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Episode Description

Getting two platforms to play nicely together isn’t always a walk in the park. On this week’s episode, Jodi Knepper from Lee Myles Automotive in Reading, PA, and our own Sara Savio join host Tom Dorsey to discuss what a tremendous partnership Protractor and AutoVitals can make when paired correctly.

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:02):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey, episode 26, July 31st, and we’ve got a great show for you. I know I say that every week, but we deliver. So, and we’re going to be talking about Protractor and AutoVitals integration for folks that are recently moved over to Protractor, thinking about moving to Protractor, and we’ve got a couple of great guests on today, Jodi Knepper from Lee Myles and Sara Savio, who is our Protractor specialist at AutoVitals. And kind give you a little bit of the ins and outs on how it went, what pitfalls to avoid now that we have discovered them, and some tips on making that as painless of a transition as possible. And then once you get there, what’s the big value? Why should you consider moving over to Protractor as a point of sale to benefit your operation? So Jodi, Sara, thanks a lot for coming on. It’s fantastic to have you.
Jodi Knepper (01:02):
Thanks. Good to be here.
Tom Dorsey (01:04):
Sure. And so Jodi, I know you were, I believe one of our first probably integrations, kind of like the Guinea pig shop with us on Protractor. How did that go?
Jodi Knepper (01:18):
Better than expected? I was a little afraid in the beginning. You have those fears of what if I lose all my data? What if it doesn’t go bad? What if the whole shop is shut down to a standstill because nothing’s working and I really didn’t need to worry? It went really very smoothly. I think a lot of that has to do with getting yourself prepared and becoming familiar with the product. So making sure that you do the training that AutoVitals is offering to just understand how it functions so you’re not trying to figure it out in the moment.
Tom Dorsey (01:54):
Yeah, that’s great. Well, how did it end up working out from a data perspective and the integration part of it
Jodi Knepper (02:04):
Overall? Awesome. We had one glitch in our data migration, which it had to do with the point of sale that we were coming from had an option to label your phone numbers. I want to label it as Tom’s cell phone or whatever. That tracks also had a daytime phone number, evening phone number. Those weren’t easy for the migration to recognize, and so it didn’t always recognize a phone number was a phone number. So because of that, we didn’t lose the data, it brought the data in, but it put it in the notes section. So we still had their phone numbers, but they weren’t in the phone number field. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but in the end it actually was a little bit of a big deal because one of the coolest features that Protractor offers is that white pages look up where you just put a phone number in and you can see if the customer’s in your system, if they’re not in your system, it’s going to look up the address for that customer and you have lots of information right at your fingertips. So we didn’t get used to searching by the phone number in the beginning because our phone number fields weren’t populated. Well,
Tom Dorsey (03:17):
Yeah. So then you had to go back and rebuild all that on. So Sara, what are we doing to make sure that A, I guess we probably double check before we flip that switch and then make sure that all of that stuff is going to come through right the first time.
Sara Savio (03:34):
So when we are looking at the integrations, we are truly going in and we’re looking at your data. We are making sure that we understand what fields your information are stored in. So then when we migrate that data over, we’re able to monitor those fields coming back into the system so that it all populates the way that it’s supposed to. Coming from different systems, there are some things that are going to be point of sale specific that we may not necessarily be able to pull in, but that is kind of the nature of the beast when you’re dealing with individual systems. There are so many of them out there, but we’re really taking a lot of time on the backend once again to make sure we understand what your needs are, make sure you understand what fields we have access to so that we can do everything we can to make sure that that’s a seamless transfer.
Tom Dorsey (04:31):
And I would say the big takeaway is that when you’re in the test environment before go live, that you test everything. You just make sure you push all the buttons and if anything isn’t working, raise a flag and get it fixed so that we can match all. That’s a lot of puzzle pieces to put together back behind the scenes there and we got to make sure that it’s a pretty picture once we go live. So Jodi, how did the crew react? I mean that’s because I think you went from probably three different point of sales maybe in the transition.
Jodi Knepper (05:03):
We started, we had a cloud-based software, which we actually really did love that software. We participated as a part of a franchise and the franchisor provided that software, good stuff, but it didn’t integrate with AutoVitals at that point. We tried the DBI standalone product and really liked it, but it didn’t become part of our religion. We do this all the time. We do this every job. It was an add-on, it wasn’t a revolution. So we liked the product, we liked it enough that we wanted the integration. We wanted a software that would integrate with, we were hands down sold on this product, so we started shopping for software system. We had to get permission from our franchiser, but we did, and we ended up looking at all of the options out there and we chose Napa Attracts legacy, and it was before they had the enterprise version out. So we went in doing Legacy. We onboarded both of those at the same time, a new point of sale and AutoVitals, like doing the whole TVP, doing everything. Learned to do everything like a brand new day one service advisor. It was rough. It
Tom Dorsey (06:15):
Was rough. Bigger go home, huh?
Jodi Knepper (06:19):
We went in with the, this is going to be hard, let’s just do it all at once instead of dragging out the hard. But in retrospect, I think that was really tough on my team and I wouldn’t do it that way. Again, for those who are switching point of sale, I recommend do the standalone product, get familiar with that, with whatever you’re doing now. Add maybe the point of sale software so you can get familiar with that. Then do the full extended AutoVitals integration. I have not, however, run this by Sara or any other AutoVitals person. So a plan for that may have been rolled out. Maybe they have a better way of onboarding, but like you mentioned, we were one of the first to try the Protractor integration.
Tom Dorsey (07:02):
Oh, no, no. I mean that’s brilliant bit of advice, right? Because if it’s somebody who’s new to Smart Flow and it’s going to be new to the point of sale and you’re right, while you’re waiting for your install dates and all that stuff, there’s nothing to stop you from getting a tablet in the tech’s hands and building some habits and getting the least of that part of the best practices down. Now I got my picture policy, I know how to edit. I got all that stuff out of the way, and then when the more complex pieces come into play, we’re just that farther ahead of the game and it becomes more manageable because it is kind of tipping the apple cart to some folks if you’ve been on a certain process or even a program that maybe that you’ve upgraded over time. I started with this point of sale in the nineties and I’ve just been upgrading it, and so it’s so familiar and ingrained into the business that what a huge change and you really have to take those small bites out of that Apple. But overall, once everything kind of got worked out and you made it, well, actually you made through probably a Protractor, or excuse me, Napa Tracs transition and then just did it all over again.
Jodi Knepper (08:14):
Yes. Well almost all over at that point, Tracs just wasn’t a good fit for our shop. I am sure it works great for other shops. For us, it just wasn’t a good fit. So I had heard about Protractor, I was in my mind going, it was only nine months ago that we just did this. Can I even ask this of my team now? But I did with a lot of promises that, hey, this is going to work better in the long run and so forth. At that point, we loved AutoVitals. Even then occasionally there would be some, we would miss a TVP tile or something like that wouldn’t show up when we were with Tracs. We have none of that now with Protractor. The integration is just so much more stable for us anyway. So we decided we were moving from Tracs to Protractor, already understood a lot about AutoVitals. So really the only concern at that point was we going to, is everything going to make it over? What’s the timing look like? Are my courtesy checks going to be Sheets, going to have the recommendations mapped right away? Can we just keep going?
(09:27):
My techs for me, our techs are, we’re flat rate shop, so they care about their time and they need to feel secure that they’re not even going to miss a 10th of an hour. So for us, part of making sure that everything worked out for the best of everybody looking for win-win in every situation. So making sure that it works out the best for everybody meant I print out some paper sheets that I give ’em to each of my techs. I say, Hey, just during this transition I need to write down the work order number. I need to write down the number of hours and what you did, and then we’re going to match it up at the end of the week and see if this all came out. And it did. So like I built confidence they understood that nothing fishy is going on and they can rely on the software.
Tom Dorsey (10:16):
Yeah. Well that is brilliant and I hope you wrote that down. Folks that are thinking about moving over to Protractor are in the middle of it because I mean that right there that’s going to give exactly, is that peace of mind. Always have that backup plan and hope for the best, be prepared for the worst type thing, right. Sara, what is it that folks can do to help you help them be prepared for that transition so that it goes as smooth and seamless as possible?
Sara Savio (10:45):
Sure. The first thing, if you’re onboarding, reach out to us. We want to make sure that one thing that wasn’t available when Jodi was onboarding, we have created what we call short codes for the entire service package library that comes as default with your Protractor software. And then we have taken an inspection and we have mapped all of those actions into from the Protractor short codes. So there is a file that we want to upload, and it’s in important to do that during the testing process so that you can customize everything. We want to have that done. And the second thing, we want to make sure that we are matching your, we’re prepared to match all of your time clock events to your tee time events. And that’s very important because all of that information now is pushing back to Protractor. So when you pull your tee time report, you’re pulling your labor reports from Protractor, everything is going to match. So those really are the two big things. Make sure that we have you set up for success from the beginning by once again, installing those service packages with the codes and then just talking about your workflow. Let’s set up your workflow steps properly. It, it’s just really communication. Make sure that when you’re talking to your advisor, your trainer, that we know what you’re looking for, that we know how your shop works so that we can make it as seamless as possible and as successful as possible.
Tom Dorsey (12:25):
Yeah, that’s a fantastic service, right? I mean, that’s got to be how many hours do you think of time that’s saving by building all those short codes and mapping the inspection sheet already? That’s
Sara Savio (12:36):
Got to be, Cody can answer that one. She’s done it.
Jodi Knepper (12:40):
I was afraid to keep track of that time. It was
Tom Dorsey (12:45):
A blur. Oh yeah. It’s got to be 50 hours. I mean, it depends on course size of your canned job library and all that good stuff. But wow. I mean, that’s fantastic. So yeah, in the communication part, it is really just finding out what are you trying to accomplish? What’s the switch forward? What’s your goals? What are those things that we need to be focused on to make sure we dial in and get the best practices process in place before we go live and allow your team to practice that before we go live so that there’s the least amount of disruption as possible. So let’s talk about the benefits. What was the big difference when you, because now I mean Jodi and Sara also, you’ve probably worked with three or four different point of sales also in operations, and what would you say was kind of the big benefit from moving over to Protractor with AutoVitals?
Sara Savio (13:46):
Wow. The biggest benefit, the biggest takeaway is how everything is now transferred back to Protractor with a push of a button. You don’t have to enter your technicians. You’re in and out, mileage draw transferred. You’re sending all that service package information over. You can see right there when you open up your work order with the little green lines on the left, what service packages had been completed. You can look in your time tablet, excuse me, the time tab at the bottom of your work order, you can see technicians time. So it’s just the way that it moves back and forth together, it reduces a lot of steps on the service advisor side and still is helping to keep your A TI reports straight because all of your dashboards that you’re pulling up, all of that time data is transferring directly into that.
Tom Dorsey (14:44):
Yeah, I like to say that’s all the Saturday morning kitchen table work, right? Absolutely. That’s all your free time it goes out when you got to manipulate all those reports for payroll or a TI or anybody, right? Yes. Jodi, what was the big hallelujah kind of benefit for you?
Jodi Knepper (15:00):
So in Protractor, there are a ton of features that they just were mind blowing we didn’t have access to before and they helped us level up, honestly.
Tom Dorsey (15:14):
Nice
Jodi Knepper (15:14):
Protractor is there are some who are going to look at this and they’re going to be like, this is so restrictive. There’s no fudge room. My husband, I’m not throwing him under the bus. I love this man, Kyle. He is a fly by the seat of your pants guy. He wants to move fast. He wants to just do it from memory, like muscle memory. It just happens. And I’m all for automation, but you got to learn all the steps in between to make it automated, right? Yeah, sure. So there were times in the beginning with Protractor that he would want to post something and some part hadn’t been received or something like that through Protractor. So that was frustrating for him to get used to that process. But here’s the big win in all of that. This software is so much more accurate on every possible level, specifically for accounting and for parts management because of how everything is, it’s all tracked, every bit of it, whether you received a part, if you returned to the part, did you get credit for that part that you returned or that core that you returned?
(16:20):
All of those things. We never looked at that before. We just kind of assumed everybody was doing their job and at the end of the month, hopefully the margins look good. But I’ll tell you a story. We had a computer. We put a computer in a car and there was a core on the computer, right? $350 for this core on the computer because of the way that Protractor handles it, our guys returned or put the job through, they closed out the work order. The core went into our returns bin and Protractor and it sat there until we received a core a credit against that core, right? Well, we didn’t receive it. We didn’t receive it. We didn’t receive it. Finally, I called the vendor up. I’m like, Hey, you didn’t give us the credit on this core. And they’re like, well, but we didn’t receive the core. So I’m like, what do you mean you didn’t receive the core? So that sent me back to the build room where I found that the core had been laying on the shelf, that $350 was just a beautiful paperweight in the shop. So things like that, I wouldn’t have known to go back there looking for a core that I didn’t even know existed. Wow.
Tom Dorsey (17:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Jodi Knepper (17:28):
So I mean, there are things that you got to learn the new steps, but because of those steps, I’ll tell you who this is exceptionally great for is somebody who wants to be an absentee owner because everything is tracked. Everything’s tracked at the end of the month when we have an between Protractor and QuickBooks, some people do all their accounting in Protractor. I haven’t tried that so I can’t speak to it, but we do the back office integration. So every invoice parts invoice that we generate through Protractor gets pushed into QuickBooks. The end of the month, I get my NAPA statement and it’s got all these invoices listed on it and I start going, well, where’s that one? If that one didn’t come through, then it wasn’t received in ProTrac, which means there were parts ordered on my account that either I didn’t buy or didn’t get tracked somehow. So it’s a lot harder for somebody to mismanage your business or take advantage of your business because they have access to things. Perhaps. That’s my low trust coming out. I love my guys. I trust my guys
Tom Dorsey (18:35):
Or smart business or the George Smart business. That’s
Jodi Knepper (18:38):
My job.
Tom Dorsey (18:39):
Yeah, well exactly. And if the audit process is simple, and like you said, it’s all online and you can do it from the lawn chair in The Bahamas or whatever, well now all of a sudden, yeah, you are much more absentee but still highly engaged and in control of your business without having to, because it’s funny, you go out to the trade shows and the conferences and you see a lot of people, they got all their security cameras on their phone. They’re like, oh yeah, I’m managing my shop. Everybody knows where the camera can’t see and you’re much more likely, and I think there’s studies that say this is you’re much more likely to actually start to cut corners or steal stuff if you know you’re being monitored to that level. It almost becomes a challenge to say, I’m going to get the man. But if we’re able to just set goals and monitor goals and monitor expectations and get notifications when something’s not working and then we can respond and we can find really quick access to what happened and correct it and give direction to the crew and interact with our customers, gosh, we can do that anywhere.
(19:47):
We do that for as long as we got an internet connection.
Jodi Knepper (19:51):
Great.
Tom Dorsey (19:54):
That’s fantastic. So what’s next? What are we looking at working on as far as building out that tool? Because as you said, or I think Sara said, having it to be so seamless back and forth because we’re able to now push not only the sales packages but also the technician hours and prep for payroll. What’s the next kind of project as far as building that tool out to I guess free up more of your time?
Jodi Knepper (20:26):
That’s interesting. I haven’t gone there, Tom, really. I think at this point we are trying to use AutoVitals tracking like the reports and the new, what’s the name of that new? They don’t want me to call it a dashboard. Tom, what’s
Tom Dorsey (20:46):
It called? Yeah, business control panel. There you go.
Jodi Knepper (20:49):
Control panel.
Tom Dorsey (20:52):
Apologize to for you. No worries.
Jodi Knepper (20:55):
Being able to use those kinds of things for analytics to just kind of see how things are related. How if this KPI or this metric changes, how does that affect the other KPIs? Those are things that are super interesting to me. So being able to drill down to do analytics on that level, that’s where I am personally going next is just to try and target the things that I think are going to make the maximum impact for our business. What I really love is that it feels like one system and Protractor, it feels like one system.
Tom Dorsey (21:31):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And so that’s got to be a great feeling. You’re in the refining stage and that’s really the key to becoming that full-time absentee owner, if that’s what you want to do, scale up your business, have multiple profit centers, all that good stuff. Because once you have that repeatable, scalable plan in place and then you have a way to monitor it, that’s a lot of freedom. It’s a lot of freedom. And so that’s got to feel pretty liberating in a pretty good spot, especially after the three point of sale transitions and all you went through to now to be able to sit back and say, let me find out how I can get the most efficiency here and the best performance there has to be great.
Jodi Knepper (22:11):
Well, and I think the other thing that our service advisors really appreciated was that there’s in Protractor, there’s an analytics tab that you can tap the tab and see on a per job, per line item basis, like what your margins are. And that’s made a big difference for us too in making sure that we’re doing smart business and that we’re protecting everybody. Win win-win, win for the customer, win for the shop, win for the service advisor, win for the tech. So you can’t do that if you can’t see it.
Tom Dorsey (22:46):
No, that’s fantastic. I used to do that when I was running restaurants. It’s a spot check on your plate cost, right? Spot check. And if you spot check throughout the day or whatever your time period is, and then you just go all that kind of stress, you’re in the right. And then all you got to do is just keep the funnel full, just keep the cars coming in and getting ’em moving through the process and everything else is banging and working and you a real big sigh relief to be able to lean back and watch it all happen. So Sara, if you could fill us in kind of on what are the next steps from your perspective, what are you working on? I know we’ve got some work to do and some we’re working on the training and things like that to really help get a big headstart, I think for people that are transitioning. Jodi blazed the trail for us and we learned a lot from that and now Sara’s here for us to really take that information and then make it better. What are you working on?
Sara Savio (23:53):
I think the most exciting thing that we’re working on is really aside from the training and getting you comfortable with the program, as Jodi was referring to from the training side, really getting you into that business control panel so that you as well as a coach, do you have an ATI coach? Are they involved? Do they understand what’s going on? So we’re working on that relationship as well so that together we can help you grow that business to where you want it to be. On the digital shop partner team, we have established a team. We’ve got advisors, we’ve got shop owners, we’ve got multi shop owners, we’ve got CRM specialists, web specialists. We’re a specialized team that are pulling together all of our resources to help the individual shop meet their specific goals in a short period of time. So we are working on group check-ins where we are pulling everybody together that may be struggling in a specific area so that we can have that collaboration between the shop owner, the service advisor, whatever it’s going to take to help the shop owner and the shop succeed. So we’re looking at all resources, at all options, what can we do to help you reach those goals, to be your partner to make it all happen. So that’s the up and coming that is the most exciting to me. I’ve seen the program work, I’ve seen everything work and just helping to share that and see everybody become as successful as they possibly can.
Tom Dorsey (25:35):
Yeah, it is really exciting. And it’s a great point, Sara, if there’s stuff out there, help us help you. Don’t be shy, post it up on the Facebook forum, get in touch with your advisor, whoever, send us a message and because we’re always learning, we love it, we love to learn, we love to get the feedback to see how are we going to help you be stronger, faster, better, and ultimately how do we get your crew happy, help you to get your crew happy with this technology transfer because you know why? Ultimately it all comes back to the service that you give to your customer. And that’s so important. And to have those customers that see such a difference in a customer service experience, transparency, that really changes the attitude about the industry. And then see a staff that’s well run and happy and just engaging and it’s really what’s going to help you to build those customers for life and serve your communities. And so it’s so important to get buy-in, like Jodi had said earlier, is protect those techs, make sure that they’re confident in the program, and then just really just kind of take the reigns off and let ’em go. Let ’em go do their job and just do it consistently and you’ll reap those benefits. And then like Jodi said, Protractor, AutoVitals together. Don’t be shocked to find yourself next to the pool collecting checks if that’s what you prefer.
Jodi Knepper (27:07):
I’m not there yet, perhaps one day,
Tom Dorsey (27:09):
But yeah, soon enough, right? We’re having too much fun. Yeah, sure, sure. But it’s nice to have the options, right? It’s like what John Long was telling us in that episode, the hit by the bus. I mean I keep going back to that. Set your business up for the hit by the bus rule and then you don’t have to be always hit by a bus. You could be off on vacation off at the casino or whatever you want to do, right? Bass fishing like Neman does every weekend out there hunting deer and buffalo and antelopes and stuff. Yes, I see you doing that someday. I love, so oh, two minutes. Oh shoot. Okay, well we’re out of time. Go figure. So I’ll just pitch the rest of it. I really appreciate you guys coming on. We got a great episode coming up next week. We’re going to make it a two week celebration and let’s make it as women in the industry because we had these two great guests on today who are out there blazing trails and leading the way.
(28:06):
And next week we’re going to have a fantastic episode Wednesday, same time, same place, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 AM 1:00 PM Eastern Digital Shop Talk Radio, and we’re going to be talking about women in the industry, how they have adapted and how they’re leading the way in a lot of areas. And we’ve got a great panel set up for us for next week. So tune in for that show. Until then, get out there and take this great information that you received today and go make some money with it and we’ll talk to you next Wednesday. Thanks. Thank you very much. Bye.

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