The Connected Shop: How to Eliminate Bottlenecks and Grow Your Average Repair Order

One multi-shop operator switched to Tekmetric and doubled monthly revenue in two years. He shared how in a recent Tekmetric and PartsTech webinar.

Auto repair shops are under more pressure than ever. Tighter margins. A technician shortage that isn't going away. Customers who expect speed, transparency, and a frictionless experience every time they walk through your door.

Yet many shops are still running on disconnected systems, manual workarounds, and processes that haven't changed in a decade. The result? Bottlenecks that bleed time, stall revenue, and cap growth — often without the shop owner even realizing it.

This is the problem a recent ShopOwner webinar, sponsored by Tekmetric, tackled head-on. The conversation centered on one deceptively simple idea: the connected shop.

In this article, you'll learn what a connected shop workflow looks like in practice, how one multi-shop operator doubled monthly revenue after switching to Tekmetric, where the most common operational bottlenecks are hiding in your estimating process, and how features like SmartJobs, parts and labor matrices, and good/better/best estimates can raise your average repair order (ARO) — the average dollar amount collected per repair order — without adding headcount.

What a Connected Shop Actually Means

A connected shop isn't just about having software. It's about having the right systems talking to each other — and having your team actually use 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. You can have the technology, but if you're not leveraging it properly, what good is it doing?"

That distinction matters. Technology for its own sake is another bill. Technology deployed with intention — one that connects estimates, parts ordering, inspections, payments, and customer communication into a single workflow — is a growth engine.

Tekmetric is built to be exactly that. With 70-plus integrations, built-in digital vehicle inspections (DVIs — digital inspection forms that capture photos, videos, and findings shared directly with customers), real-time reporting, and a native mobile app for technicians and service advisors, it's designed so every step of the repair order (RO) flows into the next without friction, duplication, or lost data.

One Shop Owner Doubled Monthly Revenue After Switching to Tekmetric

Tim Lanier knows what a revenue ceiling feels like. As president and CEO of Lanier Auto Group — which today operates four rooftops in the northern Atlanta suburbs — he spent years running a single shop that simply could not break through a certain monthly revenue level.

"We were stuck," Lanier said during the webinar. "We had our ways of doing things. A lot of copy-paste out of catalogs into the shop management system."

In March 2020, he made the switch to Tekmetric.

"As soon as we made that change, it opened the door to a lot of new possibilities — some of which we just didn't anticipate." He added: "We probably doubled our sales in about two years once we made the switch."

At the time of switching, Lanier's single rooftop was generating roughly $200,000 per month. Two years later, that number had climbed to approximately $400,000 — a structural shift in what the business was capable of, not just an incremental gain.

What unlocked it? A connected workflow that brought parts ordering, DVIs, payments, accounting, marketing, and inventory into one platform. The glass ceiling, as Phelps framed it, became a paper ceiling. And Lanier's team broke right through it.

The Estimating Bottleneck Is Costing Your Shop More Than You Think

When Phelps asked Lanier to name the single biggest operational bottleneck he's had to overcome, the answer was immediate: the estimating process.

"If you don't come up with systems to streamline things, that person becomes the bottleneck in the shop," Lanier said. "Some tickets can take 30 minutes to an hour to find all the parts and pieces you need for big jobs."

His solution? Get technicians directly involved — and give them the tools to act on that involvement.

"We've empowered the technicians by giving them a computer at their bay and a dual monitor setup so they can go straight into Tekmetric, pull up PartsTech, use diagrams and photos to quickly identify the exact part they need, and put the part on the ticket," he explained.

The result: estimates arrive at the service advisor roughly 90% complete. Advisors clean up grammar, add photos, and present. That's it. No back-and-forth. No shouting across the shop floor.

This is the connected shop in practice. Tekmetric's integration with PartsTech means technicians can search multiple suppliers in one lookup, confirm part specifications, and add items to ROs without leaving the platform. What once took an hour can be compressed into minutes — with fewer errors and fewer return trips.

Pricing Consistency Drives ARO Growth

One of the most overlooked drivers of ARO growth isn't sales technique — it's consistency.

Phelps highlighted this during the webinar: if a customer calls back a week later asking for a brake quote and gets a number $50 different from what they were told before, trust breaks down. Inconsistency in how estimates are built — varying labor rates, different parts markups, or service advisors quoting from memory — costs shops money and customers.

Tekmetric addresses this directly. Parts matrices and labor matrices create a consistent pricing foundation so every estimate reflects the shop's actual margins, regardless of which advisor builds the ticket or when. SmartJobs — Tekmetric's proprietary canned job system that automatically pre-populates parts, labor, and job notes for common services — takes this further by ensuring the right components populate every time, on every RO.

"If you're not using SmartJobs, powered by PartsTech, in Tekmetric, reach out to support, get your SmartJobs set up, and you'll be taking a massive step forward,” Jake Benson, director of strategic accounts at PartsTech, said during the webinar.

How to Present Good, Better, Best Estimates Without Starting From Scratch

Economic uncertainty means customers are making tighter decisions. Giving them options isn't just good customer service — it's good business.

In Tekmetric, shops can build a good/better/best estimate structure without starting from scratch three times. Build the base estimate, duplicate it, add parts or labor for each tier, and text all three options to the customer. A built-in checkbox at the job level keeps declined or unchecked options out of close ratio reporting, so advisors aren't penalized for presenting choices.

The same system works for tires, fluid services, brake packages, or any job where tiered pricing makes sense. Shops that present options consistently report higher approval rates and stronger customer relationships — because customers feel informed rather than pressured.

Tekmetric Is Built to Scale With Your Shop

Lanier's growth from one rooftop to four over the last four years didn't happen by accident. He credits systems and processes — and the ability to replicate them — as the core of that expansion.

"Once you figure out your systems and processes, things begin to click," he said. "It all becomes a lot easier."

Tekmetric is built to scale with that ambition. Whether you're running a single shop or managing multiple rooftops, the platform gives ownership real-time visibility into performance across every location — ARO, technician efficiency, close ratio, and more — without requiring an extra step to pull the data.

The connected shop isn't a future state. For shops like Lanier Auto Group, it's already the standard. The question is whether yours is built the same way.

Watch the full on-demand webinar from Tekmetric and PartsTech — How to Simplify Shop Operations and Increase Your Average Repair Order — and hear directly from shop owners and industry experts on the strategies and tools driving real results in 2026. 

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