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.

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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