Professional Move by McIntosh & Son

The new-look McIntosh & Son Katanning branch with a new administration and showroom area and a computerised parts warehouse that will be a central parts depot for the McIntosh southern group of branches. Part of the spacious administration area includes training facilities for RTO courses, 12 large offices, a parts counter, a board room and customer amenities.

Published in Farm Weekly April 25, 2019

Ken Wilson

Multi-franchise machinery dealership McIntosh & Son will apply to have its Katanning and Wongan Hills branches registered as regional training organisations (RTOs).

The aim is to have a functioning RTO at each branch by next February to accept the company’s 2020 intake of apprentices.

According to McIntosh & Son southern branch manager Devon Gilmour, who last week showed Torque over the Katanning branch’s new parts and administration wing, the move is a statement about the professionalism in the industry to deliver better customer services and retention of staff.

“Our main objective at Katanning is to improve the cost efficiency of our parts centre and provide increased service delivery to our customers,” Devon said.

“But once we started to investigate expansion options, we adopted a long-term strategy because it just wasn’t about having good office facilities.

“It’s a paradigm shift away from the old perception of a machinery dealership to a professional business offering professional services.

“We want our service technicians, apprentices and sales people to have dedicated and tailored training in the products they service.

“This is the reason for registering as an RTO, because we can tailor training to specifically include those products and services that are part of our business.”

If the application is successful, the Katanning RTO will cater to the requirements of the Katanning, Kulin, Albany and Esperance branches while the Wongan Hills RTO will service Wongan Hills, Moora, Merredin and Geraldton branches.

The new administration and parts wing at Katanning includes a specially-designed training room to seat 50. Devon envisages the room will be used for apprenticeship product training, qualified staff training from all departments and customer product training days.

“Instead of sending our service techs and sales people to product training schools in the Eastern States, we can have product specialists come to us,” Devon said.

“It will involve less cost but more importantly less time away from the dealership.

“And we have a quality control of training to ensure it’s relevant to our needs and the needs of our customers.”

The setting up of RTOs within the dealership for inhouse training also sends a statement to people who might be interested in seeking employment.

“There are plenty of career pathways in machinery dealerships,” Devon said.

“And by adopting a more professional approach and signalling job opportunities with in-house training, we believe we put ourselves in a stronger position to attract and retain staff.

“We can offer job security with great working facilities and the opportunity to improve skill sets, in a stable industry.”

Having seen the new wing, which abuts the existing service building, Torque is in no doubt McIntosh & Son is on the right pathway.