How can Aftersales Efficiency improve your Dealerships carbon footprint?
You may think that efficiency in aftersales and your dealership’s carbon footprint don’t have much in common. However, following an insightful day’s training with AutoTrader and The Carbon Literacy Project, I got thinking that there is. I wanted to share some thoughts on how we can support the path to Net Zero and save money.
For me, it all comes down to one key factor: effective energy use.
Lighting and heating your workshops and showroom is an expensive business – even more so now with energy prices rising day on day, it seems. It can cost anywhere from £20- £30 a day, or more for a large workshop to heat that space.
What happens when the doors are open too long, or the space isn’t in use? The heat is gone or wasted, and you have to pay another £30 to heat the area again. Over a year, that number could add up more than anticipated, impacting your overheads and aftersales absorption rates.
Heating and lighting are often a hidden expense until the bill comes in, but you can save more than costs by being more effective in energy utilisation. The other factor is the use of energy that wasn’t necessarily needed – impacting your business’s carbon footprint.
Here are a few questions that I hope will get you thinking.
- Is your workshop empty at some points in the day due to poor resource planning?
- Are you waiting for the next vehicle to enter the workshop but don’t know where the car is or even what job is next?
- Are your technicians spending time walking between teams, getting updates on vehicles and customer approvals when they could be working on the next vehicle?
If the answer to any of these is yes, then you can help yourself and the environment by considering your workshop management and resourcing processes and/or solutions.
With the right tools, you could effectively manage your workshop to have jobs flowing in and out straight after each other. By knowing exactly where the next car is and where it needs to go, speeding up handovers and getting those bay doors shut faster, you can save energy.
Having digital job cards in place makes communication between teams faster and more efficient. You could also shorten your workshop hours, using less energy during the working day. If you organise and streamline your workshop processes, you could see as many customers as before but reduce workshop opening times by 1-2 hours a day.
That may not sound much, but over a year or across larger groups, that reduction in overhead costs from energy use could make the difference to your aftersales absorption rate, not to mention the saved energy and reduction in your carbon footprint.
None of this is new thinking, Amazon. They know a thing or two about warehousing and the value of enhanced efficiency when those huge bay doors swing open. They provide a role model for cost-saving and environmental opportunities. It is very significant.
If you are reading this and you’re thinking, why would I close early when I could get more customers into the workshop in that saved time? The answer is we agree! If you can fill the workshop all day, fantastic – do it; that is time and energy well spent as it’s productive.
If you think your dealership could make savings in energy and become more efficient and want to explore your options, why not speak to us to find out more about our REALaftersales range, including Workshop Management and full digital job cards.
Visit our website to find out more and request a free demonstration.
