Published on November 1st, 2019 | by Sumit Bhowal

Increase Efficiency and Communication with Shop Management Software

The automobile repair industry is a cut-throat business, the competition are plenty, and customers often want to get the best service but with the least expenses for it. Thus, business owners in this industry have to work doubly hard to find new customers and to make sure that repeat customers do come back for any repairs or job that they want done in the future. The best way to attain this is to make sure that your repair shop provides excellent services, stellar performance on a lean and efficient system. This way, you can be able to invest more on the quality of your services and less on the operational costs of the repair shop. The most effective way to attain this is to have a shop management software integrated into your shop operations.

What is a Shop Management Software?

A shop management software like Bolt On Technology is a software program dedicated to increasing the efficiency of auto repair shops. The shop management software allows you to keep track of customer data, customer work requests, needed parts and materials, repair turnaround time and even the cost of each repair job. This would mean that you can focus on ensuring that customers get the best kind of service from your shop and build customer loyalty in the process, at the same time minimizing costs and mistakes. The shop management software is like having your personal assistant at the automobile repair shop that is able to multitask and yet be able to increase efficiency and communication with your customers and your employees.

How Does Shop Management Software Increase Efficiency?

When something is efficient, it has more to do with being able to accomplish the tasks at hand accurately and within or less than the allotted time it takes to complete it. Shop management software increases efficiency by ensuring that all related tasks from scheduling, assigning workers, sourcing materials, and the costing of each repair job have already been figured out and the workers can focus on actually doing the repairs and doing it in the highest standards. When a repair job is ordered, time spent on processing the request can take time and instead of completing it in a few hours, it takes a day or more just to do the paperwork. With the shop management software, all the documentation, records and paperwork is already addressed by the software and this significantly improves efficiency.

How Does Shop Management Software Improves Communication?

More often than not, when a customer comes in for a car repair job, the issues are not always clear cut, and one problem may lead to another, hence, the repair job may entail more than one procedure or repair. However, the shop cannot just do all of the repairs and bill the customer at once. The shop has to ask permission from the customer to do the repair job needed by their car, if not, then the customer can refuse to pay the additional repairs since they have not given their consent. The shop management software has a program that allows the shop to send out texts, emails and even call the customer to communicate with them every step of the way. Whenever, the shop needs to clarify their preferences, or to get their insurance information and even what color or material they want or the budget they are willing to work with. Having to wait for the customer to get back to the shop with their replies will only delay the work and will not be helpful in improving efficiency. Moreover, the software can also be used to communicate with the other aspects of the shop, from customer service, to purchasing, to suppliers and outsourced jobs and difficult to find parts and equipment.

The Other Benefits of a Shop Management Software

The Bolt On shop management software is specifically designed to work with auto repair shops, its owner, service advisors, technicians and even customers. As such, having the software in your shop would surely result to more advantages than if you had no shop management software at all. Aside from improving efficiency and communication, the software can also keep track of your customers, and the repairs that they have already done to their cars, and the next appointment for them to have their cars checked regularly. This would also mean that you are able to build customer loyalty, and they would be happy to come back to your shop because they know that they will be getting excellent service and communication. Moreover, the software allows the shop to operate on a lean number of staff which means lower operational costs, and thus can lead to increase in profits.

With the shop management software, you will be able to complete repair jobs faster, hence you will be able to work on more cars, which would also mean more cash flow and this will certainly improve profits and increase capital. In the long run, you can benefit more from the shop management software than what it costs in setting it up. Lastly, the software will be able to help you track your sales, expenses and profit margins, it can tell you how many cars that the shop needs to work on in order to make enough profit or to increase it on a daily basis. It would be able to identify the source of expenses that you can work on to minimize as well, the most popular service that customers keep coming back for. This is called strategic advantage that will help you compete with all the other auto repair shops in your area.

How To Get A Shop Management Software?

Bolt On Shop Management Software is the perfect solution to your shop management software needs, it will work seamlessly with your existing network, it can be ran on any device and you can give access to the program to those who needs to work with it like service advisors, technicians and mechanics, and even drivers. Bolt On also offers trainings in the use and integration of the shop software program to your auto repair shop. You can choose from webinars, step-by-step procedures and even go to a Bolt On University.

Tags: communication, efficiency, shop management software

About the Author

Sumit Bhowal An Internet addict and a MASTAN , Also a lazy Freelancer . I don't try to reinvent the wheel I just like to soak things in Steroid's :p Thanks (y)