Randall MacEwen
Analyst · Roth Capital
Yes. So Steve just joined us earlier this year, and he spent a significant amount of time reenergizing our commercial team, reorganizing the workflow, reorganizing how we approach the markets, looking at our go-to-market strategies. We've added sales resources. We're continuing to add more sales resources. This is all with a view to getting our pipeline broader and qualified faster, so that we have higher probability opportunities that we're closing on quicker. So not just velocity, obviously, on the sales side, but now as we're going to higher volumes including in the Material Handling segment, we're seeing opportunity there to, on the operations side, to increase velocity as well. One thing, I wouldn't mind mentioning Matt, just on that point in terms of looking at Material Handling. We've just signed a long-term agreement with Plug. And as you know, Plug is a critically important customer. It was important during my early days here to visit with Plug and I had an opportunity to meet with Plug's CEO, Andy Marsh, just in my second week here. And one thing I want to comment on and recognize is that Plug is accomplished -- what they've accomplished is really quite, I believe, extraordinary. They've effectively traded a new vertical market, this material handling market where fork and lift trucks are powered by clean hydrogen fuel cells rather than incumbent lead acid batteries. And they've done this by offering an attractive economic value proposition based on productivity, and to quite frankly a very discerning customer base. And they've done this by simplifying the customer experience with their integrated GenKey offering and focusing on strong service and fueling solutions. So I think there's some learning there for us too as we approach the market in terms of simplifying the experience with customers, really focusing, increasing our focus on an attractive economic value proposition. And just to finish out the thought on Plug incidentally, they're seeing a growing order book, and that order book and what they've accomplished with their customers and their systems integration capabilities didn't happen overnight. It took them a significant amount of time to get where they are, but they are now starting to see the fruits of focused and committed game plan. The backup power market is -- we expect to see that type of result in the future as well. As we have a committed and focused game plan, and simplify the customer experience and look for opportunities to articulate the economic value proposition much more crisply. So there are a number of things that Steve's been driving here over the last number of months, and I think that will bear fruit for us in 2015 and going forward.