Out in front

Part of being a top shop is standing out from the crowd. One of the best ways to do that is lead where many others choose to follow or simply maintain a presence. For Keenan Auto Body, a nine-location company headquartered in Clifton Heights, Pa., leading in one area isn’t enough. It has set impressive standards on three business fronts – IT networking, Web outreach and green technology – the rest of the industry could find difficult to match, much less surpass.

Middletown facility employees stand between the solar panels that help power the shop. Click here for more photos.

Tying together information systems and consolidating information is a demanding chore in a small, single-location facility. But consider Keenan’s challenge. The nine locations, which includes an aluminum repair center, accommodate on average 180 vehicles a week. They deal with multiple vendors, a number of different insurers, and they repair everything from popular, high-production vehicles to BMW and Mercedes Benz models for which they offer manufacturer-certified aluminum repairs. To manage all this information and data across locations, each shop is connected via a network to Keenan’s corporate offices, which allows the accounting department to pull any data needed to service its vendor accounts accurately.

The network is particularly valuable to him because it provides real-time access to each location, allowing Michael LeVasseur, Keenan’s vice president, to maintain oversight of the entire operation.

“I can sit at my desk and plug into a shop’s information at any time,” LeVasseur says.

The Middletown, Del. Location was built from the ground up to be a green operation. Click here for more photos.

The company also uses special products to pull together and manage related business areas. For example, ABW Tracker incorporates every vehicle estimate into its accounting software, which keeps credits, accounts payable and accounts receivable as accurate as possible.

To keep this sophisticated system running, Keenan employs a full-time IT professional to maintain and keep all of the company’s computer and networking systems up and on line 24/7.

Online efforts

Considering the company’s investment in IT networking, it’s shouldn’t be surprising Keenan has taken an equally aggressive and ambitious road with its Web presence. Along with more conventional shop website fare – customer testimonials, career information, shop news, videos and contact information – the company’s site offers live chat, which connects Web users directly to an online Keenan representative, a licensed Pennsylvania appraiser who takes questions and comments about company policies and procedures. LeVasseur calls the feature unique in the industry and says it has proved its worth in capturing sales and heading off potential problems.

The Keenan site also ties to its Twitter and Facebook pages, which are updated regularly by Craig Camacho, the company’s marketing director, who uploads shop news, photos, special deals and amusing videos. Along with promotions that offer items such as Philadelphia Phillies tickets for Web users who take part in discussions and provide input.

Camacho also directs the company’s search engine optimization efforts to garner top placement on Google, Yahoo and ASK.com. Outside the site, the company blogs on online forums to build its brand and connect directly to the communities it serves.

Along with its IT, Web and green initiatives, Keenan finds time to repair 180 vehicles a week. Click here for more photos.

All nine Keenan locations are equipped with marquee monitors and a circuit wireless connectivity system. Customers can jump online when they’re waiting for their estimate or for a minor repair to be completed. The marquees show pictures of Keenan locations, management and staff, and vehicles before and after repairs. All four Keenan television spots are available, too.

Green initiatives

As customers become more familiar with Keenan’s site, they can become familiar with its environmental initiatives, most notably efforts to hold a minigreen revolution at its largest location in Middletown, Del. The Middletown shop was built from the ground up to be a green operation. It transitioned to waterborne finishes (leading the way for the rest of the company locations) and installed the largest solar power system of its kind in Delaware. It’s the only collision repair shop in the state to switch to solar energy and just one of just a handful of shops in the country to do so, LeVasseur says.

The system uses 248 pure polycrystalline solar panels, 43 of which sit in front of the shop, with the remaining panels set in a half-acre field directly behind the facility. The system will provide 90 to 120 renewable energy credits (RECs) a year.

“These credits are sold back to the power company at a current value of $250 each,” LeVasseur says. “You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out we should recoup our investment and start making money with the system in just five years.”

Using conservative estimates, the 65-kilowatt system should generate 75 kilowatt-hours per year, about half of the energy needed to run the 16,000-square-foot facility. To showcase the system and drive environmental awareness, monthly and year-to-date solar information (provided by a third-party monitoring service) are broadcast on a 31-inch display monitor in the Middletown location’s waiting room.

Government officials have noticed the significance of Keenan’s investment. This past January the Environmental Protection Agency awarded Keenan a Design for the Environment certification. The Delaware governor’s office has recognized the company for its green initiatives as did U.S. Senator Thomas Carper, who stopped by the Middletown facility for a tour.

Furthermore, LeVasseur is looking to open more shops that, if history is an indication, will work hard to run at the head of the pack.