There is a lot of technology currently available to help aftermarket businesses navigate fleet consolidation.
“In this day and age you really can’t handle a 10,000 unit fleet on a piece of paper or a white board,” says Adam Madsen, manager of product management at Karmak. “You need a more sophisticated system.”
Madsen says Karmak’s business systems allow distributors to set price, shipping and invoice notices for national fleet customers in accordance with buying group rates. Similar to VIPAR’s price-correction tool, this technology ensures a large customer is charged correctly for any part prices it has negotiated. The software also can sync up with localized prices for other components.
Madsen says that transparency across multiple locations is something larger fleets appreciate.
“It can make you attractive to that customer,” he says.
That simplicity is visible in service shop technology, too.
In addition to its parts notices, Karmak’s service software also can record negotiated labor rates, says Jason Goby, product owner.
(Karmak also recently published an article in its thought leadership series on this topic. Titled “One of My Customers Just Acquired His Biggest Competitor. Now What?” the article can be found HERE.)
At Decisiv, Vice President of Products and Channel Marketing Michael Riemer says his company’s service management platform allows technicians to access maintenance information in seconds.
By entering a VIN into Decisiv’s program, a technician can pull up a complete vehicle history on any unit saved into its cloud-based system. The lookup is filled with factory and aftermarket spec’ing information, previous repairs, PM schedules and fleet contact information for any future work.
And Riemer says once a fleet (or service provider) enters a vehicle’s information into the program it is there to stay; and can be accessed in the future at any time.
When handling a new unit after consolidation, that’s a major time saver, he says.
“It fundamentally changes the way service providers can work with customers,” Riemer says. “Service recording, vehicle history, customer approval requests … it makes everything more efficient.”
