In the present challenging industry circumstances, more dealers are looking to their aftersales operations to boost profits. Pinewood DMS helps dealers achieve this through more efficient management, using a part of the system called Workshop Planner.

It helps dealers improve productivity, by allowing them to optimise the way they manage their technicians’ time. Users can visualise and allocate work using a simple drag-and-drop interface. Bookings can be reviewed and amended as they arise and with a real-time view of the technicians’ and service team’s workloads, service advisors can allocate jobs to available technicians.

“Workshop Planner also allows dealers to ensure that specialist technicians aren’t being misallocated to generalist jobs – a common error which stifles the potential revenue they could be generating from more skilled work,” explains Neville Briggs, Managing Director at Pinewood.

“By segmenting technicians into service teams and splitting them by skill category, it makes it simpler for management to allocate work according to the proficiency of technicians.”

Specifically designed for technicians to focus on work that requires attention, jobs in the planner change colour according to their status.

“The colour-coded planner makes it really easy to see which jobs need attention. Technicians can see exactly when work needs to be finished – allowing them to ensure the job is completed within the allotted timescale, or communicate delays with the customer. As a consequence, dealers have found that customer satisfaction has increased.”

Workshop jobs can also be accessed in Pinewood’s mobile app for technicians, Tech+, where they can seamlessly move through operations, speeding up technician clocking processes.

Dealers’ using Pinewood DMS have found the Workshop Planner particularly beneficial. The ability to project a real-time display of activity in their workshop has provided clarity, and allowed them to react easily to changing customer requirements – improving flexibility and providing a superb aftersales experience.