CCM garage welcomes new technology
CCM garage based in Surrey has welcomed a new garage management system from TechMan, as it looks to embrace technology in its modern workshop.
TechMan’s specialist service offers garage owners, managers, technicians and front-of-house (FOH) staff intuitive garage management tools and features to make life in a busy workshop easier – arguably more crucial than ever to stay competitive and meet the demands of today’s competitive market.
Key features of TechMan include job scheduling, reporting, service assist, a customer portal, purchase orders, Haynes Pro and Euro Car Parts catalogue integrations – and these are regularly updated to reflect customer real-time needs.
Going digital
With the advent of digital mobility, TechMan recognises it is now more important than ever for independent garages and service centres to get on board with technology to streamline processes and efficiency.
Operations Manager at CCM garage, Tina Drayson, hails the provider as something the business couldn’t function without. She comments: “Being digital and embracing new technologies has allowed us as a business to able to track and measure key data, which ensures we are more efficient, productive and as a consequence provide a better customer experience. This has led to growth within the business a better consistency of service across all of our sites.”
Tina adds: “It is our everything. It has all our customer database on board and all the tools for techs and front-of-house (FOH) to carry out their day-to-day activities. We could not function without it.”
Improved customer service
Discussing the benefits of TechMan, Tina says “one of the main benefits to us is that it means we can offer better customer service as a business. It allows our FOH teams to be up to date immediately with any issues that the technicians find on vehicles, as we can see the notes that they have made. This in turns allows us to get authorisation, extra parts etc without the hold up of waiting for the technician to come in and inform them.”
Customer service is also key for TechMan. With new features regularly being rolled out, TechMan works closely with its customers offering advanced training and support programmes to ensure garage businesses can meet their goals through the successful implementation of its garage management system and issues or questions are swiftly corrected or explained to avoid any downtime.
A team of Success Managers are also on hand to ensure all TechMan users understand how to fully exploit the growing list of impressive tools in the application.
“TechMan’s customer service support is excellent. Their response is always quick and if they don’t know the answer or need to find more information, they get back to us ASAP.”
This support extends to making the transition to its garage management system, Tina says: “From a data point of view it was very easy to make the transition to TechMan’s service provider.”
However, Tina points out it was much harder getting staff to make the change, as “people don’t like change, but TechMan came down and did training with everyone, plus they were on hand every day to help with the transition. I lost count of the number of times we called but there was always someone willing to help us out!”
Paperless business
With over 80 percent of TechMan users now operating a paperless workshop, garages have been able to streamline communications with technicians and their customers by providing images and videos of vehicle defects.
Tina continues: “Another key benefit is we are now paperless. TechMan gives us the ability to be able to email estimates, invoices, health checks, easy use, and numerous forms of communication. Plus, we can measure staff efficiency and productivity, load our diaries more efficiently, take online bookings, which reduces the number of calls to FOH. Overall, it has allowed us to look at data and identify where small improvements can be made to produce better productivity, efficiency and therefore turnover.”
The company continually updates its features in response to requests by workshops and the brand’s solutions are specifically developed to make hectic workshop days more manageable by reducing the amount of admin and serving up the right information required – as well as making the job of car maintenance easier for motorists.
Market disruptors
TechMan was born in 2015 from a service centre in Northampton, In Town Automotive, noticing a gap in the market for garages and workshops to have a digital and transparent view of its operations.
Owner, Terry Dorney, and his team built the system from the ground up, using their real-time frustrations and knowledge to identify suitable solutions to assist technicians, thus creating a garage management system that enables garages and workshops to gain a tighter grip on the day-to-day running of the business.
Using In Town Automotive’s workshop as a proving ground, the team were able to identify what features were needed and accurately test them out, whilst simultaneously inviting prospective new clients to view the software in a live environment. It quickly became a hit with independent workshop owners looking for a new way to run and manage their operations.
TechMan’s ethos of listening to the market has allowed the company to be a leader in the industry and has gained significant success over the years. Always quick to produce solutions independent garages and service centres are crying out for, the company always trials new features in a live environment via its own garage.
Today, TechMan has over 8000 automotive professionals across three continents using its garage management system.