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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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!
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.
Vehicle inspection checklists guide your technician’s through each aspect of a given inspection so that no problem areas go unaddressed.
Having a set list of points to check for each inspection will ensure they remember to look into each item listed. But before your shop gets started on inspections, you have to get down to the nitty-gritty of inspection checklists.
There's no one-size-fits-all vehicle inspection checklist. It's essential to have different inspection checklists depending on the customer's concerns and what prompted them to bring their car to your shop.
One generic inspection checklist is not enough as it may be too broad or too narrow to cover all the necessary areas.
Your shop may have its own variations of inspections depending on the services you provide. For instance, an auto body repair shop may focus on checking for scratches, dents, and cracks, while a general repair shop will mostly inspect the belts, filters, fluids, and everything else under the hood.
So, how many vehicle inspection checklists do you need? As many checklists as there are common reasons for vehicle owners to bring their cars to your shop.
Thought Leadership
April 14, 2023
Whether you’ve worked in the industry for years as a technician or are considering moving into the automotive industry for the first time, owning an auto repair shop can be a very rewarding experience.
In collaboration with PartsTech, we reached out to our customer, Eric Reich, who purchased his auto shop in 2021, to learn about his experience and share it with you.
Before becoming an auto repair shop owner, Eric worked for about ten years in the aerospace MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul) sector and about ten years in the electrical distribution sector. Looking for a change, Eric ultimately jumped into the auto repair industry by purchasing Bennet’s Automotive — a six-bay shop that services all domestic and Asian-manufactured vehicles.
For Eric, working at large corporations for 20 years became too predictably bureaucratic. He felt buried by meetings, paperwork, and slow decision-making. “After spending nearly two decades at corporate companies, I was looking for something I could call my own,” said Eric. “My goal was to be an independent business owner and not rely on large corporations whose only goal was to maximize profits at all costs. I found that independence when I purchased Bennett's Automotive, which has been in business since 1991.”
Taking the time to find the right shop
Eric didn’t want just to purchase the first shop for sale that came across his path, “You can’t rush or predetermine anything. If the shop you are evaluating is not a good candidate, then you have to walk away,” said Eric. During his patient search, Eric found that he very much enjoyed the process of evaluating prospective shops and identifying if they were a good potential candidate to achieve his business goals.
A dedicated, expert team
From our conversation with Eric, it is clear that he values his team, which stayed on through the change of ownership when he purchased the shop. “I have been consistently impressed and proud of my team's dedication and technical expertise. During the transition of ownership, they did not allow the uncertainty of the situation to impact the quality of their work,” said Eric. Having the right people in place is critical to a successful shop. “I was so lucky to purchase a shop with such a solid existing team.”
A small team naturally results in staffing issues
Eric credits his team with minimizing the level of operational challenges he faced as a first-time shop owner: “Thankfully, I had a great core team when I took over the shop. Without them, the transition would have been much more difficult. You are only as good as your team.”
Though his team is awesome, he quickly discovered that his most significant operational challenge would be staffing: “As a smaller shop, the risk is in quality manpower. If we have a guy out or are operating a guy short, it adds additional strain to the rest of the team.”
Time is incredibly precious, and everyone wants a piece of it
“As a shop owner, you have to be careful about your time,” says Eric, “and one of the biggest surprises I encountered was the number of unsolicited calls from random companies trying to sell or sign me up for something.”
There is a ton of paperwork.
“I did not realize how much paperwork would come with purchasing and owning a shop,” said Eric, “There is a lot!”
First things first
Before jumping into the deep end of purchasing a shop, Eric recommends you consider the following first:
It’s not just about the physical tools and equipment.
When purchasing an existing shop that already had a lot of the necessary physical tools and equipment, Eric focused on the software he wanted to implement. He encourages shop owners to evaluate the current software and make necessary changes early in their ownership journey.
Choose software that drives efficiency and organization and is user-friendly for employees. Also, select software that enhances customer engagement and provides a positive experience.
Put a big focus on building trust with customers
One of the big reasons Eric wanted to upgrade the shop's software when he purchased it was to have better tools to help build customer trust. “We transitioned to Tekmetric from an older legacy program that made communicating via text/electronically almost impossible. We get consistent customer feedback that they like our new system and communication method with our ability to send inspections, images, videos, estimates, and invoices digitally.”
Purchasing an auto repair shop is a significant step that requires careful planning, honesty about your goals, and a strong understanding of the business's financial and operational aspects.
As Eric's journey demonstrates, having the right team, investing in efficient software, and being prepared for unexpected challenges are crucial for success. If you're considering this path, take the time to evaluate your options thoroughly, seek out the necessary training, and build a solid foundation for your new venture. With dedication and the right approach, owning an auto repair shop can be an incredibly rewarding experience.
Thought Leadership
August 29, 2024
Remember spring and summer of 2020? A lot of us are probably trying to forget and move forward, and we feel you. It was a scary time period for everyone, including the automotive repair industry.
Last April, auto shop owners were wondering, are my customers going to come into the shop? If people stay inside, are they going to drive less? If they drive less, are they still going to come into the shop as frequently? What if other industries are affected, and people have less money for repairs?
We were nervous like everyone else. But anyone who knows Tekmetric knows that we’re committed to driving the auto repair industry forward; we wanted to answer these questions and put Auto Repair Professionals’ minds at ease.
We also wanted to enable shops to not only endure the pandemic but also grow and come out stronger than ever before.
If there’s one thing that makes us feel confident, empowered, and like we know what’s going on, it’s numbers. (Tracking shop performance and providing insights is kind of our thing).
We’ve seen the power of metrics in shops across America, and we know that customers, service advisors, technicians, and the entire auto repair industry benefit when auto shop owners can make informed decisions.
So we launched the TM-500 Index. The TM-500 tracks the Average Repair Order and Car Count of five hundred auto repair shops located across the United States. But data don’t mean squat if it ain’t easy to read. The TM-500 let’s users sort data by time and region so they can quickly explore trends.
Want to know the ARO and Car Count between the months of June and November of 2020? Simply set the time period “by month,” and the TM-500 will generate an easy-to-read graph.
Want to know if shops in midwest states had a higher or lower Car Count than southwest states last summer? Simply set the time period you want to observe, and hover over different regions on a map of the United States to learn how they performed.
Just as the Tekmetric system for auto repair shop management gives shop owners better insights into their shops, the TM-500 gives Auto Repair Professionals better insights into their industry.
But knowing is only half the battle.
The auto repair industry has lagged behind almost every other service industry in how we utilize technology. Almost anyone with a smartphone can order a pizza, sushi, enchiladas, or any other food they want and track it while it’s being delivered to their door.
Meanwhile, someone paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a new transmission still has to go in-person and deal with a half-legible piece of paper that feels greasier than the pizza and enchiladas put together!
But we get it. People are sometimes reluctant to change. For many auto shop owners, however, the COVID-19 pandemic was the “now or never” moment to fully digitize their shops.
In 2020, Tekmetric prioritized the rollout of several features we had been working on to help shops provide their customers with the experience they’ve come to expect in almost every other part of their lives. In April of 2020, we rolled out Text-to-Pay, allowing shops to invoice and collect payment via text message.
In November of 2020, we rolled out True Two-Way Texting to make it easy for service advisors and customers to communicate throughout the entire repair process.
Combined, these two features enabled Tekmetric users to provide a completely touchless experience to their customers without sacrificing the quality of their work or customer service.
Much like in other industries, customers who bring their cars in for repairs appreciate the extra service and transparency of a more enhanced, digitally assisted customer experience.
As we watched many shops grow by using Tekmessage and Tekmerchant, we kept an eye on the overall performance of the TM-500. We were able to see when shops began to bounce back in summer after an early slump, and developed other understandings about where the industry was headed.
Over time, we have added new metrics to the TM-500 such as state-by-state Labor Margin, Parts Margin, Effective Labor Rate, and Car Count to gain a more complete picture of these high-performing shops.
When making conclusions about where the industry is going, we like to be informed by both quantitative and qualitative data.
The numbers give us a factual look at what’s gone up or down, and talking to people in the industry helps us make correlations between how certain behaviors, processes, and principles affect these trends.
Between the data we gathered from the TM-500 and the feedback we were able to gather from talking to auto shop owners, here’s what we have learned.
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