Adapted from the article by Bob Clements, “Time to See How Your Business Measures Up“

As we move into a new season, it’s a perfect time to assess what changes you are going to make in your dealership and how those actions will impact your bottom line at the end of the new year. While this article by Bob Clements was published two years ago, the techniques still apply.

An area of the dealership that deserves special focus is that of role of the service manager or service writer. With the service manager/service writer there are two key measurements to performance: recovery rate (total billable hours per day/total tech hours purchased per day) and segments/value per work order.

Let’s take a look at how we can apply Bob’s techniques to increase your service recovery rate using a dealership management system.

• Increase Recovery Rate with Better Technician Efficiency
  Recovery rate measures how good your manager is at turning the hours you are buying into billable hours. If you have two techs you are paying 8 hours a day and the techs are each billing out 5 hours a day, the recovery rate for your service department would be 62.5% (10/16 hours). Your goal is to be at least at 90%. Use the system’s service clock to track 100% of your technician’s billable time. Techs log onto their assigned work orders to effectively manage their time on each order.

• Use Work Order Segments to Increase Work Order Value
  Create segments on your work orders to represent a repair on the equipment being serviced by the tech. For example, if a mower needs both the carburetor cleaned and a new deck belt installed, create a segment on the work order for each with separate billable time assigned. You will find your ratio by dividing the total number of segments for a given period of time by the total number of work orders.

• Use Flat Rates and Standard Job Codes to Increase the Value of Each Work Order Segment
  Use manufacturer job codes and set flat rates to increase the value of each work order segment by 25% or more. The more you flat rate, the more value each segment has and the more money you put toward the bottom line.

• Beef up Segments by Up-selling Additional Services or Parts
  In the ASPEN system, using Standard Job Codes can increase your service charges by automatically populating the work order with associated parts and other miscellaneous additional charges along with the flat-rate labor charges.

Read the original story by Bob Clements.