What is performance-based turf machinery purchase like?

By: Miklos Breitner October 9, 2017

For those of you who were involved in performance-based media planning, Turf Machinery Acquisitions‘ (founded by Paul Copsey, a former Group Courses & Regional Course Manager at Crown Golf & American Golf UK) performance-based turf machinery purchase solution will not be a big surprise. The essence of their offer is that if they cannot save money for the golf club in turf machinery purchase then the golf club will pay nothing to them. Their income comes from a percentage of what clubs save.

Their solution is based on that the cost of turf machinery, capital equipment, has been rising faster than golf courses income + golf clubs don’t always have the policies and procedures needed to make the right decision and choice.

turf machinery purchase

What are the turf machinery purchasing challenges?

I asked some of my sources about what are the turf machinery purchasing challenges. I was surprised that most of the answers were not about the money/financing, but about:

To be well-built, but affordable;
Be multi-use equipment or compact equipment;
Reduce the amount of labor required to complete a job;
Efficiency + uptime +hiring competent operators (as another challenge for golf clubs);
They like leasing compact equipment to mitigate out-of-the-pocket costs + they prefer monthly fixed costs with little or no downtime.
3 popular financial solutions were mentioned: cash purchase options vs financed purchase options vs leasing.
They want to know: how can the specific turf machinery product add money to the bottom line.
Service and support network (training + technical) available at the manufacturer.

When we consider buying new turf machinery then don’t stop your evaluation process at the product review & selection + financing steps. You will have to think and evaluate the related future operating and maintenance (O&M) expenses of the desired turf machinery as well. I am telling this because managers tend to give priority to initial cost and schedule considerations.

This is why I would use the Life Cycle Costing evaluation tool. It can help you to compare the various offers by quantifying the long-term outlook (e.g. uptime, dependability, performance, efficiency, maintenance costs, labor costs). It includes future costs of O&M, downtime, production losses, replacement, decommissioning, and incremental operating costs associated with material choice, and initial costs.