Kunes Country Auto Group grows nine times

Report/Mate Aids with Store Insights

Report/Mate, Auto/Mate’s robust cross-department reporting system, has helped Fohr oversee and compare key metrics of the stores in his region. “In the last two years, the changes we’ve seen in reporting have been huge,” Fohr said. “We can pull pretty much any data from anywhere we want. I know other DMS vendors sometimes restrict access to data, so I appreciate having everything at our fingertips. We can use it for marketing or internal reporting, and it’s incredibly easy and fast to pull.”

In his role as regional manager, Fohr is constantly bouncing between stores to check on sales and numbers. Report/Mate allows him to easily accomplish these tasks without having to log out and log back into several different sessions. Additionally, he has set up a dashboard with customized widgets that track and compare key metrics at all his stores.

Another benefit of Report/Mate is the ability to build customized financial statements. In a large auto group, comparing the financial performance of numerous stores can be challenging, since every manufacturer’s financial statement has its own format. “When you’re comparing a Ford store to a Chrysler or GM store, it’s time consuming to search for data on manufacturer statements,” Fohr said. “The numbers are all located in a different place on every statement.”

Building their own financial statement allows Kunes’ management to easily compare 35 stores against each other. This has made it easier for Fohr and other managers to monitor and manage expenses. “We’ve seen a lot of different things that we probably would have missed before, such as advertising costs going up in one store or different compensation percentages.”

Service and Parts

In their service departments, Kunes has used Auto/Mate’s auto dispatch system to help streamline operations. “Before dispatch, our techs would have to manually flag jobs and adding all those up at the end of the week for payroll was challenging,” Fohr said. “Auto/Mate’s dispatch system keeps our techs in their bays. Obviously, a tech’s time is valuable so every time they put down their wrench to walk back and forth to a time clock is money wasted.”

Kunes’ stores have also rolled out Auto/Mate’s service scheduling tool to encourage customers to schedule appointments online. “Scheduling is really easy, we use it across all our stores, and we’re getting ready to roll forward with the recommended maintenance program,” Fohr said.

In 2020, Auto/Mate also rolled out major enhancements to its parts system. “Everything they’ve done is good. To be able to point and click and search for parts, is so much easier than trying to key things into the older-looking system.”