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Car service center are under more pressure than ever. Tighter margins. A professional scarcity that isn't going away. Customers who expect speed, openness, and a smooth experience every time they walk through your door. Numerous shops are still running on disconnected systems, manual workarounds, and procedures that haven't changed in a decade.
The conversation centered on one deceptively basic idea: the linked shop. In this post, you'll discover what a connected store workflow looks like in practice, how one multi-shop operator doubled regular monthly revenue after switching to Tekmetric, where the most typical functional traffic jams are hiding in your estimating procedure, and how functions like SmartJobs, parts and labor matrices, and good/better/best price quotes can raise your average repair work order (ARO) the typical dollar quantity gathered per repair order without adding headcount.
It's about having the best systems talking to each other and having your team actually utilize them. John Phelps, director of channel partnerships at Tekmetric, put it plainly: "Just because you have an oven, that doesn't make you a chef.
Innovation deployed with objective one that connects quotes, parts purchasing, evaluations, payments, and client communication into a single workflow is a development engine. Tekmetric is built to be exactly that. With 70-plus combinations, built-in digital automobile assessments (DVIs digital examination types that record photos, videos, and findings shared directly with consumers), real-time reporting, and a native mobile app for professionals and service advisors, it's developed so every action of the repair order (RO) streams into the next without friction, duplication, or lost data.
As president and CEO of Lanier Vehicle Group which today runs 4 rooftops in the northern Atlanta residential areas he spent years running a single store that merely could not break through a specific month-to-month earnings level."We were stuck," Lanier said throughout the webinar. "We had our methods of doing things.
2 years later on, that number had climbed to around $400,000 a structural shift in what the service was capable of, not just an incremental gain. A connected workflow that brought parts ordering, DVIs, payments, accounting, marketing, and inventory into one platform.
When Phelps asked Lanier to name the single greatest operational traffic jam he's had to overcome, the answer was immediate: the estimating process."If you do not develop systems to enhance things, that individual becomes the bottleneck in the shop," Lanier stated. "Some tickets can take thirty minutes to an hour to discover all the parts and pieces you need for big tasks."His option? Get technicians directly included and provide them the tools to act upon that involvement."We've empowered the service technicians by providing them a computer system at their bay and a dual monitor setup so they can go straight into Tekmetric, bring up PartsTech, use diagrams and pictures to rapidly recognize the exact part they require, and put the part on the ticket," he discussed.
No screaming across the shop flooring. This is the connected store in practice. Tekmetric's combination with PartsTech means technicians can search several suppliers in one lookup, verify part specifications, and add products to ROs without leaving the platform.
Among the most overlooked drivers of ARO growth isn't sales technique it's consistency. Phelps highlighted this throughout the webinar: if a consumer calls back a week later on asking for a brake quote and gets a number $50 various from what they were told before, trust breaks down. Inconsistency in how quotes are built differing labor rates, various parts markups, or service advisors pricing quote from memory costs stores money and consumers.
Parts matrices and labor matrices produce a consistent prices structure so every quote reflects the store's actual margins, no matter which advisor develops the ticket or when. SmartJobs Tekmetric's proprietary canned task system that immediately pre-populates parts, labor, and job notes for typical services takes this additional by guaranteeing the best parts populate each time, on every RO."If you're not utilizing SmartJobs, powered by PartsTech, in Tekmetric, connect to support, get your SmartJobs established, and you'll be taking an enormous advance," Jake Benson, director of strategic accounts at PartsTech, said throughout the webinar.
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