Steve Olson is a managing partner of two shops with a lot of real estate between them — Louisville Collision Center in Kentucky and Manchester Collision Center in New Hampshire.
He visited The Collision Vision podcast, hosted by Cole Strandberg and driven by Autobody News, to talk about how he uses technology to help his two shops run smoothly and efficiently, despite always being far from at least one.
Collision Repair Management Systems
“I got a really great opportunity, obviously not right around the corner,” Olson said. “It’s in New Hampshire and I’m in Kentucky. So the challenge is, since I can’t be in two places at one time, how do I find a way to make managing and overseeing and ownership in both shops become easier?”
Since the pandemic, a lot more paperwork has been passed to shops, Olson said. He has hired more administrative personnel and found more technology solutions to help handle it.
“Most insurance companies in our markets still have not brought back inspectors and adjusters to look at cars in the field,” Olson said. “We are the ones now primarily that are seeing the car.”
Anything that can save the shop’s personnel time “is huge, because the administrative side has become so much greater in the last five years,” he said.
Olson said the key was finding a management system that allows him to review both shops’ daily operations.
He uses Rome, which allows him to pull the same reports from both shops. He said shop owners should choose whichever system that will best keep staff organized, helping them do their jobs more efficiently.
“I’m constantly pulling reports every day that tell me sales in and sales out,” Olson said. “I can see what we’re producing, knowing what I want our goal to be.”
Management systems can generate detailed reports on parts and labor profitability, for instance, without needing an employee to input endless lines of data.
“Sometimes we let those reports do a lot of that, and we free up ourselves to look for some of those other things,” Olson said. “Spend the least amount of time but get quick data back, that’s accurate, that helps you run your shop to the best of your ability.”
Olson’s shops haven’t started using any AI-based tools yet, but he has looked at UVEye’s automatic inspection products.
“Think of it like an MRI for your car,” Olson said. “You drive your car through and it assesses damage from the top of the car, the roof to the underbody. It gives you a printout, photos, everything that shows damage.”
Tech companies are constantly developing new products, Olson said, so it is important to go to conferences and trade shows to learn about them.
“If you don’t jump on board, you can be left behind really quickly in this industry,” he said.
Using Data to Make Decisions
Olson said after enduring a “brutal year” in 2020, his shop in Kentucky had its best year ever in 2021, which it topped in 2022 and again in 2023. This year, however, has backed off at both the Kentucky and New Hampshire shop.
Olson said there are several reasons for that.
Among them: there wasn’t much of a winter in either shop’s area — or in much of the country, for that matter — so there wasn’t the typical seasonal high volume of claims, he said. People tend to pull back on spending among the uncertainty of a presidential election year.
Looking at his management system’s reports, Olson can direct his employees where to focus. He can see how many potential customers come through the door, how many estimates get written and how many jobs are captured.
“That tells us if the door is slow, we need to be focusing on this, or we need to be focusing on that,” he said.
Olson said it’s important to ask employees what they need, and then look for the solutions to provide it.
“I think the key thing is going to your people and asking them, ‘What could I give you, whether it’s tools or equipment or technology, that would help you do your job better?’” he said.
Recently, Olson’s shops started using OEC’s RepairLogic to help write more complete repair plans faster, after his team introduced him to it.
“If I can buy software that helps them to do that, all that means is the ability to produce more and put out great, high-quality work for our customer,” Olson said.
He said a lot of his shops’ technicians are under 40 and see new products on social media.
“They’ll come to me and say, ‘Hey, have you heard of this?’ If it’s not something I’ve heard of yet, I’ll go research it,” Olson said. “That’s the key part, is listening to your team.”
New Technology in Collision Repair
Olson said he is looking forward to the 2024 SEMA Show to check out new products.
“There’s people out there a lot smarter than me that have been doing this longer, and are coming out with some crazy stuff,” he said. “We need it, because there is a whole lot more admin stuff that’s come to us as a result of the last five years.”
However, Olson said, “as many of these technologies and things that are coming out, at the end of the day, it still goes back to the people, making sure that our employees are just as important as the customer.”
He said technology also doesn’t understand the differences between customers — for instance, if one prefers regular progress updates, while another only wants to know when the car is ready to be picked up.
“That’s where the human interaction comes in,” Olson said.
Technology should be used to help staff maximize employees’ time, which gives them more time to spend listening to customers’ needs.
“I don’t ever want my estimators to feel like they need to be rushed to hurry up and get done with one customer to go help another one,” Olson said. “We’re a zero-DRP facility, so our connection to the customer is huge. We’re heavy OEM, we’re heavy certified. Our goal is to have that transparency and have that time. And so if that tool helps us to be quicker, to allow us more time with the customer, that’s what’s important.”
Key Takeaways
Maximize your time so you can spend more time with people.
Adapt to change. See what’s out there and challenge yourself to be better.
Don’t lose your connection with your staff. The most important thing that you can do is listen to your team to help them win.