MCKINLEY EQUIPMENT CORPORATION
“My entire company is on Salesforce. I can do what the big boys do, but I can do it better because I’m faster.”
McKinley Equipment is built on trust and powered by Salesforce.
“Being the Most Trusted at What We Do” is more than a slogan to McKinley Equipment, it goes to the very heart of its business. From its earliest days, former Marine and founder Bill McKinley built a reputation for being an honest, trustworthy business partner. Today, Bill’s son Mike McKinley embraces those same values as he leads the family-owned company. After his tour of duty during World War II, Bill McKinley moved to Ohio to his uncle’s forklift business. After learning the family trade, Bill moved to California in 1948 to found McKinley Equipment, a distributor of material handling equipment. Since then, the company has grown across the Western United States and spun off a sister company, McKinley Elevator. Today, the two businesses share in the mission of being the most trusted brand in their space. In 2011, when the McKinley companies employed roughly 100 people, CFO Kevin Rusin made the call to adopt Salesforce. By his count, McKinley had nine silos of data and each employee worked inside of his own laptop and email account without much visibility into teammates’ work. “There was no pipeline — it was total blindness,” Rusin said. Rusin wanted a platform into which data could be entered once and shared across the organization. He wanted his employees working collaboratively and efficiently. “At the end of the day, the choice was really easy to make — Salesforce,” he said.
“We’re a service company. Everything we sell has to be installed and maintained to maximize uptime and asset life. Salesforce gives us the ability to manage the process.”
A family business built on trust, service, and Salesforce Platform
Exploring the future of service with the Internet of Things
McKinley Equipment continues to explore new areas of growth, as befits its company legacy. The company is launching a pilot program around the Internet of Things, tying select McKinley-serviced equipment back to ServiceMax. At the end of the day, the people at McKinley Equipment wear a lot of hats, but their business revolves around building and maintaining customer trust through great products and awesome service. “We’re a service company,” Rusin said. “Everything we sell has to be installed and has to be maintained to maximize uptime and asset life. Salesforce gives us the ability to manage the process.”