Maximizing Tire Management to Elevate Your Shop’s Business

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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We brought our entire team together in person to kick off the year in Houston, and to say I was anything short of blown away would be an understatement.

We pride ourselves on being a remote-first company and we’ll continue to build our team remotely with the best talent from across the world, but there sure was something special about having everyone in person at the same time, in the same place, uniting around the same goals. 

When you have the opportunity to gather such an amazingly talented group in the same room, you’ll be surprised by what happens from the brainstorming, to the tactical collaboration – and well, all the fun we had together!

And this wasn’t all just about us. Because in the end, we’re here to support all the amazing independent auto repair shops that do great work every day getting cars back on the road.

Tekmetric's Dedication to Customer Obsession

A dozen of our customer shops were gracious enough to host folks across our teams as we spent time with shop owners, advisors, and technicians diving into the next batches of innovation the industry needs us to build into Tekmetric.

Running a repair shop is the background of everything we do. It's that partnership between Tekmetric and the auto repair shops that leverage the platform daily that enables us to build the absolute best tool for the job: running an independent auto repair shop.

As we continue to build Tekmetric, I’m especially keen to hear more than ever from technicians on this front.

At a time when industry continues to fight to keep up with challenges in educating, recruiting, and retaining top-quality techs, we’re taking a more intentional stance on the role a shop management system can play in helping your shop build and support the best team possible. Be sure to look for more from us throughout the year in this area.

We’ve always started anything we do at Tekmetric with a ‘customer obsession’ mindset – and I’m proud to extend this further down to the technician level this year.

As we grow, I’m also noticing how important it is to spend more of my time transferring real-world shop knowledge to every member of our team. In the early days, our Tekmetric office was the upper level of my shop, and I probably took for granted how easy it was for our team to observe the activities going on downstairs.

It's rejuvenating to now bring over 100 of our teammates to shops and immerse ourselves in the challenges our customers are facing. I smile when I see a well-drawn whiteboard with jobs listed out in columns, color-coded and sorted by promise time.

I think back on the early ideas that went into translating age-old management concepts into better versions of what are now standard features in Tekmetric.

I get even more joy when one of our new product managers builds well past my ideas, or I hear one of our onboarding managers asking a shop owner a question that even I’m not sure I would have thought of.

One thing is certain: the opportunity for our team to connect, collaborate, and brainstorm our next steps as a shop management system has ignited our drive for success. 

Driving for Success in 2024

We are growing and maturing in real-time, and the pace of our new thinking and new innovation is mind-blowing.

If you’re a current customer, our doors are always open. Feedback from front-line employees, technicians, service writers, general managers, and of course shop owners, has turned into some of our most powerful features and functionality.

If you want to connect with our team, we welcome you to email us at support@tekmetric.com to set up a time with our product team to discuss ways we can improve, or set up a 1:1 consultation if you need additional support.

And if you haven’t made the switch to Tekmetric yet, what are you waiting for? Book some time with one of our Shop Advisors here to talk through how we might be able to help your shop run better than it ever has.

From our team to yours – thanks for your continued trust and support as we grow Tekmetric. 2024 figures to be a great year for us and for the industry. If there’s anything I can personally do to help your shop measure up to another level, please reach out!

- Sunil Patel, Tekmetric Founder and CEO

Well, there’s an easy way to make sure none of that happens ever again.

Just like how it’s easier than ever to book an appointment with your doctor, or even your barber, in a matter of seconds online -- your auto repair shop can modernize the scheduling process too.

During a recent webinar, Join Kieran O’Brien Co-founder of ShopGenie Co-Founder, and our very own PJ Leslie, Head of Business Development at Tekmetric, offered their insight on how auto repair shops can provide a modern experience for their customers with online scheduling.