Reporting is essential for understanding what your ROI is, right? So why then are we wasting several hours of your manager's time creating reports (using excel) in the service lane? More often than not, the reason managers are creating their own reports is mainly due to their not knowing how to pull the correct report. Albeit, there are multiple vendors the dealer works with daily. However, there is a way of collectively aggregating all of the data using the vendor's platform.

Many, if not all, vendors have substantial reporting options available within their platforms. And I understand that there is such a thing called analysis paralysis. But, it is best to review your essential vendors - i.e., marketing, appointments, email collection, and compile all of the "performance" reports into one cohesive report. In doing so, it allows you to better understand how the vendors and services interrelate in so far as how they work together. For example, in the service lane, a dealer wants to better understand how many appointments are being booked online. To then reviewing how many of those appointments came in, and what their average spend per customer pay RO was. 

Who Keeps Track of Appointments On the Excel Sheet? 

If you are using a manual report - often having human errors - then you are not getting the whole picture. Whereas if you are analyzing web traffic, conversion, appointments, and show rate - vs. the average dollar per RO for both warranty and customer pay, you are able to make a much more sound decision. A decision that can have a profound impact on overall sales in the lane - while you might already keep track of this using excel. I do recommend working with your vendors! In fact, when is the last time you called your vendor's account manager asking them to come in or give an update? 

Do you still use Excel? How do you manage the monthly reporting? 

As mentioned above, it is hard enough to compile all of the reporting into an excel sheet, let alone being consistent at it! One day off, or a day where your team is to busy to do the report, the less likely they are to continue with that report. Not to mention, in many cases, we wait to report on items until there is an issue of epic proportions. Yet had your dealer had monthly reporting in place, it would have been much easier to identify the breaking point? In which case, your management team could have potentially resolved the issue(s) at hand! 

How do you manage your reporting for service?