It's safe to assume you didn't hire your parts team for their keyboarding skills or ability to navigate the nuances between software solutions. You hired them because they skillfully manage parts orders, grow customer relationships, and, obviously, because of their parts expertise. 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:
1. 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