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.