orn fritters used to draw diners to Sourdough Mining Company, on the banks of Campbell Creek near Midtown Anchorage, until the restaurant closed in 2016. The cost of renovating the building, under the same owner as the neighboring Peanut Farm, was prohibitive.
“I used to jog by it on the trail every day, and I watched it get more run down over time,” says Sean McLaughlin.
The CEO of Alaska Gear Company and the owner of Craig Taylor Equipment saw the potential to add the building to his business holdings. “My first company [in Boston] was housed in a repurposed factory, so I was familiar with this level of renovation,” McLaughlin says.
After two years of work, the space was ready in December for a new tenant—but it’s not a restaurant.
Where once a kitchen cranked out “world famous” hot-buttered corn, McLaughlin’s team is crunching code. The building is now the headquarters of his software development company, Flyntlok.
McLaughlin says, “Flyntlok was growing, and I knew our current location had no options for expansion.” The sight of the vacant Sourdough Mining Company inspired him.
A local fixture for thirty-two years, the restaurant was imbued with an incredible history, signature food, and distinctive décor. McLaughlin wanted the renovation to retain the original character. “When the building shut down, they didn’t touch anything,” he explains. “It was like a museum that was shut down. I saw in it a place that I could add some high-tech flourishes, so it would be a cross between old and new. I kept some of that but put in very modern fixtures, including an updated bathroom, new gym, and locker rooms.”
The revamped space is perfectly suited for Flyntlok and its fifteen employees, who had been working at an office a short distance down Old Seward Highway. About half of them had been working in a garage. At the new office, the company can benefit from having its creative staff in one place. “Everyone is excited,” McLaughlin says.
Besides providing an enhanced work environment, Flyntlok’s new location is important for talent recruitment. Many high-tech startups are repurposing old structures with character to attract a certain type of employee. That was a key impetus for putting a computer company in an ersatz gold mine. “You don’t want a standard office building,” McLaughlin says. “You want something that speaks to the youthful exuberance of entrepreneurs.”
Flyntlok
McLaughlin launched Flyntlok in 2018 to support his other businesses. The goal of a DMS like Flyntlok’s is to offer a single sign-on environment for employees of a dealership like Craig Taylor Equipment to streamline internal and external processes. When implemented properly, the system optimizes operations across various employees, regions, and manufacturers. It also facilitates communication among different departments, including management, marketing, sales, rental, parts clerks, technicians, and accounting.
“We are not just trying to do this,” McLaughlin says. “We are succeeding and will deliver 100 percent ARR [annual recurring revenue] growth this year. We are solving problems for Alaska companies.”
A competitor of Craig Taylor Equipment with offices just around the corner from the old Sourdough Mining Company, Construction Machinery Industrial (CMI), is already a Flyntlok customer.
“CMI was one of the first companies to recognize the potential of Flyntlok as a local software startup squarely focused on what we do as a business,” says CMI CFO Travis Verley. “We knew our old dealer management system was holding us back, but there was not a fundamentally different offering until Flyntlok came along.”
Flyntlok’s SaaS solution allows customers to connect to and access cloud-based applications over the internet instead of downloading software to a desktop PC or business network. With this type of delivery model, the software is centrally hosted, licensed on a subscription basis, and accessible to end users through their web browser.
As a software delivery model, SaaS offers a variety of important benefits for users. Primarily, SaaS is inherently mobile, easily advanced or improved, easily deployed, and easily connected to other “best of breed” software solutions, McLaughlin says.
With McLaughlin’s direct involvement in the equipment industry, it’s not surprising that Flyntlok’s system was designed in coordination with Craig Taylor Equipment’s leading brands: John Deere, Doosan, Stihl, and Bobcat. The company is fully invested in and committed to ensuring that its software helps dealers support sales, part sales, rentals, and service work.
Built on Google’s cloud, Flyntlok’s multi-tenant dealer management platform is a much-needed, comprehensive solution, according to McLaughlin. The front-to-back management software is designed to help equipment dealerships run all aspects of their business model, including point of sale, purchase orders, work orders, rentals, transportation scheduling, fleet planning, and inventory planning. In addition, the software integrates in real-time with QuickBooks Online for general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll.
“There has been a protracted lack of investment in the space for quite some time,” McLaughlin says. “We are filling that hole in the market with one of the only new offerings.”
To complement its DMS product, Flyntlok offers an array of support services. The company provides support to dealerships of all sizes, whether they operate one or twenty locations and have 3 or 300 employees. Flyntlok supports all aspects of equipment dealerships. For example, the company has full point-of-sale support for both equipment and parts sales. Point-of-sale support includes integrated credit card processing and stored credit cards. Flyntlok also supports instant messaging and email customer relationship management (CRM) contact to facilitate order clarifications or to notify them when parts arrive.
Flyntlok
Flyntlok also provides equipment dealer service support, which includes a service system for work orders and warranty claims. From scheduling to billing, the company handles each step. Service managers can monitor the activity to see which technician is clocked into which work order and what their overall dealer backlog is.
Other areas that Flyntlok supports include equipment dealer parts inventory and ordering; equipment rental operations with contracts and check-in and check-out procedures; and logistic support for equipment pick-ups and drop-offs or for multi-location dealer groups.
Regardless of the type of support involved, Flyntlok provides access to a help desk that is integrated into the product. Customers can ask a question wherever they are in the application, or they can share their screen with support to receive more hands-on assistance.
As an innovative software company, Flyntlok is focused on maximizing the efficiency of its DMS product. In October, Flyntlok began offering an advanced CRM capability that allows dealers to manage the full lifecycle of their customers and prospects, from handling incoming leads to quoting, sales, and customer experience follow-ups.
The system for managing customer relationships meshes with Flyntlok’s existing suite of tools. It integrates with customers’ external marketing websites to automate the creation of leads into the DMS. It contains an overview of customer interactions, purchase history, and preferences to enable personalized interactions and tailored services. Communication tools to allow real-time engagement with customers tied directly to existing inventory, parts, and other critical data. And advanced analytics provide actionable insights into customer behavior and native cloud integration.
The new CRM features basically close a gap with old DMS vendors, according to McLaughlin. “CRM was never included, but it should have been,” he says. “We heavily rely on SMS [short message service] for this part of the application.”
As a software company in Alaska, Flyntlok is somewhat of an outlier. But Alaska knows equipment, McLaughlin says, and he is confident in his firm’s ability to become as world famous as Sourdough Mining Company’s korn fritters.
“I just cannot see why a software development culture couldn’t thrive in Alaska,” he says. “We think we can and that we can be competitive.”