How to be productive and organised in a fast-paced Garage
Nathan Fothergill, Autowork Online Sales Manager at MAM Software discusses how a garage can be a chaotic workspace and how Autowork Online can help manage this.
During a busy week, a garage can be a revolving door for vehicles requiring repairs and MOTs. Multiple staff working different jobs, accumulating different paperwork, countless customers have to be continually informed of their job status and how much this will all cost. It's quite easy for this environment to become chaotic, even unmanageable at times.
Autowork Online is the fully-featured, cloud-based garage management package, which includes all the features required for the end-to-end running of your garage or workshop business. Every aspect of the day-to-day running of your business, from estimate to invoice can be managed using the one solution, without the need for additional third-party products.
Nathan Fothergill said ‘At the core of Autowork Online are 3 key foundations: Organisation, efficiency and work recovery. For instance, Autowork Online has an intuitive SMS feature. Removing the need for numerous phone calls with the ability to send many automated procedures.’
He continued ‘A great way to utilise SMS messaging is the deferred work feature. Many garages will quote customers for jobs and if the customer chooses not to purchase, the job is often disregarded or lost among piles of paperwork. Deferred work can store the job for a later date and can be linked to SMS to contact the customer in the future, this is completely automated with enhanced scheduling functionality, freeing up staff and often recovering otherwise lost work.’
It is important to be aware of how your business is running at all times. This is possible with Autowork Online's latest development the KPI Dashboard. Nathan added ‘When the workplace is so busy you just don’t have the time to sit through reports and analyse the data, the KPI dashboard can give you everything you need to know at a glance. This shows up to 6 different key performance indicators from total jobs invoiced to average labour per job. It simplifies and streamlines whilst freeing up your time to work on other jobs.’
An essential accompaniment to Autowork Online is Teamview, MAM Software’s paperless job card and technician’s activity add-on. Nathan advised ‘TeamView could be the answer to reducing the amount of paper around the garage as it moves essential processes online. It's full of features that can maximise productivity including job status updates, an Electronic vehicle health check and a Damage inspection module that stores all vital information you need to know about the job in hand.’
Nathan concludes ‘A company's success relies on taking the right tools to the job. A garage cannot determine how busy it is, but it can take the necessary steps to prepare and manage the chaos. Autowork Online is the right tool to do this.’
