Early Years
Ray Marean started his programming career with IBM. He eventually left IBM and started a company that programmed environmental systems for department store chains. In 1994, Ray was approached by his neighbor who was a Komatsu forklift sales person. The neighbor described his problem with creating forklift quotes using the manufacturer’s printed price pages and a legal pad of paper. The process for creating a forklift quote was described as lengthy, tedious and prone to error. The seed was planted and they began to develop a computer program would make the process faster, easier and more accurate. The problem of accuracy would provide the greatest challenge for the development of the software and the solution to this problem became SRA’s most important aspect.
Ray Marean, lead programer at IBM in Palo Alto, CA. Can you tell what year?
The Configurator
The goal was to create the program in such a way that when equipment options were selected, SRA would assure that the choices made would be consistent with the manufacturer’s production and design constraints, and the options being specified would be compatible with the basic chassis configuration and other selected options. From the very beginning, SRA was developed with the concept that we call “intuitive compatibility checking.” No option could be omitted or selected that did not fit the specified chassis and option configuration.
Manufacturer and Dealer Acceptance
The first manufacturer and dealership network to begin using SRA was Komatsu, followed by Hyster, Crown and Raymond. At the time, the entire program fit on one 3.5 floppy drive. During the years 2002 to 2010, Yosemite Software contracted with an ERP software development company to market and distribute SRA on their behalf. SRA would be offered to dealers that were using their dealer business systems.
SRA the Sales Tool
As SRA’s customer base grew, Yosemite Software continued to listen to the needs of the dealers and manufacturers, and as a result, SRA has developed into a complete sales tool with additional features and options that streamline the forklift sales process.
Today
On April 1, 2010, Ray and Yosemite Software took over the support, marketing and distribution of SRA. As of today, SRA has pricing for over 60 product lines and represents over 100 dealers and manufacturers with over 1700 users.
At the outset of the development of SRA, Yosemite Software has worked to meet the needs of the salespeople and dealers that sell material handling equipment, and we continue that 20 year legacy so that you can spend more time selling and less time on administrative tasks.
