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Tony Kramer: Hi I'm Tony Kramer, your host of the Agriculture Technology Podcast. And I'm sitting down with agriculture, technology and equipment experts to help you enhance your operation for today, tomorrow and into the future. In this episode, I talk with Larry and Jeff about Operations Center PRO Service. With that, let's dive into the show.
Like I said, we are going to be talking about Operations Center PRO Service, a new tool that was recently introduced by John Deere. But before we talk about that, I want to welcome our two guests back to the show, actually. So we were kind of talking about this, or I was reminded, uh, prior to recording here that both of these guests are returned to the show. Coming off of episodes 12 and 15. So we got some guests coming back to the show.
First up, Larry Herman. Larry, welcome back to the show. Why don't you tell us or remind us who you are, what you do with RDO Equipment Co., and kind of how you got to where you are today.
Larry Herman: Appreciate you having us back. My name is Larry Herman, the Telematics Support Manager here at RDO Equipment Co., part of our Connected Support team, coming up on ten years with RDO already. Back then, I was a Telematics Support Specialist. So working with our customers, helping them gain access to Operations Center, at that time, JDLink, learning how they can utilize the tools, the data coming off those machines, what they can do with that.
Today, I'm the manager of that team. We've got specialists scattered across the organization to help our customers and our field teams. My background, a lot of it in telecom. So remote connections to machines is where a lot of that came in. So definitely a passion for that — seeing what we can do. And it's just that evolution of the technology coming off the machines. How do we help keep machines up and running and enable support on our end, how we can do that and how customers can support their own operation?
Tony: It's great to have you back here to talk about some more offerings we have. And our other guest here, Mr. Jeff Wiener, again, a return guest to the show. Jeff, why don't you remind our listeners a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how you got to where you are today?
Jeff Wiener: Awesome. Thanks, Tony. Episode twelve was a long time ago. It seems like, uh, glad to be back on here. Still kind of doing the same thing I did, but I am the Machine Support Manager, so my team, we, uh, we take customer calls to help diagnose and figure out some of their problems or issues they're having with their machines over the phone, try to give them some basic diagnostics. And this includes for John Deere Construction and Forestry Equipment, Premier Industrial Paving Group, and also very connected to the PRO Service piece of this as well. So there's a separate team for the Ag group. But yeah, I was the manager of all of them at one point back when I did the first episode podcast. So glad to be back here and just teach everybody what we do and what PRO Service is, and how our customers can utilize this tool.
Tony: Very unique perspectives. A little different in what you guys do in your day-to-day job. But Operations Center PRO Service seems to be right up your guys' alleys based on what you do and how you connect with these customers. Getting started, let's just talk a little bit about what is Operations Center PRO Service.
Jeff: Operations Center PRO Service is a tool that our customers will be able to utilize within their Operations Center account to be able to further diagnose, enhance what they're doing, look at manuals or repair manuals, technical manuals, operator manuals, component technical manuals, and even the operation and test stuff. And with the new features within PRO Service, they will even be able to program controllers.
So there's a lot more going on with PRO Service than we used to have with Customer Service Advisor. Glad and excited to be able to do this and bring this offering, which Deere started many years ago — back in 1982. Already they were supporting customers with repair manuals and it just evolved into a very robust digital offering that they have today with Operations Center, Equipment Mobile, and moving on to PRO Service. So excited to be part of that and help help our customers any way we can, whether it's on the phone or giving them this tool, and to know how to use this tool.
Tony: Jeff, you bring up a really good point there. You talked about the customer version of Service Advisor. So this now is essentially replacing that tool. Correct?
Jeff: That is correct. As of July 31st or August 1st, uh, we no longer can sell Customer Service Advisor — it is being replaced by PRO Service. Yeah. We'll be able to get a little more offerings, a little more detailed offerings tailored to the customer's need, whether they have a small fleet or a large fleet, or even if they're an independent repair. So we'll be able to do that, that we did not really have the option for before. It was just the one kind of deal before. And now we have a couple different ways of being able to do it, and it all starts with Operations Center.
Tony: That actually leads me right into a question I have for Larry. So Larry, I know you're very heavily involved on the machine telematics side of things. You're very heavily involved with the Operations Center and what it takes to utilize the Operations Center. And to Jeff's point, Operations Center PRO Service, of course, runs through the Operations Center. So what are the first steps into getting into the Operations Center so maybe one day — or today — they could get into Operations Center PRO Service? What are the needs from a customer perspective?
Larry: Going back for customers that remember the old MyJohnDeere, Operations Center has really kind of become that digital hub for all things Deere digital tools. So that really becomes that hub for accessing tools like PRO Service and all the other digital pieces out there.
So for a customer that today doesn't start with anything — just some semantics — but they're going to start with their account. They go to operationscenter.deere.com. There's a sign-in button or a create new account. They create that account. And what they're creating at that point is their individual user account. So they start with that. Users in Deere terminology are going to have an account.
Once that initial user creates their account, they'll be prompted to walk through creating what we call an organization. That organization really is that legal entity that owns the machine. That might be the farm operation, the contractor, the municipality — whoever owns that machine is also going to own the rights to what’s sometimes referred to as the digital twin, right?
So they create that Operations Center organization. From that point, they can add machines themselves if they know their serial numbers. If they work with a dealer, dealers can help facilitate some of those transfers as well. With that, if they give enough permissions for the dealer — customers have total control over that — what dealer or dealers do they want to partner with to have those varying levels of permission, whether it's helping add machines to their Operations Center, adding staff, things like that — that's all customizable by the customer. Customer has total control over that.
Obviously, the more permissions they give to dealers like us, the more we're able to do on their behalf to work with them. So once they've got their organization set up, they can start adding staff members, which are also going to be those users for things like PRO Service, Operations Center, Equipment Mobile, all those tools that Jeff just talked about.
Again, all those users can have varying levels of access. So some would be considered maybe an administrator versus a basic user — having those set up in there. Very easy to do. That administrator just needs to drop in an email address and invite them as a user. That user will take care of the rest.
I know I mentioned adding machines. One of the other pieces that's a little newer with some of these services too is the digital twin, or what Deere would refer to as the admin rights. See that in the Equipment tool. Typically that's mostly associated with what we've considered connected machines, those with the JDLink modem on there. So if the data is coming off the machine, that's where it's going to go.
For applications like PRO Service, we also need to add in machines that may not be connected. Maybe it's some older equipment or some smaller equipment that might not have had a factory-installed modem, and making sure that customer gets those admin rights. Admin rights will also play into licenses. I'll let Jeff dig into license pieces, but that's another important part to make sure that information gets in there.
Again, dealers can help with that. They reach out to their local dealer. In some cases we can help. Again depends on permissions and a whole lot of nuance there. But making sure you've got the right staff in there, that your fleet list is right, you've got the admin rights — really sets you up for that success.
And like I mentioned, Operations Center is really just that hub. So in Operations Center there's a Service dropdown. And when they click on that they'll see a few different options in there. One being Maintenance, one for PRO Service — which that'll route them right through making that purchase. And the other one is Service Overview, which gives them kind of that high-level overview and then links into the actual PRO Service tool if they've purchased that to do into the deeper dive.
Tony: So I think you kind of touched on it, but two questions that I had as you were talking there. One of them — is this for both our Ag and Construction customers, or is this Operations Center just for one or the other?
Larry: For everybody. Ag, Construction, Ag and Turf. Yep.
Tony: So even Ag and the Turf and Utility machines, we can get in here as well. So it kind of covers the entire equipment portfolio that John Deere has to offer.
Larry. Correct. The other thing that's nice about this, Tony, is it's not limited to just machines that are connected with telematics. We can add older machines — taking old 544E Loader — would have to be in the customer's Operations Center to see PRO Service. And now you have a lot more data that you'll be able to see and access because of doing that. So just because a machine does not have telematics does not limit them to PRO Service or adding them in Operations Center.
Tony: My next question as you were talking there, Larry, you had mentioned something about staff members and whatnot. So if I understand that correctly — say I have a service shop and I have three service technicians. Are they able to also get access to this through the Operations Center, or how does that work?
Larry: Yeah, they would just be added as staff members. They'd create their own username, password, and again have access to Operations Center. Again, you can give them varying levels of access. So if it's a service tech, maybe they don't have that full-tilt kind of admin level of access to where they're able to add and remove users, but they can access the tools like PRO Service, some of the other Maintenance tools in Operations Center, even something like Equipment Mobile, where they get those maintenance lists right on that app.
So that is where they would have access to that, as well as have the ability to download the offline version just to get the details on there. But that's an option then for those service technicians as well.
Tony: So it really gives our customers the ability to, in some aspects, service their own equipment. And hopefully Jeff can enlighten us a little bit more on the capabilities or the things we can and cannot do with this tool, but it really ties into the Operations Center, that central hub that John Deere has built out for all of the different product lines — whether it be Ag, Construction, Turf and Utility, or whatever it may be.
On that, we kind of talked about what do we need? We need that Operations Center account. We need that set up properly. And then Larry, you had mentioned licenses and you kind of referred over to Jeff on that. Jeff, why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the license options or what the differences are in being able to purchase Operations Center PRO Service?
Jeff: Sure. We have basically three separate license types:
- One per machine — so more kind of geared towards that smaller fleet. If you've got anywhere from one to basically twenty-five machines, you can have individual machine license.
- When you have a few more machines — the larger fleet — you can do it for the whole organization. And those would include anything that's within Operations Center, any John Deere machine within Operations Center that they'd be able to access PRO Service on.
- The Service Business is more for those independent repair/outside repair shops — that they would be able to access the equipment as well, and they would have to be partnered with the customer if they were going to do remote programming or some other things.
Each one, they all can do basically the same functions within PRO Service. How they get there may be a little bit different, whether it's per machine or per organization. There is a local version that's downloaded to their laptops, and the Business License is the only one that's limited to ten users. The Organization License and the Per Machine License are not limited to the number of people that are on that Operations Center account.
Definitely a lot more flexibility with the PRO Service licenses and how we can add people or how more people can access the information right at their fingertips.
Tony: Yeah, that definitely shows the different solutions we have to offer the different customers of all different sizes. Whether you have just a couple machines within your fleet or you have a large fleet — I think about up here in the Fargo, North Dakota area, you have some of those snow removal companies that might have a fleet of fifty to one hundred units, things like that. Being able to utilize Operations Center PRO Service to service and maintain some of their own equipment.
So definitely a license for all different sizes of operations. Now, once we've got this license, Jeff, why don't you tell us a little bit about the capabilities of this tool. Maybe give us some examples of, you know, how could a customer, if they were interested in this type of a service or diagnostic tool, how could they utilize it on their own equipment?
Jeff: They have access to a lot more stuff. Um, as far as manuals go, they'll have Operator’s Manuals, Maintenance Intervals, be able to view Warranty Status, if there's any Product Improvement Programs (PIPs) on the machine, Diagnostic Trouble Codes, Remote Display Access — they'll be able to access that on some of the stuff that has remote display access. All the Technical Manuals, retrieving, clearing, refreshing codes. Uh, the new and biggest one to me is Software Programming and being able to Remote Software Program now with PRO Service and Operations Center.
Seeing the components and option codes within the equipment itself is pretty crucial for some of the guys. There's just so much more that they'll be able to do — even stuff that we didn't do before. Recordings, tests, and calibrations. Um, all great stuff that we really were very limited before within Customer Service Advisor to be able to do some of those things.
Tony: Some of these items — Larry, I'll come back to you — some of this stuff, you had mentioned it at the beginning when you were kind of explaining some of this with the Operations Center, but you had mentioned things like Equipment Mobile or Operations Center Service Overview. Some of this stuff for no cost we have the capability of, but the Operations Center PRO Service is an additional license on top of that to get more accessibility, more information. Correct?
Larry: Right. Operations Center itself for all that basic functionality, there's no licenses or charges for that. And the mobile apps — there's the Operations Center Mobile and Equipment Mobile, the two main apps there.
Operations Center Mobile is really for your higher-level managers or someone that's overseeing the whole fleet, the whole operation. Equipment Mobile is really for that person that's got their hands on the machine, whether that be an operator or a service technician. Um, queuing up diagnostics — Equipment Mobile can get into Operator’s Manuals, Maintenance, even some Diagnostic Work for the modems and things like that on that machine.
Service Overview gives you a high-level overview of some of that information just natively, right? Even without the PRO Service license — for if there's open PIPs, right? Um, Warranty Information, if you have Maintenance Plans set up in there, even some of the Software Updates, you can see all that.
PRO Service, like Jeff mentioned, really can get into the nitty gritty with some of those enhanced features on that. But a lot of tools just put natively right into Operations Center for customers to use. So again, depending on their operation and how comfortable they are doing some of that, their own repair, for some, they just want to know what's going on. Then they'll engage their local dealer. Uh, and some are fully equipped to do that repair. So we've got different levels of options and service depending on what that customer is capable of.
Tony: So Jeff, you had mentioned something that was new to the Operations Center PRO Service and some of the capabilities that customers have on their own farm or work site or wherever they may be. You had talked about Software Reprogramming. So we know that there's so many different controllers and different things that need software. Tell us a few things that a customer may be able to upgrade or update software on in terms of controllers when utilizing Operations Center PRO Service?
Jeff: Sure. So going back — if Engine Control Unit (ECU) were to go bad, or a Transmission Controller, and we diagnose it — that that's what it was — customer could technically put it in, but it would have to be programmed by the dealership in the past to be able to do that.
Now they can replace that controller themselves and use PRO Service to install that new software to those controllers that may need to be either replaced, or if it's just a simple software update that needs to be done. It could be all the many different controllers we have — you know, with PDAs, DCAs, VCAs, FLCs — there's just a plethora of controllers now on the machines that sometimes the software update is actually a fix to some of the problems that's been happening for many years.
And it's like I say, it's pretty exciting that customers will be able to use that Software Reprogramming or Software Updating to possibly fix their machine.
Tony: So if somebody wanted to learn more about Operations Center PRO Service — the ins and outs, or maybe some pricing information — where can they go? Who can they talk to to learn more about this tool?
Jeff: Most of us at RDO will be able to help them. Um, their Salesperson, they can get in contact with our PRO Service Support Line. We can help out there. We'll help create quotes. We'll ask some questions based off the size of customer is, or the fleet they have and what they're looking for to get out of it. And we can customize that and we can create quotes, give them all the ins and outs so they can make a good decision on how to do that.
Whether it's their Salesperson, Aftermarket Sales Professionals, basically anybody within RDO Equipment Co. will be able to steer them in the right direction to be able to get the support and answers they need.
Tony: Now, before we go here, I just want to ask each of you one last question, and it's going to be the same question for both of you. I assume the answers are going to be similar, but I want to get your guys's take.
A tool like Operations Center PRO Service — in today's day and age, with the electronics, the controllers, customers wanting to do some of this work themselves — what are the major benefits? What does a tool like PRO Service bring to the Ag, Construction, Turf and Utility industries to help our customers? And how do we best support them with tools like this?
Jeff: Reducing downtime, faster turnaround time, getting machines up and running quicker has always been a goal of ours. We obviously want our customers working and being able to get into this tool and do some of those preliminary diagnostics. Maybe it is way over their head, but they can figure it out with tools like this and say, yeah, I definitely need to wait for a technician because I just — I just don't have time to do it or I don't have the right tools or whatever it may be. But they can make that decision quicker because of that.
Everybody knows that time is money and weather doesn't cooperate, and most job sites are fields these days. So it's all an advantage to saving time and input costs, really.
Tony: And Larry, what are your final thoughts on the benefits to Operations Center PRO Service?
Larry: That's a — that's a hard one to follow. But Jeff just did a great job. And I think, you know, Jeff talked earlier about all the different controllers that are on machines, right? In some cases that fix is as simple as pushing out some software, making some other updates. And to Jeff's point, right, it's all about uptime.
So whether it's reactive — in those instances, to me that's a little more reactive — one of the other, I think, really nice features that's in PRO Service that wasn't in the prior versions is what they're calling Machine Health Insights, which on the dealer side, we've heard it called Expert Alerts for a while, which really is where I think Deere leads the charge across the industry as far as predictive analytics and making sure, hey, we think a component's going to fail even before there's any indication on that machine.
So that machine might not have popped any DTCs yet. It might not even be acting up. But Deere, because of the vast amount of data they've got on the back end, knows that the failure is coming. They don't issue those until they have a 95% confidence rate in those.
Before, that was only coming through the dealers for us to communicate to customers. Now those are also in PRO Service. So those very proactive versions versus a reactive in that break-fix. So it's getting back to Jeff's point about making sure we've got maximizing that uptime, minimizing that downtime. If we can catch things when they're still little, nip that bud right out of the gate — that just helps everybody. Keeps them up and running. How can we support them? Just the more information that customers get, the more prepared they are, the more we can help get customers back up and going if they need us to jump in.
Tony: You two said it best. It's reducing that downtime, making sure those customers in all the different industries are continuing to run. They're continuing to get their jobs done and doing it the best they can. And we want to support them in the best way we can. And sometimes it's something simple that a customer could take care of with Operations Center PRO Service themselves. And we support that. We appreciate them being able to do that and continuing to get the job done.
So I want to thank you guys very much for taking the time out of your day to talk to me about Operations Center PRO Service. I know we were talking before the recording — I learned quite a bit here. I wasn't completely knowledgeable on Operations Center PRO Service, but after talking to the two of you, I definitely feel like I have enough knowledge to go out and discuss with a customer.
But yeah, if you're interested in learning more, please reach out to your local RDO Equipment Co. or your local John Deere dealer, and they should be able to help you with Operations Center PRO Service.
So thank you again, Larry and Jeff, for doing this. I greatly appreciate it.
Larry: Thanks for having us, Tony.
Jeff: Thank you very much, Tony.
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Tony Kramer
Tony Kramer is the Product Manager of Planting Technology and a Certified Crop Advisor at RDO Equipment Co. He is also the host of the Agriculture Technology podcast. If you have any questions for Tony or would like to be a guest on the podcast, email agtechpodcast@rdoequipment.com, or connect with him on LinkedIn.
