Use finance to drive systemic growth

April 9, 2015
Owners must go outside of their core competencies of vehicle repair and customer service to also focus on marketing, information technology, human resources, accounting, finance and operations to be successful.

Collision repair operators will have to develop new core competencies in order to compete against the increasing competitive pressures as a result of industry consolidation. As we have seen, consolidation is a trend that is not going away, and most likely will continue in frequency and intensity. Collision repair is no longer just about fixing cars and minding KPI’s.

In business school we talked a lot about core competencies. The most basic definition of a core competency is something a business is really good at. In collision repair, most operators would have a core competency in vehicle repair and customer service.

In fact, we may actually be too good at those things. The reality is the vast majority of owners in the industry are owner/operators. And even those owners who have done an excellent job of firing themselves to work on the business rather than in the business, most owners started in the business in some sort of operational role.

It is a prerequisite that to be successful in this industry you must drive excellence in the day to day operations of running a business, managing customer service, meeting insurance requirements, and fixing a car properly. Unfortunately, what I often seen in this industry is an exclusive focus on operations to the complete detriment or sometimes even complete exclusion of the other incredibly important aspects of a business. Continue reading.

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