Shelbourne Motors streamlines its workshop

Shelbourne Motors, a Renault, Nissan and Toyota dealer based in Portadown, have operated in the automotive business for 35 years and are the longest established Toyota dealer in Northern Ireland. They have been an ADP customer for the past seven years and were the first dealership in Northern Ireland to install Autoline revision 8.

Aftersales and Workshop Loading

When opening the Renault franchise in 2003, Shelbournes aim was to focus on aftersales throughout the group. They implemented workshop loading throughout all of their franchises.

Caroline Willis, Managing Director of Shelbourne Motors, comments, "We needed to focus on our after sales to provide maximum absorption. Autoline has enabled us to focus on this. Ensuring the workshop loading screen was beside our workshop controller, tightened our times." Aftersales statistics are constantly displayed on the manager's screens, each manager and department has a daily target and watching the screen gives them accurate information as to how their day is performing.

Workshop Loading allows your workshop controller or service manager to plan the days ahead and allocate the appropriate technician with particular skills. You can view loading, work in progress, completed jobs or uncompleted jobs. The touch screens in Workshop Loading are a great tool, when the service advisor checks a vehicle in, it becomes available for selection on the screen and technicians can clock onto the job immediately. Technicians can move between tasks and complete when appropriate. For ease of use, the screens are all colour coded, this ensures that once your advisor checks the vehicle in, it isn't forgotten about. Once jobs are completed they are displayed in purple, when invoiced they turn green.

Senior management also have screens open to track profit, ensuring that you maintain the right level of GP, where this drops, a quick keystroke will enable you to see where the profit has dropped, it may well be user error, or poor productivity of a certain individual, but this ensures that you are made aware of any problems immediately.

Reports

The reporting function in Autoline was one the most important features of Revision 8 for Shelbourne Motors. Caroline explains, "We use the system extensively, we are always wanting more reports, or changing our current ones. We have reporting dropping into excel for our accounts department ensuring that debtors are kept track of and emailed to management. Budgets have been incorporated, giving accurate comparisons throughout the year and vehicle reports ensure that all is recorded giving us accurate analysis of sales, metal profit, finance, GAP, supagard and accessories."

Accounts

Shelbourne Motors target is to have accounts closed by the 14th of each month. Management accounts with budget comparisons are produced and distributed to our department managers. "There is a good team in ADP, who will endeavour to assist in any way they can. All setup, training and reporting of any problems with particular functions are dealt with efficiently." Caroline comments, "You must think outside the normal parameters when using this system, you must make maximum use of its potential. It is a very powerful tool in the right hands."

A word of advice from Caroline, "Do not scrimp on training, this is essential, I would advise you to get your staff trained on the system and budget for refresher courses in the following months. Ensure that your accounts team get up to speed on the system, a lot of profit or loss can be found in the balance sheet."

"Management of your business is now more paramount than ever, maximising profits and reducing overheads is the way forward," Caroline says, "Dealers need their finger on the pulse. Profits can be enhanced by ensuring all your departments are running at their maximum. ADP offers the management system to analyse this and does it very well."