. So thanks again. I'm sure we'll talk soon.

CW: Thank you. Greg, I appreciate what you guys do. Thank you.

GU: Before we hop off, don't forget, you can watch or listen to episodes of Connected on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify Podcasts and make sure to subscribe to every other Wednesday when new episodes are released. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you in two weeks.