No items found.

How a Cloud-Based Shop Management System Will Help Grow Your Business

|

May 3, 2024

|

Read time: 3 min

You’re looking for the right tool for your shop: something that can manage your shop's workflow efficiently, free you up to spend your time on important shop decisions, and grow your bottom line.

How do you know if a system is designed to grow your business? At the very least, it must measure your business. If a shop management system cannot accurately measure shop performance, it can’t tell you whether or not using that system has improved your business.

Tracking Your Shops Performance

Part of the benefit of using a cloud-based shop management system is the huge level of data collected. But more importantly, the power is in using that data to see how your shop is doing. Any solid shop management system should at least measure:

  • Average Repair Order
  • Car Count
  • Close Ratio
  • Total Gross Sales
  • Total Gross Profits

However, a great shop management system will show you much more, and present the information in a way that is easy to view, analyze, and understand.

With Tekmetric’s real-time Reports, you can track key performance indicators, including:

  • Profits on parts and labor, so you know how to protect and increase margins as needed
  • All Declined Jobs, so you can run sales and marketing campaigns to re-engage customers and close more work
  • Lifetime Visits, Lifetime Spend, Lifetime Profit, Lifetime ARO, and Lifetime Close Ratio, so your service advisors can cater to the needs and tendencies of every customer
  • Customer Close Ratio broken down by service advisor, so you can analyze individual service advisor performance and coach your team as needed
  • Sold Work by each individual technician, and Technician Efficiency both individually and as a team, so you can coach technicians on inspections or other aspects of the job if needed
  • Customer leads broken down by marketing channels, so you know where to invest your marketing dollars.
  • Customer leads broken down by source, so you know precisely how customers heard about your shop
  • Total amount in discounts given across Parts, Labor, Sublets, Fees, or Fixed Discounts on ROs, for a clearer idea into how discounts impact shop performance and to cap discounts to protect your profits

A system that improves life for you, your team, and your customers will already lead to new growth for your auto repair shop. Real-time reports open up even more overlooked opportunities for growing shop performance.

Find a Shop Management System that Scales as Your BUsiness Grows

The decision to upgrade your shop management is a positive indicator that your shop is poised for growth in the near future. 

And a cloud-based shop management system will help your team create the right foundation to build off of.

With Tekmetric, you can: 

  • Add new users without burdensome costs. Add service advisors, technicians, and other team members—such as a service manager or a parts foreman—to the system without having to do the math on whether or not each new addition is worth the cost
  • Pay a flat rate if you open another shop, too, which is a much more manageable way of paying than trying to figure out your costs for the future based on projected hiring patterns
  • See reports across all your shops in one place with Tekmetric Multi-Shop.

Adding team members to your system and training them to take on different roles and responsibilities should put more money in the bank, not take money o

You work hard to grow your profits. You should be able to keep as much of your payoff as possible!

Shop Management Systems are Always Evolving

Our development team drives toward the constant pursuit of innovation.

Tekmetric never stays static; our system dynamically evolves, keeping shops who use it at the forefront of the auto repair shop industry. We consistently communicate with our users, striving to achieve our max potential.

As you innovate as a shop owner and your team grows, we hope to fuel that growth and support you in your goals and ambitions.

👉 Ready to grow your automotive business? [Book a personalized Tekmetric Demo Here]

FAQ

More articles

Within an auto repair shop, data serves many functions: streamlining day-to-day operations, helping service advisors and tracking a shop’s cash flow. But you can also harness the power of data to plan for the future. In fact, strategically leveraging data can help you determine when it is time to open a new location. Think of it as your roadmap to multi-shop success. Data helps you every step of the way, from optimizing your existing business, to creating a plan for a new shop, to maximizing workflow across all locations.

Looking at the Big Picture: The New Location Roadmap

When you start planning for a new location, your strategy should prioritize the big picture of your business, allowing you to strategically determine the process for opening the next shop. Key metrics and analytics can help you monitor your business performance and plan for both the long- and short-term future. Whether you are expanding for the first time or the tenth, leveraging data can help make the process smooth, strategic and simple. It’s as straightforward as 1… 2…3: 

1. Getting Started: Make Your First Location the Best It Can Be

Before opening a new location, ensure your existing shop is optimized. Your goal is to maximize efficiency and productivity, so you can replicate the process at a new location. Take a good, hard look at your numbers, and be honest with yourself about your business performance. Some key questions to ask include:

  • What are your ARO and car count, and can you increase them?
  • How many repeat customers do you have versus new customers?
  • How effective are your mechanics at completing their work? 
  • Will adding another mechanic or bay be enough to support my current levels of business growth?
  • How frequently are customers approving your full estimate or returning for follow-up work on previously declined jobs?

Once you have determined that your existing business is performing at the highest level possible, you are ready for the next step.

2. Creating a Plan: Determine Criteria for Your New Location 

As you look to add a location, it is important to identify your business needs and the assets you have available. Data from your existing location(s) is key to this step. Not only can you analyze business performance to determine your financial ability to open a new shop, but you can also identify opportunities with new customers to target or niche services to offer.   

For example, if your existing location is overwhelmed with customers seeking same day or next day service, another shop might be the solution. Or, if you are targeting customers in a different area of town, building or buying another location closer to the population you are targeting might draw them in. Here are some questions to ask when determining the criteria for a new location:

  • Have I maximized the efficiency of my existing location(s)?
  • Can I afford to build a brand-new shop, or should I buy an existing business?
  • What is my close rate at my existing location(s)?
  • What demographic am I targeting, and how can I meet their needs with this new location?

3. Setting Up for Success: Use Tekmetric Multi-Shop to Maximize Workflow 

Once you have multiple locations, it is critical that you maximize workflow between all locations. You can compare locations using Tekmetric Multi-Shop to monitor performance, track key metrics and determine each location’s strengths and weaknesses. A good question to ask yourself is: how can I leverage each location’s strengths to support continued business growth? 

First, ensure that you have replicated the optimized processes from your original location(s) at the new shop. You have worked hard to ensure your business was performing at the highest level possible before opening a new location – make sure to keep that momentum moving!

Second, play to the strengths of each location so they support each other. For example, determine which locations are high versus low volume to maximize your technicians’ time at all locations. If one shop is a high-volume location overwhelmed with work, you can leverage a lower volume location by moving some cars there for same-day repairs. Just don’t forget to move the cars back to the original location for the customer’s convenience! 

The idea of multiple auto repair shop locations can seem daunting, but by maximizing your data, you can simplify the process to ensure you are prepared for the next step. First, put all your efforts into running a top-tier business with your existing location(s). Once you are satisfied with your performance, utilize data to establish a clear plan for opening your next location. Finally, use tools like Tekmetric Multi-Shop to maximize workflow and leverage each location’s strengths to support the overall business. This approach will maximize your productivity and efficiency across all your locations, increasing your overall bottom line and keeping customers satisfied. 

Next Level: Using Data to Open a New Auto Shop Location

July 17, 2024

Read time: 3 min

read more

We're happy to announce that our commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction has been recognized! For Spring 2025, G2 has awarded Tekmetric with a range of badges, including Momentum Leader, Best Results, Best Usability, Most Implementable, and Grid Leader.

These awards reflect our customers' experiences and trust in Tekmetric, highlighting their role in our success. 

What These Badges Mean

G2 award badges for Tekmetric.
  • Momentum Leader: We're leading the pack, constantly evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of the automotive industry.
  • Best Results & Best Usability: Tekmetric is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, helping you achieve the results you want.
  • Most Implementable:  Change can be scary – That's why we've made it easy to get started and integrate with Tekmetric so you can hit the ground running.
  • Grid Leader: This badge showcases how our customers describe Tekmetric as the go-to solution for auto shop management.

Thank You to Our Customers

We couldn't have done it without our customers! Your feedback and support drive us to continually improve and deliver the best possible shop management experience. We're excited to continue this journey with you and can't wait to see what we accomplish together in the future. We'll continue to innovate, listen to your feedback, and provide the tools you need to run your shop.

Spring Forward with New G2 Badges!

April 2, 2025

Read time: 3 min

read more

“Receipts.” We all know the literal meaning of this term—those pieces of paper or emails/texts a retailer sends you as proof of purchase, in case you want to exchange or return an item down the road.

In a casual sense, “receipts” also mean “proof” in the event of a dispute. For example, if your dog could talk and claimed he definitely did not steal the pizza from the picnic table, you could show him “receipts,” which could be a photo your astonished friend snapped of him while he was dragging the pizza away. Busted!

Ok, but in all seriousness, as a business owner, you interact with receipts in two ways:

  1. You give receipts to your customers once their repair work is finished
  2. You get receipts when you purchase items for your shop (like parts)

Even though receipts exist in practically every industry, there’s a huge difference between the receipts customers get from an auto repair shop versus the receipts they’d get from a restaurant or clothing store.

Look at it this way: you don’t go to a restaurant and get an estimate for how much your food will cost. You see the prices on the menu, order, and then pay at the end. But in the auto repair world, we have to scope out the work with an inspection and estimate. That’s where the shop and the customer come to an understanding of the repair work that will occur, and get a preview of the cost, before any work gets done.

Without a solid inspection and estimate process, there can be a higher risk of misunderstandings and miscommunications, which can diminish customer loyalty and lead to credit card chargebacks. For example, a customer could misunderstand the severity of the need for a repair and decline it when they get their estimate, and leave a negative online review that their car still has issues. Or, a customer could say they don’t want a particular repair, but a service advisor misunderstands them. The repair happens, and the customer is upset when they get the final bill because they’d communicated that they didn’t want the repair.

That’s why estimates and receipts are extra important in our industry—they protect shops and customers. They give your customers peace of mind; they have a record of what repair work they got done on which day, and how much they paid. And in the event of a customer claiming a certain repair didn’t happen on a particular day, you could pull up your copy of the estimate and the receipt and set the record straight. You won’t have to deal with a frustrating back-and-forth process that can stretch out for days.

But beyond literal receipts, there are other elements of safeguarding your business. After all, protecting your business isn’t just about protecting it from financial and legal standpoints, although those are two important areas. You also have to think about things like your team’s productivity, employee management, healthy margins, and more. Auto shop management software is a great core tool that can help you safeguard your shop from multiple angles.

×
Book your free demo with Tekmetric