July 10, 2019—According to Mike Boyd, founder of iRecon, some of the biggest pitfalls in the reconditioning process are a lack of process and communication with vendors. When Boyd talks about vendors, he’s referring to both external—like glass repair—and internal. Internal vendors would be any of the departments within the dealership that are somehow involved in the reconditioning process, such as the service department.
In order to recondition in an effective manner, Boyd says the key is to treat vendors like partners. After all, each vendor plays a role and every role is working toward a common goal.
“Traditionally, everyone is very siloed,” Boyd says. “There’s not a free flow of information.”
That approach doesn’t make sense. When it comes to reconditioning, sales needs information from service, service needs information from sales, and outside vendors need information from the dealership.
“It’s not sales and service—it’s the name of the dealership. We need to get away from that siloed approach,” Boyd says.
In an effort to create a mainstream line of information, iRecon announced the introduction of its new app—iRecon: Vendor. The application helps vendors more efficiently and effectively manage their workloads and dealer interactions across the reconditioning process.
“With the iRecon: Vendor app, it puts the information at the vendors fingertips to help control workflow—they know what’s coming,” Boyd says. “They can self-manage their employees, it’s all about scaling.”
An example of this could be a detail company that has a detailer that can only handle a certain amount of work. The detail company can look ahead and anticipate the work that is coming and determine if they need to bring in more support. The app ensures that vendors “won’t cripple under work,” says Boyd.
The app connects the dealer, vendor, sales people and the consumer with the same information. With iRecon, dealerships saw a decrease in the amount of time from when the vehicle was purchased to being released to the customer by 25 to 30 percent, Boyd says. With iRecon: Vendor, dealerships can expect even more time savings.
Beyond finding a process that works, Boyd says that conducting regular reconditioning meetings with everyone involved in the process and setting realistic goals and holding people accountable to those goals are the keys for a solid reconditioning process.
