Rapid Recon and iPacket, industry leaders in digital reconditioning and digital selling solutions, announced today the Rapid Recon™ Digital Vehicle Portfolio powered by iPacket.®

“The addition of the Digital Vehicle Portfolio to Rapid Recon is the most important selling tool since the inception of Rapid Recon 11 years ago,” said Dennis McGinn, Rapid Recon founder and chief executive officer.

The Digital Vehicle Portfolio helps dealers convert more shoppers to engaged and active sales leads. The tool gives online shoppers detailed, accurate and clickable VIN-specific insight into a dealer’s used car inventory, including:

Recon Summary Reports that educate shoppers on the quality and integrity of the dealer’s vehicles and dealership

The original OEM MSRP Window Sticker

New Car Brochure

Certified Pre-Owned or In-House Warranty Docs

Other value-building documentation

“The iPacket integration with Rapid Recon is a tremendous addition for sales operations. It helps educate vehicle shoppers about the exceptional recon process the dealer uses to build integrity, value and trust in the dealership and the used cars it sells. Integrating Rapid Recon’s solution and data into iPacket for our mutual dealer partners delivers an unmatched digital transparency solution,” said Seve Astorg, iPacket founder and CEO.

Other content provided by the Digital Vehicle Portfolio includes the vehicle history report, warranty options, and the dealership’s “Why Shop Here” marketing messaging.

“Our customers tell us that we build the best reconditioning management software, and they also tell us that iPacket builds the best sales presentation software. It just made sense that we partner up to bring to market the best products dealers want, from the companies they trust,” McGinn said.

Over 1,400 dealerships use iPacket: more than 2,400 use Rapid Recon. The Digital Vehicle Portfolio is supported by Rapid Recon customer support and client performance teams. It is 100% automated, eliminating document scan and upload tasks.

Rapid Recon is the #1 best-selling reconditioning software, enabling automobile dealerships to

maximize used car sales and profitability by improving the speed-to-sale of their used car inventory. www.rapidrecon.com.  iPacket is the #1 provider of digital sales presentation solutions for dealers to convert more shoppers to engaged and active sales leads. www.ipacket.com

by Dennis McGinn, CEO, Rapid Recon

Lots of folks suit up to look the part. But, unless the general manager of your dealership looks the part and plays that role hard, your dealership won’t be great.

And it’s a different GM needed in this unusual market.

Playing to today’s tune requires hands-on GMs who following the metrics your business spins out. And knows them personally and analyzes them deeply. It’s in these metrics that the health and opportunities fundamental to the dealership are found.

In this market, a GM who delegates knowing the numbers isn’t the right GM. Things move too fast to wait for others’ understanding and then reporting.

Like a good controller, the GM protects your assets. About used car inventory, the GM who intimately knows the numbers here and their relationship to your market, the auctions and consumer trends keeps the wheels on and the boat afloat — and the best ones also lead the charge.

A great GM knows what’s going on. He or she is as familiar with the systems you use to manage inventory, reconditioning, pricing, and marketing as anyone else in the store. Moreover, the just described GM understands today’s dynamics – knows that a customer is won or lost in seconds, depending on quickly and accurately you can build value and trust in the car they want to buy.

GMs with these skills know how to sell in this market 150 used cars from an inventory of no more than 60.

Vehicle reconditioning is a complex part of your business.  Recon workflow software has simplified much of the recon process by making it trackable, accountable and readily transparent to identify bottlenecks and delays instantly. But in this unusual market, a GM needs to take an active, responsible role in keeping reconditioning able to meet today’s fast turn, quality recon market.

Is your GM right for this upside-down market? Find out here: www.rapidrecon.com.

By Curtis Sampson, Rapid Recon

As the supply of Grade 4 and 5 used cars continue to dwindle, franchised dealers will increasingly turn to lower condition -grade vehicles to supplement their lots.

“Condition of units [at auction] is trending toward the ‘edgier’ side with damage, dash lights illuminated, and vehicles running on red and yellow lights,” Black Book noted recently.

Can a dealer acquire these cars and still recondition them to make a profit? Yes, if done smartly.

Lower condition report (CR) units are not necessarily older, higher-mileage vehicles. They are two to four-year-old cars in rough condition, presenting at the auction or as lease returns having dents, scratches, bad brakes, torn seats, and other evidence of wear.

Chevrolet dealer and used-car best practices consultant Ed French said he’s now buying 2.5 to 3.5-grade vehicles for his dealership, 500 Automotive Chevrolet Buick GMC in Clinton, Indiana.

“We’re doing so for two reasons. There are fewer bidders on these cars because many dealers don’t know how to recondition them efficiently, and they’re more affordable for us to buy,” French said.

“Even in a white-hot market, value shoppers are still buying. When you can recon lower-grade cars right, they present as mechanically sound and cosmetically nice, not perfect,” French said.  “If  you’re using your recon software data correctly, you’ll get the answer to the big question, ‘Is there any juice in the squeeze left based upon what we would have to spend on it in recon?’”

Because these cars are likely to require more recon work and thus more time to get them sale-ready, it is wise to create a separate recon time-to-line bucket. Thus, these cars’ longer slower recon timed won’t skew the dealer’s typical time to line. Notify staff they won’t be docked for slower time to line results on these units.

Certain times require a paradigm shift. Dealers get in a mindset, driven by customer requests, that a vehicle needs to be near perfect, if not perfect. You’re not restoring used cars, but you are in the business of reconditioning preowned ones. 

For edgier condition units that need a durable recon process, providing bona fide accountability, transparency and communication in every step are essential, for both inside your operations and with outside vendors.  I cannot over emphasize the importance of having in place a robust recon process, the key to creating profitability from lower CR units.

Curtis Sampson is a new business manager for reconditioning software company Rapid Recon. He is a former dealer principal, general manager, and used vehicle director.

PALO ALTO, CA, April 16, 2021 –  Rapid Recon today released its latest update on dealers’ progress toward improving their key reconditioning performance metrics.

From May 2020 through March 2021, users of this speed-to-sale software reduced their Average Days in Recon (ADR) performance by 25% and their Time to Line (T2L) execution by 11%.

“Most revealing in this continued improvement is these dealers made these gains despite the pandemic slowdown and the current remarkable demand for used cars. The data show that these dealers continue to get cars sale-ready fast to meet this record demand,” said Anthony Martinez, Rapid Recon Director of Client Services.

These improvements translate into two days’ faster reconditioning, which at NCM Associates’ $40 per day per car holding cost average means an extra $80 per vehicle in gross margin. Across 100 vehicles, the gain is $8,000.

ADR measures from when recon staff first start work reconditioning a vehicle until all steps are completed from mechanical to photography. T2L is a total count of days, from vehicle acquisition through ADR until the finished car is released as sale- and delivery-ready. The T2L best practice is five to seven days.

ADR speed is increasingly important as online selling stimulates more sales from cars still in recon.

Martinez identified three characteristics exhibited by dealers improving these critical performance metrics:

• A commitment to continuous improvement of processes by which they bring used cars to sale-ready status more quickly.

• A consistent focus on using the software to identify and remove approval delays and create real-time communications and information sharing among crucial fixed and variable operations personnel, from lot tech to dealer principal.

• Aggressive reach-out and interaction with Rapid Recon’s Client Services team, including virtual and onsite performance management recon experts for an in-depth consultation, process and performance reporting and analysis, and shared best practices.

Rapid Recon is the No. 1 best-selling reconditioning software, enabling automobile dealerships to maximize used car sales and profitability by improving speed to sale of their used car inventory. www.rapidrecon.com

By Keith Brice

The time value of money states that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar tomorrow. Fixed Ops managers live in the present. Their focus and sense of urgency are on the current month and, because a portion of their monthly income comes from the gross or net they generate, they want to close as many repair orders as possible.

More hours are turned, and more repair orders are closed when repair decisions are made while the car is racked.

Approval time determines whether the work your team is performing flows smoothly forward or creates snags and delays. Approval time risk can create workflow bottlenecks in a service department, especially where no clearly defined workflow processes are in place.

We see similar delays in the manual reconditioning function, where techs typically submit the inspection and estimate and then remove the vehicle from its stall to wait for the repair approval. They get started on another car and, too often, the cycle repeats.

What works better? Using work items in the automated reconditioning software for estimate approval. Depending on the system, this keeps everything in ONE central record — notes, vehicle images, estimates, safety recall, website photos, and other information and costs. This action alone speeds approvals, as critical information for the decision is immediately at hand.

Lagging approvals are an avoidable frustration for your fixed operations. Delay erodes internal labor efficiency, and, eventually, sales margin and sales opportunities are lost when these vehicles aren’t ready to sell. Consider these facts:

• Costly decision delay is unnecessary — and avoidable. Faster approval time results influence the time to line — the time it takes the shop to get cars from off-transport through reconditioning and ready to sell. More rapid approval decisions will get a vehicle from acquisition to sale-ready — time to line — which means a gross margin savings of $40 to $85 per car, depending on make, when the vehicle is sold. 

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• Faster time to line also results in more internal repair orders closed and more Parts and Service gross realized. 
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So, why is it so hard to get fast approvals? When I was a service manager, getting responsive action on approval requests was a significant bottleneck. Reasons that slowed down a quick response included being unable to:

• Find an approver when the estimate review is needed to keep technicians working, and, provide the detail needed to make an informed repair decision.

Approvers are rarely at their desks. They’re at the auction, on the lot appraising vehicles, in the showroom negotiating a deal, or away at lunch or on vacation. Mobile inspection apps can help bridge this location gap.

In my experience, the approver can approve/decline or ask questions within minutes, if not seconds, from receiving the push notification on their mobile phone. The message can include the entire vehicle record — including estimates, notes, supporting photos, and NHTSA safety recalls, if applicable. It can also include pictures of tire wear or oil pan seepage to help the approver better evaluate the situation without a physical visit to the tech’s bay.

The more information the tech can add to the vehicle record using such a tool, the better. The goal is to keep the vehicle in the stall or on the lift, continuously moving the work forward — never backward.

The financial consequences of delay are staggering. Every month, I would look at an open repair order report and see how much gross profit my department could not recognize because a used vehicle was not completed. And not only that financial impact, but the delay in getting that vehicle sale- or delivery-ready constantly eroded the gross profit realized on its sale. 

Some such decisioning tools feature real-time reconditioning costs per vehicle. Now, a service director can see repair items approved or disapproved, as well as how those decisions are trending. A study of declined brake work, for example, may point to a pricing issue.

The used car department is Fixed Ops’ best customer. If too many brake repairs are disallowed, perhaps it’s time to investigate your sourcing, prices or both.

Keith Brice is Director of New Business Development for reconditioning software company Rapid Recon. Before joining the software company in 2016, he spent 30 years in automotive retail, as Comptroller and in fixed operations for Texas dealerships.

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Congratulations! You’ve decided to advance your used car business by improving its reconditioning efficiencies through automation.

Now what?

Listen to this informative podcast: 

https://soundcloud.com/autoremarketing/special-sponsored-podcast-rapid-recon?utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Listen+to+Podcast&utm_campaign=PODCAST%3a+Rapid+Recon%27s+Anthony+Martinez

Your

Rapid Recon workflow software helps internal service technicians at Bountiful Utah’s Performance Ford generate an additional 60 to 70 hours of billable work per month.

"That's great for the technicians — and the dealership," said Denim Simkins, service director. "Instead of technicians averaging eight or nine hours a day, they're now at 12-plus hours per day. That's an additional 20 or 30 hours a month per tech.

"And with internal technicians able to push cars through faster, that efficiency means an average-days-in-recon rate of 4.4 days, so we sell more cars too. That's great for everyone here," he said.

Performance Ford traditionally sells 100 new and 200 used cars a month. However, COVID-era used car sourcing — a challenge for most every dealer — is placing stress on Simkins's goal of keeping 300 units front-line ready. "They’re selling as fast as we can recon them, and we do a hell of good job reconditioning these cars,” he said.

“I can’t think of a more impactful tool than Rapid Recon that would help us create this efficiency,” he said. “It has helped us put order into our process and has provided the communications necessary to help all of us understand these efficiencies and, where delays occur, get them sorted out quickly.”

Performance Automotive Network is a family-owned business operating for more than 40 years. It is a Top-50 automotive dealership group in America and operates 18 franchised dealerships in Ohio and Utah.

Simkins has 27 years of experience in automotive retail. He finished college by supporting himself as a service advisor, and then spent 20 years in service management, gaining respect as a “fixer.”

“I take on things that need specific attention and fix those problems,” he said. “None of these improvements would happen, however, without the cohesive support of our Rapid Recon culture by our team, which includes general manager Bill Barnes, our used car manager Adam Forman and our internal service advisor Ryan Lawrence. They’re active users of Rapid Recon and are 100% behind what I’m working to accomplish here.”

Flushes Inefficiency

It is surprisingly easy in any dealership for missed gross to hide in plain sight. Yet, when managing by Key Performance Indicators (KPI), service managers can maintain tighter control over outcomes.  For vehicle reconditioning, the two most meaningful KPIs are:

• Time to Line (T2L) — This is the measure of efficiency from vehicle acquisition through reconditioning to final sale-ready status.

• Average Days in Retail (ADR) — ADR measures the reconditioning steps the department can control, and it is affected by everyone who “touches” the vehicle —­ from recon system login through final photos.

Using T2L to manage a recon department (and, by relationship, the parts department) makes everyone who touches cars either a contributor or detractor to T2L.  

When Performance Ford added a sizeable commercial truck center, Simkins was asked to take on its service operations, including vehicle and truck reconditioning. He is also responsible for the dealership’s customer-pay service operations.

Performance Ford added Rapid Recon reconditioning workflow software to its reconditioning operations around that same time. The dealership is one of 11 stores in the Performance Automotive Network using time-to-line reconditioning and inventory turn technology.

Creates Efficiency

Working with Rapid Recon’s recon experts, Simkins structured the software to flag the recon center’s parts department immediately when the dealership’s buyers had acquired a vehicle from auction or trade. Creating this parts-alert function is a simple step change in the software, but many dealerships underutilize its benefits.

Simkins, however, seized on the idea. Now Performance Ford’s parts department automatically gets a notification within Rapid Recon on desktop or mobile devices. Hence, maintenance and replacement parts that are common to all vehicles reconditioned are immediately pulled and are ready to be delivered to the technician stall.

Often, Simkins said, parts are ready before technicians are notified about which cars they’ll work on next.

“Now techs are freed up to focus on the inspection and repairs,” Simkins said. “Eliminating the parts-waiting step has significantly improved team productivity, so they get more cars recon in less time.” The reconditioning center has two full-time used car technicians, an internal service writer and part-time runners.

These gained efficiencies are just as attainable to a service manager running recon alongside customer-pay operations.

“Whatever the recon setup, this tool helps technicians get cars done in a shorter period, and compares Tech A’s performance with Tech B’s,” Simkins said. “Now, equipped with accurate performance data, it's a quick conversation with technician B about how important the used car department is — it’s the dealership’s No. 1 customer — and that we need to get these cars through for them faster.”

These practices will also boost technician efficiency in shops where techs perform both customer-pay and internal duties. Simkins sees a 125% efficiency in so-structured Performance dealership service shops.

Vendor Management

As good as vetted sublets are, unless you have line-of-sight supervision into their operations, you’re blind to inefficiencies or activities in their processes. In his second reconditioning best-practices book, Inventory Is A Waste, author Dennis McGinn, founder, and CEO of Rapid Recon, said this about managing sublets and vendors:

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For many, the weakest link in achieving the best T2L lies outside of your own organization — it lies with your vendors and sublets. Tracking and managing the flow of cars to and from sublet services is a patchwork of phone calls, runners and missed opportunities. Individual agendas, differing work disciplines and competing priorities create a lack of visibility and control over the vendors who service your business — drawing optics only when there is a disaster or egregious issues come to light.”

Simkins worked with Rapid Recon to set up this sort of vendor connectedness, giving him near-line-of-sight into vendor operations.

“Getting answers, giving instructions, or alerting a vendor to a new job doesn’t even take a phone call,” he said. “That step is in our recon software and is pushed to the right vendor. By including them in this workflow process, we’re not only controlling the speed of our internal employees but also those of the vendors we use.”

For the service manager who fixes problems — and those who have labor efficiency challenges — Rapid Recon is the right tool, Simkins said.

“We got everyone to buy into this time-to-line culture, from GM to vendors,” he said. “They all know we grade performance and hold them accountable to the metrics we’ve set for ADR and T2L. We strongly reinforce that if we’re going to sell used cars within 14 days from the time they hit the inventory, everybody’s got to be in sync. Rapid Recon is the tool that helps us do that.”