Looking for Parts & Service CRM Solution

[TorqMeister]

I was hoping someone from the OEM/Dealership industry would be able to provide some insight or possible solution. I am trying to find a modern CRM/CMS solution for parts and service, which will help run my specialty aftermarket parts and service business. I have no need for selling new/used vehicles.

I am too small for a solution like Reynold/Reynods or ADP and any of the "repair shop" management software solutions are very out dated, lack a lot what is needed pertaining to tracking sales, leads, and analytics or offer great service record keeping but product sales management is horrible. The local and mail order parts business (on the web and in store) is a very big part of our business. I cannot neglect anything

I need a solution similar to a retail CRM solution offered by companies such as Salesforce.com or Zoho CRM that will manage contacts and leads, campaingns, automate follow up emails for parts and service, contact status.

I have thought about using my current "shop management" software and having an API bridge created between something like Salesforce.com but we are a fairly new company and do not have the budget.

Another option I thought of was using my events calendar in Salesforce.com, adding my labor as a "part number" and selling labor hours as parts.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

UDC is really known for their Service CRM. I don't have experience with it but I hear some good things about it, though not sure if it's what you would be looking for. Here is a PR for reference... UDC Announces 50% Increase in CRM Software Sales for Auto Dealers

I have thought about using my current "shop management" software and having an API bridge created between something like Salesforce.com

- this might be a route to take.

 

[umer.autojini]

Checkout Dealer Tracks Accessories solution... it has lead management and parts...

 

[Jarrett]

If you would like I would be happy to let you demo our Salesforce integration with Arkona, before you rule them out I know many ways to complete integration without blowing the bank.

What are you using for a Management System that you would want to integrate with?

Jarrett

 

[TorqMeister]

If you would like I would be happy to let you demo our Salesforce integration with Arkona, before you rule them out I know many ways to complete integration without blowing the bank.

What are you using for a Management System that you would want to integrate with?

Jarrett

That would be really cool. From what I read, Arkona is now DealerTrack. I called them and others like ADP the other day to see if they have an affordable solution for me.

When you say without blowing the bank, what are we talking about?

We are getting ready to make the switch to DealerLogic (unless we end up using something like ADP or Dealertrack) and I was going to use SugarCRM for our CRM solution.

 

[Jarrett]

TorqueM

(sorry about all the black cover-up lines, the data is live and I did not want any complete names shared in a public forum)

This is more for information sharing only. I imagine there are great service CRM's available, however we already modified SF for the front half of our dealership and it seemed a natural to stay with one solution and bring the back half into the same tool.

Our DMS did not offer much in the way of prospecting for service, follow-up on closed tickets and otherwise ease of customer history review. Here are some screen shots taken from our SF instance, in which we have taken the DMS data and simply added it to our CRM tool. We pay $30/user/month for this service. Our invoicing is all done through the DMS at this point in time.

This appointment screen is self explanatory. From each hyperlink you can easily access all referential data in the respective object.

This is how our schedule for appointments looks, hovering over time blocks gives more detail.

This is a section of the Repair Order screen giving an easy way to review service history.

From the customer screen you can easily see service history and vehicles they own for ease of review, as well as all service, sales and parts history, open follow-up activities and closed activities like thank you for sales calls. All inbound and outbound emails integrate automatically with the customer accounts via our mail server hooking into the CRM.

The Dashboard is also very popular for our management and users alike. It is a great way to encourage competition.

 

[TorqMeister]

How much did you have to pay for the custom bridge into SalesFroce and how much to have the custom fields made in SalesFroce?

That is exactly what we need for Parts and Service