Adam Torres and Kristina Harrington discuss the AED Summit.
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Show Notes:
Listen to the Associated Equipment Distributor’s annual summit coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Kristina Harrington, CEO at GenAlpha Technologies, explore GenAlpha Technologies and the Associated Equipment Distributor’s annual summit thanks to the support of our sponsor, Vanguard Captive Management.
About Kristina Harrington
Kris is one of the original Co-Founders of GenAlpha and has been full-time with the company since 2013. Before her time with the company, she worked in leadership roles in sales and aftermarket parts with Enerpac, Caterpillar, and Bucyrus International. Her career has spanned multiple countries, including Canada, Brazil, and Peru. A majority of her work has included working with internal stakeholders, dealers, and customers to deliver business results in aftermarket and original equipment sales.
Her previous role at GenAlpha was as the President and COO, and in that position, she’s helped numerous manufacturers transform their sales operations through the implementation of technology. She’s also been hands-on in establishing and maintaining customer relationships and ensuring they reach their digital goals.
About GenAlpha Technologies
GenAlpha equips manufacturers, distributors, and aftermarket organizations with the digital tools needed to thrive. With deep manufacturing expertise, the team delivers top-tier customer solutions tailored to each client’s unique needs. As former OEM insiders, they have firsthand knowledge of industry challenges and specialize in crafting effective strategies. By seamlessly integrating into client operations, GenAlpha becomes a dedicated partner in driving success.
Committed to elevating every client to peak digital performance, GenAlpha’s comprehensive solution enhances the customer journey, streamlines operations, and maximizes online profitability. With limitless digital opportunities available, GenAlpha empowers businesses to seize them all.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I’m doing another episode in our AED Summit 2025 series. And just to let you know, this series is sponsored by Vanguard Captive Management, which helps manufacturers of all sizes with innovative products.
Captive finance strategies. You can learn more at van cap. com. My guest today is Christina Harrington, and she is the CEO over at gen alpha technologies. Christina, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam, thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. All right, Christina. So I’m excited to get into Gen Alpha Technologies and the work you’re doing there.
And also, I don’t know if we crossed paths at the AED Summit over in Orlando, but you were there. Am I correct? Yes. I was there. Yep. We had a booth. It was our first year in attendance. So it was very exciting. We were happy to be there. Yep. So I’ll tell you, Christina, I’ve been doing this interview series covering different stories behind even the conference, right?
Like business owners, the CEOs, and what, brings people to the conference and really just the industry as a whole, which is super fascinating to me. And since it’s your first year there, I’m curious, what led you to go this year and to have a booth? Yeah, well, we’re actually new Association of equipment distributors members.
So, in 2024 we became members and just a little something about gen alpha is if we are going to become a member of any association and our. World that really means that we’re going to participate. So we’ve been a part of the association of equipment manufacturers. So am for many years, and we just started branching out to our target market now includes distributors as well, because they are starting to sell their parts and equipment online.
So it’s a critical. Target for us and we wanted to join the association to, get more active with its members and attending the summit is just one place to really collaborate and be present with everyone. Yeah. What did you find special about the summit this year as your first time, because having been and not comparing organizations, obviously I’m not doing that, but, you know, just in general, what made it special for you?
Yeah, I think, you know, the thing that made it really special is the mix of the opportunity to speak with different suppliers, OEMs, and distributors, but then also the opportunity, so it had the trade show component, but then it also had the educational component with the educational tracks, and what I really liked about the way that they scheduled everything is that it.
Yeah. Those two weren’t overlapping, so we could, as a provider of technology, we could participate in the education sections alongside our customers and potential clients and learn the same things that they’re learning and. Participate in the challenges, opportunities, threats, that they’re actually facing so that it gives us more knowledge.
And I think when you are so many conferences have that trade show component, which is great. It’s a great networking opportunity. It’s also a great way to show your wares and be able to talk to different people in the industry. But when you get to educate alongside others, I always find that that’s a real helpful component.
I also was able to be a speaker for a session. So I got to be an educator, which is one of my favorite parts of my role is always just teaching teaching why things are important. So the fact that I got to do all of that alongside having that the trade show and demonstrating our solution to people as they came by.
That was what made it really special. And it’s so special that we’re already planning on attending again next year. Amazing. Let’s go further into what you’re doing over at gen alpha technology. So you mentioned a little, but let’s go further. Tell me more about the company, please. Yeah, so, Jen Offa has been in business since 2012.
We have been working with manufacturers helping them, OEMs, the equipment industry. So, if you think about construction equipment, agriculture equipment, heavy duty truck, trailer specialty vehicle type equipment. We’ve been helping manufacturers sell their parts and equipment online to really provide customers and dealers support over that life of the equipment.
So digital commerce is our technology software. Now that distributors and dealers are understanding the need for. Digital solutions as well. We’ve moved into expanding our offering to distributors as well. that’s really what we do is we help them take their data. You know, we integrate to their business systems, often for dealers.
That means a dealer management system that’s running their business. And we become the customer face. So we help them take all of the products that they sell and move that into an e commerce environment so that it becomes a self service, customer portal for their customers to come in and purchase things that they need over the lifetime of that equipment.
It’s really typically on the B2B side more than direct to consumer. It’s often business to business is the need we’re filling. and can you talk a little bit about when a, because obviously other, AED members and other individuals in the industry are going to be listening to this.
And at the end, I’ll give you the opportunity to, leave websites or things like that. So people can connect and follow up. But can you talk a little bit about when a business knows that they’re kind of ready to make this transition online and what, that looks like? When, do people normally come to you?
Well, people normally come to us when their customers are asking for the solution so that there is a growing expectation from customers today that they have a digital option when purchasing. So, if we look at the way people buy today, it’s. not just in a dealership, right? It’s over the phone. It’s over email.
And now growing and which has been growing over years is online. So when, a dealership or a supplier or an OEM realizes that they’re either losing market share to a competitor who has moved online, Or the demand from their customers to make it easier for them to do business with them, essentially, right?
By being able to access information, 24, 7, 365, that’s when people come to us. And, you know, I like to say that. A digital commerce solution like ours from Gen Alpha, and the name of our product is Equip360, but it’s so much more than a place where transactions take place. So, absolutely, customers will come there to find the right part for their equipment.
they’ll get their price. They’re going to get product availability. They’re going to place orders, but a lot of what they’re also going to get is, Copies of invoices. They’re going to be able to track their orders and get order status. They’re going to be able to reorder things that they’ve purchased in the past.
They’re going to get helpful product information that include, can include videos and work instructions. They might be able to get reports or other things related to that piece of equipment over its lifetime. So if it went into service last month, and there’s a service report related to it. They can safely go into the digital commerce environment and access all of this information in addition to purchasing product online.
So that becomes the real benefit to customers is it’s so much more than just the transaction. Yeah, I can see that. And over the, you think about life cycle of a customer or long term value, like you’re just adding way more value to the relationship too. So if it’s one enables this and another in the competition doesn’t or vice versa.
You’re kind of behind. You kind of want to be up to date on this. It sounds like. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And, customers come in all kinds. there’s been a lot of talk about the generational differences, in equipment support today. We still have a lot of baby boomer generation people working.
And then you have the, Gen X, the millennials and Gen Z as well. So, yeah. When you look at all the different generations that are in the workforce today and the ways in which they want to do business with an organization, it’s really critical that companies meet the needs of all of these different buyer types.
And that’s really where we’re coming in and we’re assisting. We, like to believe that these organizations have to have a holistic sales strategy that attends to all of these things in e commerce is just one portion. Wonderful. Well, Christina, so, you know, post conference, we’re recording this in February.
We got it. We got a lot of year ahead of us. I mean, what, are some of the priorities for the organization but for gen alpha technologies going forward? Yeah. So after we came out of the show, we certainly want to make sure that we continue to communicate with the new people that we met and we talked to something I, Forgot to share with you, Adam, is that while I was speaking to an audience, there were about 52 people in the room during my educational session. And I yeah, and it was great. It was very well attended. So it’s an engaged audience of people that want to learn. That’s amazing. Yeah. Exactly. And I asked the question, how many of you have an e commerce site today?
And only 5 percent of the hands went up. So what that tells me is that there’s, a need here. And education is something that’s really important to this group of people. They still need to understand why their business needs to move in this direction. But more importantly, how do they move in this direction?
And that’s where we’re here to help. So over the next 12 months as we lead up to next year’s summit, we’re going to continue engaging with the people that we met and looking for opportunities within a D to continue the discussion and continue educating customers to help them move in this direction.
So our hope is to continue talking to members and and really be a great resource for them. Amazing. Christina if somebody’s listening to this or watching this and they want to follow up and learn more about and connect with your team over at Gen Alpha Technologies, how do they do that? All right.
Thanks for asking Adam. They can visit genalpha. com. That’s G E N A L P H A dot com. That’s our website. We have a lot of resources on our website of So, if you are looking for educational information and just want to understand more on how you can move in this area, we’ve got a lot of things out there.
Also we’re very active on LinkedIn. We have a Gen Alpha LinkedIn page, so you please follow us. We share a lot of our resources there as well. And I’m personally active, so connect with me, Christina Harrington. I would love that. Perfect. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the listeners, just to remind you that this AED Summit Series is sponsored by Vanguard Captive Management, which enables manufacturers of all sizes to harness the power of innovative captive finance to achieve market success. You can learn more at vancapp. com. And if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, Be sure to hit that follow or subscribe button.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Christina, thanks so much for coming and I’ll see you next year at the AED summit.
Appreciate you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you guys, Adam.