Unfortunately, when your parts solutions don’t work together, your team loses time on admin work instead of focusing on parts sales and customer service. A quick example: The average estimate contains 40 lines, but if your systems don’t communicate with each other, it’s 40 lines of manual reentry that could otherwise be handled with one click. That’s just one scenario but demonstrates why it’s best to leverage solutions that make your behind-the-scenes processes smoother.
Here are three benefits to enabling your parts department platforms to work together:
- Efficiency
We’ve all heard “time is money” (many times), right? Despite how often we hear the saying, it’s not as easy to calculate time savings as it is with other types of ROI. But having more time presents its own type of ROI: the ability to get more done. So, when your dealership’s systems work together, it eliminates tasks that slow your team down. This means you can save time, grow your sales, and, most importantly, provide better support for your customers. Products that allow your DMS to communicate with parts department solutions, like collision and mechanical parts management solutions or supply chain and backorder fulfillment tools, add efficiencies to your day by:
- Simply saving the parts team time
- Eliminating the need to verify customer selling prices
- Reducing errors caused by manual order re-entry
- Accuracy
When you eliminate frustrating administrative processes, like manually checking prices & re-entering orders in your DMS, you also improve order accuracy. That’s a bonus and solves two issues: In addition to streamlining your parts operations, connecting systems within your parts department improves the overall quality of the information that you provide to customers. By reducing the error-prone manual tasks through system integration, your parts team can:
- Provide real-time information
- Display accurate inventory
- Develop a reputation for dependability
- Profitability
Efficiency and accuracy gains allow your team to focus on more meaningful tasks, like increasing sales. This is where you see the more expected type of ROI: healthier profits and growth. Solutions that create connections between your systems allow you to put your people in position to leverage their expertise and insights to support customers. When your parts management platforms communicate directly with your DMS system, you can experience a streamlined, accurate process to support your bottom-line by:
- Avoiding pricing mistakes
- Minimizing costly returns
- Improving customer satisfaction
Too many tools, too little time
Your parts team likely uses many systems throughout the day. With so many tools and processes, it’s easy to get bogged down. When the team can zero in on customer-focused work, it benefits your shops & your parts business. This makes it worth your time to find new ways to streamline admin tasks, improve the customer experience, optimize your parts department.
