Service Parts: The Key to Service Growth in 2026 w/ Josh Weiss, Syncron

00:02
John Carroll
Welcome today’s in Service podcast event. My name is John Carroll, I’m the CEO and founder of the Service Council and I’m super excited to welcome Josh Weiss. He’s the CEO of Synchron. We’ll introduce more formally Josh in just a moment, but a quick wave to Josh, our featured guest today. Thank you to Synchron for bringing today’s discussion to our community. I’m also accompanied by my colleague Gerardo Palayo, our Chief Research Officer, who will read and react and maybe share some of the latest research signals that we’re getting from our ongoing Benchmark series. We have a couple of in market surveys and ones that we’re heading and leading into that are really excited and topic relevant. So we want to welcome and encourage you to get involved in the discussion. To all of Those joining on LinkedIn, we see you.

01:07
John Carroll
Hello, welcome. We hope that you engage. Josh has agreed to think on his toes and read and react to any questions comments that come inbound and we’ll try to make sure that we find time today. Today’s discussion is set for somewhere around 30 minutes depending on how deep we go. And without further ado, why don’t I set the table topically speaking? So this topic, service parts, the key to service growth in 2026, I think is becoming a real important and critical part of the story. We reframed the people process technology data storyline last year at the symposium to five Ps carving people out into two segments, philosophy people, and then having process platform, converging data and technology together for interoperability. And lastly, parts service lifecycle management cannot function without the importance and focus on parts. That’s the first thing I want to talk about.

02:07
John Carroll
The second thing is if you step back and you look at what’s happening across industrial and service based businesses right now, there’s something very interesting that’s unfolding and that’s that service parts has been treated and relegated to this operational necessity. Inventory to manage, cost to control, logistics to optimize, suppliers to manage. And now we’re seeing this shift where leading organizations are reframing parts as more of a strategic growth engine. And the data that supports why people are looking are starting to look at it this way is quite revealing. Across industries, aftermarket industries, in particular OEMs and manufacturers. You’ve got to look at what the opportunity is with respect to parts from a profitability perspective.

02:59
John Carroll
McKenzie has found that average EBIT margins for aftermarket are somewhere around 25% and our research actually corresponds similarly to that number and that’s compared to roughly 10% for new equipment. You know, there are a couple of examples of this. So BMW as an automotive manufacturer, somewhere between 10 and 12 points of margin on new products shipped on aftermarket can reach as high as 50 to 65 points of margin. So there’s a tremendous opportunity from a profit perspective. So that’s one point. There’s also this concept of, you know, yes, we’ve got to look at, you know, the efficiency gains. That’s a major theme that we’re really diving into right now, which seems to be a theme that’s lingering since our symposium.

03:46
John Carroll
This topic of process efficiency and so technology and AI and all these things are pointed towards these enabling efficiency gains, but they’re not necessarily the value driver that parts represents. Right? So parts can become a strategic advantage from not only an efficiency and an execution perspective, provisioning the right parts to be there right time so you can avoid, you know, repeat dispatches and second visits and parts shotgunning. But again, the storyline goes that the profit opportunity attached to parts can be quite significant behind that. And so today we’re going to explore this topic. We’re going to dig in with Josh, the CEO of Synchron and how are parts becoming part of this storyline to leverage and transition service to growth in 2026 and beyond. I am so excited to welcome Josh and unpack this topic together.

04:47
John Carroll
Without further ado, Josh, I’ll welcome you to the discussion. And why don’t we start off with just a quick introduction to yourself, a little bit of your background and a little bit about what you’re learning as the incoming CEO. You’re not new anymore, so there’s a lot of learnings that you can share with our audience today so they can get to know Synchron a little better.

05:05
Josh Weiss
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me, John and Gerardo, it’s great to see you again. Just quick background, maybe the Cliff Notes. I have about 20 years experience industrial technology and a big part of that experience and being part of an industrial conglomerate is making hardware and hardware related products. And I can tell you just firsthand, having directly run what we call technical services and support, a combination of field services and remote. It’s a size. It was always been a sizable part of our business representing a lion’s share of revenue. And I have, and I had seen, let’s call it a front row seat on how it evolved over time where yeah, traditionally a lot of it was linking the operational efficiencies. But as we got into service 2.0 initiatives and maybe even 3.0, 4.0.

05:51
Josh Weiss
As were even getting to it became a lot more about linking the customer life cycle and the full customer journey, tying directly to those revenue and value drivers, things like customer loyalty, etc. I think everyone knows some of the statistics like it’s five times less costly to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one in most industries. Right. And so for me that was a great firsthand experience that I’ve had the pleasure of going through directly during my background at a cliff note level. But as you mentioned before, I’m roughly nine months in at Synchronous. I saw a ton of the same opportunities just from my own direct experience and looking at purpose built applications from the ground up.

06:31
Josh Weiss
That focus and aftermarket and a serious, let’s call it, missing piece in the full value chain of most of our customers predominantly being the OEMs in those capabilities, which is what I truly felt that synchron is uniquely differentiated in. And it doesn’t just happen overnight because there’s such a high barrier to entry and complexity in doing this. So built on decades, we have roughly 25 plus years of history in working directly with our customers across the world to build up these capabilities and these specialization in aftermarket.

07:02
John Carroll
That’s outstanding, Josh. Thank you for the introduction and really excited to welcome you today and dig in on this topic and really unravel the critical opportunity that Parts represents. And thank you to you and your organization for our really extensive partnership that’s been quite meaningful to our organization. So thank you. So I mentioned in my opening dialogue here, monologue if you will, this focus on efficiency and how Parts represents the growth lever. You know, one of the things that I keep talking about is some of the concerning signals that I’m hearing around service losing its pathway to the C suite, the boardroom, and becoming more of that cost center orientation and not necessarily that revenue and growth driver. Can you maybe talk a little bit about why 2026 actually is a moment to reframe service as that growth lever?

07:57
John Carroll
Maybe spend a minute or two introducing your viewpoints on that topic first?

08:01
Josh Weiss
Yeah, absolutely. I think some of it also is a symptom of maybe the current climate in many of the end markets for our customer base. And just a lot of different OEMs, whether it’s automotive, heavy equipment manufacturers, et cetera, most of them are projecting and anticipating a slowdown in new equipment sales on the back of a relatively slow past couple years as well. But I think from my point of view that the big idea or mindset is they need to not just look at that in itself, but really think how can they leverage their aftermarkets business to directly drive additional revenue to compensate those shortcomings and those anticipated slowdowns and new equipment sales. And there’s lots of data points behind it too. Like the average life of equipment in most end markets continues to reach all time highs.

08:46
Josh Weiss
I mentioned before the benefits in retaining existing customers versus trying to acquire new customers. That’s even more challenging in a slow ish environment. So I think there’s just a lot of areas that probably they’re going to be shortcoming if they just look at it from an operational lens or a cost center type of mindset and don’t continue on what had been historically a really nice step up for most of them shifting towards that profit center, that revenue driver and across that value chain. In the current climate, but also in the long term, I think these things obviously, let’s say normalize out over time as well, will continue to grow in importance.

09:21
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
Yeah. And if I could jump behind that, as you were describing your viewpoint, Josh, the movie Top Gun came to mind, the latest one, at some point he’s trying to teach them how to be fighter pilots and they play what they call dogfight football. And the whole point of it is you have to play defense and offense at the same time. And, and it feels that in service parts many of the leaders are playing defense on offense. But as a pendulum today I’m afraid of tariffs, I’m afraid of geopolitical risk. Everything that you mentioned and I play defense and then there will come a time to play offense until it’s not anymore. And that’s the wrong way to approach it.

10:01
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
I think we need to get into the point of how do we use it to drive primarily growth and the defense element of it is how to do it responsibly. You, you cannot do it at any cost. But, but in fact many of the levers that service part is able to provide from a defense perspective. It’s about resilience, it’s about reliability, it’s about that availability that makes sense, that doesn’t break the bank. And, and we have to remember that staying with the football analogy, defense can also put points on the scoreboard. So I really like that as an initial setup.

10:41
John Carroll
Yeah. Gerardo and Josh, I concur with your viewpoints. There it’s and not or right. There is a dual focus on both growth and cost preservation and that’s an appropriate focus of next gen service leaders. So I think that’s a really good point you make, Josh. Let’s talk about how many organizations have invested in process improvement and technologies to enable such where are companies missing that connection between operational excellence and actual revenue and margin impact? Can you maybe talk about that a little bit?

11:21
Josh Weiss
Yeah. I love the defensive and offensive analogy and the Top Gun reference as well because I think it flows perfectly into the reality of the day to day challenges that a lot of our customers face. I think like you framed up perfectly, it’s not an either or, it really is and and to do it’s a balancing pendulum that they constantly need to manage in equilibrium across all facets as well. Of course, like I look at the efficiency sides as kind of the must have. You need to be agile in the current climate, you need to be quick. I think the last the pandemic was kind of wave one of agility on a mass scale. Then tariffs are kind of wave two and it definitely has built up resiliency in a lot of our customer basis is that we serve.

12:06
Josh Weiss
We see a lot more proactive measures and also in this kind of, even the last couple weeks, you know, there’s been other waves of tariff headlines grabbing the news. You just see the reactions different because they’re prepared for it this time as well. So I do feel like they have made really good progress in step change specifically for things like parts and parts availability through their value chains. And I feel do, I do feel good about where that’s at now of course efficiency is always a continuous process improvement and they want to get back better and better. But the real value. And like I said from my own direct experience, I real, I kind of did the quick math. I could maybe gain 1% point of margin here, I could defend it here, I could gain profitability here.

12:48
Josh Weiss
But to really drive the needle and to really make a material impact, it really flowed through our revenue top line growth and then that ultimately also flew through our gross margins and our profitability as well. And that’s where unlocking aftermarket as a differentiator, including through parts and parts availability just continues to grow in importance. I mean if you look at customer satisfaction scores, one of the biggest areas that’s predicated on it is just even having the right part at the right place at the right time and typically right around the right cost basis as well. But it’s also just heavily just on availability and availability in itself and I see it as the OEMs and kind of the dealers and others involved in that ecosystem to ensure they have the efficiency side of that equation balanced out.

13:28
Josh Weiss
But they have to meet that must have from a end customer expectation. And that’s typically where I see the linkage has been not nearly as strong, let’s say the connectivity getting down into individual team based KPIs and goals and bonus targets and etc. Which is one of the kind of leading questions I like to ask is like what makes each stakeholder, each different Persona we interact with on our customer basis successful. And when you see it just that, and that in itself, you typically see that mindset drive certain tactical decisions and initiatives and underlying projects which we are trying to advise and influence our customers to think more holistically, to think about those true levers that ultimately add the most material effect to their value and to their overall contributions to the broader organizations that they represent.

14:19
John Carroll
I love the viewpoints. Gerardo, do you have a viewpoint behind there? It looks like you were about to comment. You’re on mute, my friend.

14:28
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
Yeah, see I was so eager to share it that I was like I need to hold myself back, put myself on mute and then so that I don’t interrupt Josh. But I think you really hit a critical point which is looking above and beyond the direct benefits that service parts provides. I asked myself why is it that service parts is not widespread, it’s not just generally seen as that critical engine for strategic growth. And the key metric that tends to be used is the profit margin that you get on sales. And that’s good. And the looking at the numbers right now, 48 of our respondents to last year’s state of service supply chain reported a margin 40 or higher on service parts greater. Great story there. But then how does it relate to the rest of the service organization?

15:22
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
And there’s a lot of hidden revenue that we don’t take into account and that therefore makes it hard for others to care about service parts. Things like your renewal rates with customer, the shape and the profitability of service contracts in general. You talked about customer retention and growth, a big one. One of the trends that we’ve been talking about is getting into this multi vendor setting. So all of these things require service parts to be a core element of the conversation. And, and therefore one of the takeaways, one of the gaps that I see is aligning the way in which we’re measuring the impact of service parts to truly represent those connections. The, the number One example that jumps to mind is what is the impact of missed first and fix because of service parts availability. That should be one of the standards.

16:25
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
And like this, there’s many examples across the service lifecycle.

16:31
Josh Weiss
Yeah, maybe why it’s actually getting more complicated in some regard too tied to the average life of assets continuing to increase. Where I came from in my past experience we made kind of Swiss quality products at the end of the day, we like to call it that, but they didn’t break and they would last for 20, 25 years. And these were high precision pieces of equipment that need to calibrated maintained. But I can tell you technology changes and parts change over that time. So a lot of the critical components will go end of life at a certain point in time, which also just adds to the complexity because the reality is you’re not going to upgrade all your customer bases to the latest and greatest equipment and a lot of these different end markets.

17:11
Josh Weiss
And so you need to really have data to empower the full, call it supply chain effect of even parts availability through the average life of equipment and assets increasing over time. Which just adds another level of dimension of why you have to get it right and get it right the first time in some of these cases.

17:30
John Carroll
Yeah. And we saw, you know, one of the big things we’ve been advocating for is the integration of supply chain into service in a way that is not just leadership structured but also metric structured.

17:47
Josh Weiss
Right.

17:48
John Carroll
So if supply chain is causal in nature to achievement of service operation throughput, then these things need to be integrated in a way where we’re measuring the parts provisioning to triage and diagnosis to how are we enabling the first time fix rates through parts accessibility on time arrivals and all the things that we need. Because to Gerardo’s point, I’m not sure if I’m remembering the data correctly, but I think it was one in three service leaders signaled that greater than 30% of their first time fixed rate misses were caused by parts. I think it was something to that effect.

18:28
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
Yeah.

18:29
John Carroll
So it was quite significant. And so how do we integrate the way that we measure these causal factors that erode our service throughput which impacts cost but impacts margin impacts everything. Right. So fully agree.

18:43
Josh Weiss
I, I kind of cringe every time I, I go upstream in the OEM world and see them doing S and O P based on historical demand planning and historical data without really leveraging the data down at a parts level intelligence sitting in aftermarket. And also to take into account a lot more leading indicators in some of those decision making Processes which goes fully back into their suppliers and contract manufacturers and their full supplier supply chain as well.

19:09
John Carroll
Outstanding. I’m going to take us back to this growth lever storyline for a moment if I could, and then we’ll get back into like some of the supply chain trends like resiliency and other things. So you know this, we talked about the defense posture and then how leaders are turning to the growth mindset. If there is truly the observation that service is becoming relegated and not the pathway to the boardroom is being impacted by this cost orientation and the profit and growth storyline is amiss, how do service parts help restore that narrative and help pave that way to the boardroom in terms of the impact of parts to that growth story? Could you share some of your viewpoints on the growth potential within parts?

19:59
Josh Weiss
Yeah, absolutely. Even at let’s say the macro level, as after market in the current climate grows as a percentage of revenue immediately, I would say that needs to have more visibility into it across the full enterprise at that kind of CXO board level beyond just the historical or let’s say the traditional cost efficiency margin and cost center dynamics on it. So I think that’s even just on the macro level like right away that should increase relevancy because it has more material effects. And in a climate like we’re in right now with a lot of the end market slowdown in new equipment sales, et cetera, that in principle should also continue to grow in importance.

20:39
Josh Weiss
But at a more tactical level to instill, let’s say, confidence and measures behind that, you need to take that down into tangible measurements and tangible growth drivers and value drivers linked holistically. That’s one of the challenges. There’s just so much data for a lot of big OEMs and customers out there. It’s like what really are the metrics that matter the most and how do I have high fidelity confidence in the aftermarket data as it sits through ultimately the end consumers that they service in a cohesive way where they have a single source of truth tying to a tangible KPI or subset of KPIs in a balanced scorecard approach to get there. And so I think that’s kind of step one.

21:16
Josh Weiss
But they have to look at it in the context of maturity curves where they’re at the quality of the data and the silo nature of getting different signals from end markets might be coming in and all the other factors that do into it, which typically it’s I think that goes back to really having a good grasp and view of your current landscape and having those foundational pieces in place linked tangibly back to the growth drivers that they’re meant to represent at a level below than just revenue I mentioned there at the start. I think that’s the macro signal and then this is more the tactical signals you put in place to instill that confidence and emphasis at the CXO level awareness.

21:57
John Carroll
I want to talk about the topic of resilience and I know that this is a passion topic for Gerardo, so maybe we’ll add his viewpoints into the discussion as well. So continues to be a major theme. How do parts and the overarching parts strategy move from just risk mitigation to actually helping companies capture more market and margin. Can you talk a little bit about some of the inhibitors that resilience can help alleviate if that makes sense and maybe we can start Gerardo, welcome you to the discussion. Back to the discussion. I know this is a real passion topic for you.

22:37
Josh Weiss
Yeah sure.

22:38
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
And the first thing to bridge between Josh’s last comment. We just released our results from the KPIs and metrics survey for 2026. In there those leaders who were focused on growth rather than efficiency were three times more likely to care deeply about supply chain metrics. So we are seeing that differentiator but it’s still not at the levels that I would expect. And resiliency is a great example in my view tends to be seen as a defensive measure and as a short term solution as well. The number of articles and times it shows up in the news has dropped significantly since the pandemic. Then it had a height in tariffs and now it’s dropping again.

23:24
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
We care a lot about customers and customer retention, customer growth, that customer experience resiliency becomes a lever for them to trust our supply chain to trust that if something goes bad that there’s going to be a quick solution and that there’s a buffer behind it. So if we’re trying to build those true partnerships and that level of trust in the relationship which is more and more becoming a differentiator for maintaining that business resiliency should be front and center and service parts again plays a massive role in achieving that resiliency in a cost efficient manner.

24:08
Josh Weiss
Yeah, I would fully agree and apologize John, I thought you were queuing in her arter there before, but I definitely have some thoughts as well. Getting back to that defensive versus offensive analogy as well. I think the defensive side is kind of the must have like we’re talking about in the world of tariffs and supply chain disruptions etc. But then the next state, the next question to ask is how can I actually turn that into an offensive play or an offensive strategy? Is there a premium associated to this? If we are more resilient that we have a competitive advantage that we could associate to this.

24:38
Josh Weiss
You know, those are the next stages that I would ask and really work with our customers to understand how can they flip the script to not just be defensive and reactor in area in nature, but flip it to offensive and figure out how they can associate that with getting back to the points of revenue, accelerators or other ways to help make that shift in linkage to the top line ultimately as well.

25:01
John Carroll
I’m gonna.

25:02
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
Please Gerardo, Sorry, just a quick supplement to that because just spoke about the service lifecycle and looking at service parts within this bigger context. It’s the intelligence that you can generate and that you care about from that stage in the lifecycle that you’re in that is going to allow you to do things like margin optimization for example on the service parts that leads to that profitability, the understanding of the install base and therefore what are the strategies from a service parts and a contracting perspective that are going to put you in the most advantageous situation. So that’s where service parts goes back to what is the intelligence that I need and then utilizing that intelligence to accomplish the financial outcomes and the customer experience outcomes that you’re after.

25:56
John Carroll
Let’s I’m going to tell our audience we’re going to go a little bit long here because this is a real meaty conversation and discussion topic and I’m enjoying it. So let’s continue here. We’ll probably go about 10 minutes over. Let’s get into the topic of AI and advanced technology which both there’s excitement and skepticism around what foundational gaps are preventing companies from turning some of the tools into real parts driven growth and all the things that we’re talking about this growth engine that parts represents, well, what’s happening that’s mitigating the impact of some of these tools or perhaps even before realizing the value, maybe even creating challenge in terms of embarking on an AI journey or a technology journey around this part of function of the business.

26:47
Josh Weiss
Yeah, I’ll get this kicked off here. And certainly it’s a dynamic age of AI, an age of machinery, automation and so on that we live in right now. Just in the last couple weeks, you guys have probably seen some of the headlines grabbing news out There and the potential for disruption across many industries. I still like to go back to the age old analogy, garbage in, garbage out though, specifically with aftermarket data, at least in the world that we live in today, AI in itself cannot generate and capture data, specifically data that’s happening in the real world in itself. Right. And so I go back into the real focus. That foundational piece is having high fidelity data. In our case, it’s enriched around aftermarket and specifically parts intelligence to use as the starting point to unlock that through AI capabilities which are rapidly growing.

27:40
Josh Weiss
I do expect that to continue to mature. It’s always kind of the question of where are we at on the different innovation curves and so on. But for me that’s really just drives the re emphasis on having that single source of truth and high fidelity data to begin with to truly unlock AI’s capabilities as it’s defined today. And where I see it going, the other piece I would add to it too. When you talk about things like, what do they call it, Vibe coding and the ability to get into more of that business application intelligence layer. There’s a lot of legacy applications out there, these subsystem applications that have been around for decades, that are used to do warranties, claim scoring as an example, or many different areas from my wish list.

28:21
Josh Weiss
I would like to see a lot of that be one of the areas they focus in on first because that is also a barrier to prevent them from truly unlocking the business application element that I do think AI will help accelerate over time. Maybe that’s a little bit too technical of a response, but I do see it as a barrier as really a lot of these legacy subsystems that are out there and have been for decades to really look at that because that will also enable the ability to generate more data enrichment specifically for parts, and unlock a lot of AI capabilities ultimately at that application level over time.

28:55
John Carroll
Yeah, And I think the realized enterprise value from digital transformation efforts around parts and service lifecycle management, more broadly speaking, there’s been a big inhibitor because parts has been a functional silo not integrated with service operations. And so, you know, the interoperability, the sharing of data, the common language, those are some of the things. So I agree on your garbage in, garbage out comment from the jump there because it’s a real critical part of this and I, I want to stay on this theme for a second. And, and that is so now with leaders with the intention to embark on a, you know, parts journey to make this more strategic and growth leverage where do they start? What are some of the first initial steps that they can take to start to think about the pathway forward as a strategic service optimized organization?

29:55
Josh Weiss
Yeah, we actually, and this question is really timely right now because whilst I mentioned we have a rich history spread across many different industries and customers globally, we did see a growing need for more of a longer term horizon on a tactical level on how we engage with our customers. Concepts like maturity curves, different phases, different foundational building blocks was something that we even went back to the drawing board and said, hey, like where did we start with this customer to where we’re at now? And was there pieces of that puzzle we missed over time? And so I think really ensuring you have that baseline foundation at a not just a system and technology for the technology sake level, but the processes aligned and harmonized across the remit of the project, the program, the initiative and even the enterprise into consideration at the start.

30:43
Josh Weiss
And then the people side of the equation as well. The one trend we are seeing is a lot more global initiatives in nature, tying to some of the resiliency and uncertainty and so on. But where a project might have been within a specific division or a specific region, we’re truly seeing our customer base that are global in nature. Think about these programs now holistically and globally, which means they also need to broaden that remit. But they can’t go just to like a phase two or step two, step three. They need to make sure they have that foundation and that foundation consistently across their enterprise as well.

31:15
John Carroll
I think. You know, please, just a very quick comment as well.

31:19
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
Yeah, I was going to say that what you just mentioned, both of you, is what gives me hope that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Because a lot of the ways in which technology has been used in service supply chain has been to clean up the data, to sort of organize it, create some dashboards. But most of the decision making is not as technology driven as it could. And I’m seeing some early signals, anecdotal conversations, most of that. But where supply chain decisions are leveraging technology in a scalable way, and because of the reasons that you talk about that is how supply chain can become part of the bigger picture, because otherwise it just remains this very manual driven approach that has an impact within its.

32:13
Josh Weiss
Silo, maybe just to jump in there, that translates down into cross functional alignment too, which might be at a foundational level to do it, and things like KPIs, even project delivery teams, we’re seeing a lot more of that. Where historically it might have been run and shared and delivered outside of a single department, maybe with support from IT or other stakeholders. But we’re truly seeing more cross functional teams and that alignment from the get go, which I think ultimately is like one of those critical success factors when you think back and look on past projects, past history, etc. That was often neglected or overlooked and you’re seeing a lot of learnings now to let’s say solve that from the start by that involvement and inclusion Day one.

32:54
John Carroll
Absolutely. The other thing that I would say is the old adage, start with the customer, work your way backwards. Well, who are one of the key constituents that’s closest to the customer? The front line. Right. And so, you know, we did a recent updated publication of an operating methodology we call the technician agnostic platform, which is, you know, what are the desired functions, capabilities and empowerment platform that’s needed to be effective in front of the customer in that moment of truth when and where you are. And the heat map suggested that asset telemetry, asset history and telemetry and machine intelligence, really high on the desired functionality priority list. Inventory visibility, really high. Technician to technician transfer of parts, really high. Right behind it. Parts ordering capabilities. Right.

33:46
John Carroll
So spare parts and inventory planning and the desire to impact that customer experience in that moment of truth, really among the top critical capabilities that the frontline is requesting to support the customer. So I think that’s another critical part of it.

34:04
Josh Weiss
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t, could not talk about an example in mining where uptime is everything in the world of machine systems and telemetry data. I can tell you from their value drivers and parts availability. Specifically uptime directly links to lost productivity and lost revenue, more so than anything on the impact to cost margins, et cetera. It’s all about uptime and uptime 24, 7, 365. And I think that’s just a perfect example of that consumer end customer leveraging telemetry data time back to parts to show the level of emphasis that they think of it as.

34:39
John Carroll
And uptime avoids SLA penalties. But there are some organizations that are further down the maturity path in terms of outcome based commercial models. And so uptime of course becomes even more critical. Talk about what’s going to separate service parts leaders from laggards in 2026 as we round the bend here on the conversation, maybe your viewpoints on, you know, those still stuck in that efficiency only mindset, what is going to separate those that have turned their attention towards growth from those that are still stuck. Maybe you could spend a minute you were talking about that.

35:16
Josh Weiss
Yeah, it’s, it’s almost like a mindset shift of thinking of parts not as inventory or cost or capital committed, but really as a strategic asset. At the end of the day that is income producing in nature over the life of that asset or that life of that part even at a tactical level. And so clearly you have to link it towards resiliency, availability and so on. But that linkage to revenue and that mindset shift of thinking of inventory and parts not just as a cost or a capital element, but as a true income producing asset over the life of the asset, it’s just fundamental for me. And that really gets into that life cycle view, not just transactional view of how parts maybe historically have been thought of in the past.

36:01
Josh Weiss
And then getting into areas like circular economy concepts and leveraging across a lot of the complexity and how can they even leverage and extend that life of that asset and that part in that case. But looking into areas like new concepts they could unlock like reef refurbishing, repurposing. Reverse engineering is a big common term in the aerospace MRO world where they’re disassembling and they’re inspecting every single part at every single phase with well beyond just engine hours and other types of telemetry insights into it to make those decisions. I see a lot of that could really apply into other industries like heavy equipment manufacturers or large scale assets because the life of those assets is reaching close to parallel equilibriums, if you will.

36:42
Josh Weiss
And so I do think there’s that, there’s that piece right there that they can really unlock right away, starting with the mindset shift and then taking that down into an operational and more tactical level.

36:52
John Carroll
That’s a really cool point you make there on the reverse engineering. I love that. Gerardo, do you have any supplemental views?

36:58
Gerardo Pelayo Rubio
So hard to follow that I think Josh really nailed it, but I’ll wrap up with a warning if I may, which is one of the data points from our KPIs and Metrics survey was that less than one in five service leaders are prioritizing supply chain metrics as a means to get executive influence. That should be a signal that we’re not connecting the storyline that Josh talked about properly because if we did, service parts should be, that leverage should help us get the buy in from different stakeholders across the service landscape. So thinking about how do we accomplish that, how do we turn service parts into a lever from an Executive influence is going to reshape the way in which we measure it, in which we invest on it, and in which we pursue the objectives from it.

37:57
John Carroll
Josh, why don’t I supplement Gerardo’s viewpoints on the cautionary tale with the silver bullet question, right as we leave our audience today with, you know, the, you know, moving ahead and recognizing this opportunity that service parts represents. If there’s just one mindset shift about service parts heading into 26, that what should it be? What are your viewpoints on what leaders should think about or take away from today’s discussion?

38:23
Josh Weiss
Yeah, I think just to summarize basically everything we’ve discussed in that single takeaway, if they do all these things and do it well, it is a competitive advantage for them at the end. And I see it as a competitive advantage in the short term, not just tied to some of the trends like I mentioned before, with shortfalls in new equipment or new asset sales, but also medium long term as the life of these assets, as the differentiators from customer satisfaction, loyalty renewals, all of that continues to grow in importance. And so I truly think, just to summarize it, that if they do this and do it well, it’s a competitive advantage.

38:57
John Carroll
It gives them great viewpoints. And he is Josh Weiss. He is the CEO of Synchron. If you’re looking to learn more about Synchron, you can visit their website. Synchron will also be with us bringing a workshop to our community in Wilmington, Delaware at our host, Agilent Technologies. We’ll be talking and expanding the conversation and dialogue around these same topics. So we encourage you to inquire about the opportunity to join Synchron with us in Wilmington, Delaware. That’s in one week. Actually, that’s the 19th of February, so it’s coming right up on us. But I wanted to thank you, Josh. This was a really great resource for our community and encourage our community to engage with you and your team to learn more. Thank you for joining today’s discussion. It was really deep. Thank you.

39:49
Josh Weiss
Thank you. My pleasure.

39:50
John Carroll
Outstanding, Gerardo, as always. Thank you to our listening audience. We’ll see you on the next one. Thank you for joining us today and spending a little bit more time than we had planned. A great, rich discussion and I hope it was valuable for you. Thank you so much.