If you enter a crowded dealership service bay, you are likely to watch a service advisor struggling with a repair estimate on a paper-based job card. This manual process of creating repair estimates is slow and messy, and is often prone to errors. But in the current scenario, the aftermarket has levelled up. Today, customers want speedy and accurate estimations, detailed clarity, and no surprise costs, while dealerships struggle with thin profit margins and complex repairs.
This led to the introduction of Intelli Estimate, a repair estimate software that is a lifeline for OEM dealerships and repair shops. When integrated with an interactive parts catalog software, it makes job card creation faster, more accurate, and customer-friendly.
Through this article, let’s understand why accurate repair estimates are crucial for dealerships, the difficulties involved in manual cost evaluation, and how Intelli Estimate facilitates the repair estimation process.
Why is Accuracy in Repair Estimates Important?
A repair estimate, which can also be used as a job card, is the estimation for a repair that lists the parts, labor, and costs needed to get a vehicle back on the road. Getting it right is critical, but calculating it manually often leads to errors and delays.
For a dealership, an error-free repair estimate is a medium to transparently present the cost breakdown and timeline required to complete the repair process. It helps in preventing disputes due to surprising costs or repair delays and improves customer experience.
Dealerships may lose customers if the estimates are roughly calculated or incomplete. Here’s why getting job cards right is imperative:
Improve Transparency and Build Customer Trust
A clear breakdown presents every cost involved to the customer, whether it's the parts price or labor wages. Customers appreciate such clarity, and it builds a foundation of trust.
Reduce Errors and Disputes
Introducing additional charges suddenly while fixing underlying errors may spark arguments. Accurate estimation helps dealers keep errors and disputes at bay.
Improve Workflow
Accurate repair estimates give technicians a clear plan and help in cutting equipment downtime.
Optimize Profitability
Missing on costs drains dealerships’ resources as it inflates the total costs, and shakes customers’ trust. Accurate estimation ensures that every expense is noted without scaring the customers off.
Accuracy in repair estimation isn’t just a benefit, it’s the backbone of a dealer’s reputation and profit. Dealerships that excel here stand out in a crowded market.
Challenges in Calculating Estimates Manually
Earlier, calculating repair estimates manually was the norm. The service manager would spend several minutes flipping through a parts catalog and scribbling labor times. Customers waited, turned frustrated, and errors were common. A majority of repair shops still deal with these challenges, including:
- Inaccuracy: While doing calculations manually, the service engineer might misread a part number or make blunders with figures, making the entire estimation a mess. This leads to ordering the wrong parts, interrupting repairs, and annoying customers.
- Inconsistency: Without a standard system, estimates may differ by who’s at the counter. This leads to differences in job cards for the same repair that confuse everyone.
- Time-Consuming Process: Assembling parts, labor, and cost estimations manually is a slow process. At a busy workshop, these minutes pile up, create blockages, and tense customers.
- Human Bias: Without a standard process, estimators depend on their intuitions than on facts. They may underestimate a complex repair, assuming it will be done quickly and undercharging for it. It leads to a loss for the dealer due to unbillable hours.
These issues aren’t just bothersome, but they also hit the dealer's bottom line and reputation.
What is Intelli Estimate?
Intelli Estimate is a powerful repair estimate software from Intellinet Systems that eliminates manual workflows and replaces them with an efficient, cloud-based solution. Built for OEM dealerships and repair shops, it handles the demanding job of creating accurate and transparent repair estimates.
Intelli Estimate cuts through the manual chaos with a user-friendly interface, integrates easily with tools like interactive parts catalog software, and is responsive to the aftermarket’s needs. It saves time, reduces errors, and maximizes accuracy in job cards. Whether estimating a quick fix or a full collision repair, Intelli Estimate keeps dealerships productive and their customers happy.
Intelli Estimate can be used by dealerships for two different purposes: as a job card module and as an accidental repair estimate software. Let’s understand how:
As a Job Card Module
Imagine a customer rolls into a dealership with a halting engine, complaining about its lagging performance. The service advisor inspects the engine, spots a carburetor issue, and needs to generate a job card with a cost breakdown and timeline. Earlier, job card creation meant listing required parts, making calls to check their real-time availability, and calculating labor estimates. This manual processing not only took more time but also maximized the scope for mistakes.
As a job card module, Intelli Estimate changes the game. The technician uses the software’s visual interface to click on a vehicle diagram and pinpoint the exact problem, say the carburetor issue in this case. It also helps them accurately identify the parts that need repair or replacement.
Intelli Estimate checks the dealer’s inventory in real-time, showing if those parts are in stock. If they’re not, it's integration with a parts catalog software that allows the dealer to order them right away, all without any phone calls or delays. The software descends labor times using OEM standards or custom inputs for unique fixes, then produces a job card with a clear cost breakdown including parts, labor, and any additional expenses like oiling.
The service advisor hands this to the customer, who can see exactly what they’re paying for and when the vehicle will be ready. This setup cuts estimation processing time, boosts the productivity of the dealer’s team, and prevents surprise costs for the customer and disputes that follow.
As an Accidental Repair Estimation Software
Unlike the regular service repairs or replacements, accidental repairs are a whole different affair. In these cases, dealerships not just need to fix a vehicle, they also navigate insurance claims, fussy customers, and tight deadlines. This often leads dealers to generate estimations that are vague or missing costs like paint or towing.
As an accidental repair estimation software, Intelli Estimate is a lifesaver. It helps dealers produce job cards that break down each cost, including parts, labor, paint, consumables, and even third-party services like towing, in a way that keeps insurance adjusters and customers aligned.
What makes Intelli Estimate truly stand out is its inspection process. Dealers can upload pictures of the damaged vehicle taken from multiple angles, which Intelli Estimate integrates into the estimation workflow. This ensures that even minute details are spotted, like a dented fender or a cracked headlight housing, that might otherwise be overlooked in a rushed manual inspection.
Dealerships get burned when they miss hidden damage, leading to disputes with insurance adjusters and delays. With Intelli Estimate, those multi-angle images help dealers catch every issue upfront, boosting the accuracy of the repair estimate.
The software also enforces a standard inspection process, so dealerships get consistent results no matter who works on the estimation. If a technician finds additional damage mid-repair, such as a bent frame hidden by a bumper, the software enables them to add a supplemental estimate without starting over and saving time.
How Does Intelli Estimate Facilitate Repair Estimate Calculation?
Putting together a repair estimate is like assembling a puzzle where the whole thing falls apart due to just one wrong piece. Intelli Estimate makes the estimation process simple with features that cut out manual errors and delays, including:
Visual Part Identification
Technicians can simply click on a vehicle diagram to choose parts that need a repair or replacement, eliminating the need for endless searches within the parts catalog.
Automated Labor and Part Cost Calculations
Intelli Estimates pulls OEM-standard labor times and costs for replacements and lets dealerships input custom times for repairs. Service advisors no longer need to do math manually.
Detailed Cost Breakdowns
Job cards list repair/replacement costs, labor, and any extra expenses. This keeps customers in the loop and avoids disputes.
Additional Estimate Supplement
For jobs that are not usual, such as finding hidden damage, dealerships can tack on supplemental estimates without starting from scratch.
These features of Intelli Estimate make repair estimates fast, accurate, and ready for action, allowing teams at dealers’ workshops to focus on fixing vehicles and not paperwork.
Integrating Intelli Estimate with a Parts Catalog to Facilitate Job Card Creation
Earlier, parts ordering was the biggest headache for service advisors as they would write up an estimate, only to find the part was out of stock or simply identified incorrectly. Integrating Intelli Estimate with a parts catalog software addresses these issues by consolidating estimation to real-time parts data.
Here’s how this integration boosts job card creation:
Real-Time Parts Data
An interactive parts catalog software like Intelli Catalog provides the latest information on part numbers, prices, and their current stock levels. This ensures that job cards only reflect what’s actually available.
Error Reduction
When dealerships have visibility into accurate part numbers, it reduces mistakes in ordering. This helps dealerships cut parts errors significantly and saves time and cash.
Improved Efficiency
Dealerships can order parts right from the job card screen, eliminating unnecessary navigation. This small modification saves a lot of effort in busy workshops.
Benefits of Using Intelli Estimate for Repair Estimation
By using Intelli Estimate for generating accurate repair job cards, dealerships can go from distracted to engrossed in no time. They experience several benefits, including:
- Time and Effort Savings: Accurate estimates significantly reduce technicians’ duration of repair and liberate teams for other commitments.
- Improved Accuracy: Visual part selection and auto-calculations eliminate errors, providing dealerships with repair estimates they can trust.
- Transparency and Clarity: Detailed job cards clarify every cost to the customers, building trust and reducing confusion and queries.
- Customer Satisfaction: Quick estimates and clear pricing make customers satisfied, who come back and spread the word.
- Data-Driven Insights: Estimation reports track repair trends, helping dealers adjust inventory, change pricing, and handle warranties.
- Scalability: Intelli Estimate keeps repair estimates consistent. So, no matter whether businesses include one workshop or many, the growth becomes effortless.
These benefits of Intelli Estimate enable dealerships to boost efficiency and improve customer loyalty.
Takeaways
With Intelli Estimate, creating repair estimates is no longer a struggle for dealerships. When integrated with an interactive parts catalog software like Intelli Catalog, Intelli Estimate becomes a smarter choice for fixing part repairs. It automates the manual calculation and documentation involved, pulls real-time parts data, and generates comprehensive job cards.
With a clear visibility of each cost involved in the repair process through descriptive breakdown, customers are more likely to leave workshops satisfied and return. As a scalable repair estimate software with a focus on aftermarket services, Intelli Estimate is perfect for both single-repair shops and multi-dealership networks.
Want to see Intelli Estimate in action? Connect with our experts to understand how our software can transform repair estimation for your dealerships or request a free demo today.
