Breaking point: Examining the biggest threat to Fixed Ops

As tech companies gaze into the future impact of electric vehicles on dealership service departments, the emergence of mobile repair challengers, the potential of the connected car, and the promise of artificial intelligence, a major issue no one is discussing continues to bubble below the surface. 

Hypothesizing about how your business or software fits into the industry's future makes for great conversation over a cup of coffee. However, it does little to solve the biggest need dealership service departments have when it comes to their fixed-ops software, which is this: Service writers want to be assured that, when they click on that "create-a-repair-order" button, all the correct opcodes, labor types, warranty lines, and recall information flows seamlessly into the DMS.

Unfortunately, delving into the DMS to recode and clean up an RO is the expectation for service departments stuck with one of these Frankenstein systems of loosely integrated solutions bolted together and marketed as add-on modules to the DMS. They don’t have the foundation to deliver what’s needed today, much less tomorrow — a point often lost in these look-to-the-future discussions.

Take these online service schedulers. Have you ever wondered why some of these solutions include an override button or a calendar view? The reason is not all schedulers are created equal.

For those that operate on availability alone, it's impossible to account for the possibility that a customer who brings her car in at 2 p.m. might not get it back the same day based on the time needed to complete the repair.

The right scheduler considers multiple variables like work needed and department capacity, whether the main shop, body shop, detail shop, or the one handling express services. That’s how you avoid double-bookings and set the customer up for a great experience. Because a scheduler that’s properly configured, operates within an all-in-one solution, and does what it’s supposed to do shouldn't need an override button or calendar view.

Those look-ahead discussions also overlook the valuable lesson the digital retail space learned when the pandemic exposed the hyper-fragmented state of the dealer ecosystem. And it wasn't just from a data perspective. Workflows across these disparate systems could not account for every potential outcome and step involved in sourcing, managing, marketing, and selling a vehicle.

That's why digital retail, CRM, and DMS providers now talk about how they're unifying the experience through deeper integrations and frictionless workflows, as they realize their solutions in their current state can only account for sub-components of that connected-retail experience.

However, one could argue the need for a single source of truth is even greater in the service department, especially when the conversation turns to the potential of right-time marketing powered by artificial intelligence and the connected car. Because that's all window dressing if you're cleaning up repair orders in the DMS or overriding your appointment scheduler’s settings because it doesn’t do an adequate job of controlling service availability.

All these considerations went into the design of Dealerlogix, an all-in-one service workflow suite that's DMS integrated, works with all OEMs, and that I launched in 2002 behind a team of actual car people. We didn't just hire one or two of them to get their opinion. That allowed us to create a solution from an operator's standpoint — software built on a proven process. 

That foundation translates into a solution that intuitively knows to “automagically” create or update a customer profile in the DMS when a service advisor enters a VIN or name into the system. It also means a one-button, single-view of previously declined services, recalls, and repairs that’s uniform for all advisors, parts personnel, technicians, and managers. It also means a service scheduler that works.  

And by having the right people driving our software, we're able to head off the biggest threat to our industry's future. And that's all those duplicate or triplicate opcodes and labor types many of today's dealerships have created over the years. Folks, there's a lot of junk buried in the DMS that nobody can really figure out. It’s a disaster that awaits the unsuspecting dealership that continues stacking these loosely integrated solutions onto these Frankenstein’s of bad data and disconnected workflows.

Personally, I'm excited about the future. For one, there is plenty of evidence that consumers are ready to embrace it. Our internal data shows that service retention among in-warranty and out-of-warranty customers is 54% and 76% higher, respectively, when offered pick-up and delivery services. Close rates on recommended services are also 40% higher when presented through digital tools, while dollars from digitally approved recommended repairs are 61% higher.

The main reason I’m excited about the future is none of the threats covered here are issues for Dealerlogix — the only single-source solution designed specifically for service departments. That foundation gives us a huge advantage from a functionality, operational, revenue, and expense perspective. Just ask our customers, or see the results for yourself.

Mark Brandon is the founder and CEO of Dealerlogix, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions for dealership service departments. Learn more at dealerlogix.com.