Improve your reconditioning process – Tips for Dealer Principals and General Managers

Do you know the difference between your dealership’s time-to-market and reconditioning time? It may sound weird, but this difference has a lot to do with the active involvement of the General Manager of the dealership. Holding your team accountable to your reconditioning time is a big factor in improving your inventory turn and the bottom line. There is no denying the fact that reconditioning is an integral part of getting a car ready for the frontline. However, it is nothing more than a subset of the time-to-market. There was a time when the General Managers were happy to see the inventory manager, service manager, and UCM going through a spreadsheet for the metrics and accountability. However, now, the Dealer Principal or General Manager has a more direct role to play in time-to-market because of three strategic reasons. It has become much easier for them to remain on top of their metrics without much effort.

• Gross is impacted.
• Exposure to Safety Recall.
• Inventory turns.

The holding cost can be calculated easily and is a real expense that can be managed very easily. Many dealerships may be satisfied assuming that they are doing a good job while their cars are being reconditioned. However, after the automation of their processes, many of these dealerships has found that their time-to-market was nowhere close to their assumption.  The is a difference in terms of gross that can be anything between $200,000 and $800,000. You can read more on how we calculated the number using our Savings Calculator Regardless of whether the dealerships employ a TTM strategy or a Velocity strategy, both these strategies revolve around the same point.  Getting the cars ready for the frontline will always increase the selling days. The Dealer Principal or General Manager can no longer assume that the recall liability is being properly handled. Now, they need a policy that is monitored round the clock. On the basis of the TTM metrics of their dealerships and the recommended best practices, the Dealer Principal or General Manager must be able to set their dealership specific goals. It is needless to mention that everyone becomes more attentive towards his/her individual accountability when the targets are set and monitored by the General Manager. Some steps to make it work:

• Thoroughly examine what the others have done to get inventory on the front line and use time-to-market.
• Map all the processes into a detailed workflow taking your current staff, vendors, physical constraints, resource limitations, and best practices into account.
• This will create a workflow system that is specific to your dealership. This workflow is built around the flexibility and expectation that people, processes, and responsibilities will change with time.
• Ongoing (30 and 60 days) review of training and launch.
• Along with the Recon Advisor  and GM, create Performance Progress Report for 120 days.