How we helped a car workshop save 100 hours/week using a simple software

We were tasked by a car workshop here in Singapore that specialises in commercial vehicles to come up with a software to help them manage their processes. The goal is to be able to scale their operations from 40 vehicles to 150 vehicles.

Here’s what we did to make that happen.

First, we define all the touch points that we could digitalise. The staff were having issues with appointment bookings. Everything was booked using a phone call and pen and paper. While everything is working, the staff working on the appointment management always has to be ready for a new call or a new walk in appointment.

Moreover, servicing records are made manually. Everything is written down on a card and kept in a file. With this, it was hard to track whose servicing is near due. Therefore, we intend to digitalise this portion of things as well.

Managing customer information

The first step that we had to do was manage customer information. We had to ensure that we had a CRM system in place that has customer contact details and the vehicles that they owned.

They could also checkout the servicing records with the workshop. In the future, it is also possible to make this information viewable to the customer, although this feature was not requested at this point of time.

This was done simply by creating a database of customer information, tied to vehicle information. This will definitely be further used by other features down the line when we need to pull customer information to populate fields or save fields, etc.

Managing appointments

With the current manual process, the software should also be able to handle automated bookings of appointments.

There are two ways that we can go about doing this, as per our plan.

Firstly, admin can manually add in the appointments based on availability in the backed. This is done because some people might not have access to the frontend to make appointments. Therefore, if they call or WhatsApp the staff regarding scheduling information, the staff is able to book the appointment on behalf of the customer immediately.

The second way is to allow customers to book the appointments instantly via a weblink or a mobile app download. If the software is used regularly, then a mobile app makes perfect sense, otherwise the customer always has to key in the URL in his browser to make the booking.

From the second way, they are able to see block out timings and slots whenever the workshop is unavailable. This can be set in the admin years in advanced, automatically blocking out public holidays, for example.

Managing reports by the mechanics

Previously, for every work done by the mechanics, things were written down on pen and paper. It’s hard to consolidate everything at the end of the day, including things like inventory management and keeping track of next servicing.

Therefore, we come up with a servicing document generator on an iPad that the mechanic can use.

Here’s how it looks like

The staff can simply key in the parts that were ordered and the services that were conducted during the appointment.

This can then be seen by the admin in the backend for verification and consolidation.

Attendance taking system

Previously, the workshop was using punchcard systems where the staff has to manually calculate the hours worked by the team.

Now, whenever the staff has arrived, the manager is able to take the attendance of the team member. Whenever a staff leaves, the manager is able to indicate the same.

At the end of the month, they are able to calculate hours worked.

Moreover, overtime pay is also calculated here.

After a certain hours per week or month, it is considered as overtime pay and should be paid extra.

Sales/rental agreement document generator

Documents can be generated by filling up a simple web form. PDF will be generated with the exact format required and the fields pre-populated from the web form.

This saved so much time from the admin side, manually generating the forms manually.

Instead of spending half an hour adding the data and making sure that the formatting is right, you can now complete the form within two minutes.

Conclusion

This project was interesting and the best thing about it was that it was really beneficial for the company and staff using it. If you are interested in workshop management systems, contact SleekDigital for a free consultation to understand your needs more.