ALBANY, N.Y. – February 5th, 2013 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems (http://www.automate.com) announced today that Rowe Ford in Westbrook, Maine has successfully transitioned to auto dispatching in its service department since switching to Auto/Mate’s dealership management system (DMS) in November of 2012. Since implementing auto dispatch, the service department has realized improved service tech productivity and a greater volume of warranty submissions.

Service Director Dave Auspland oversees the dealership’s fixed ops department, which includes a commercial shop, body shop, main service shop, a quick lane and a retail re-conditioning department. With 38 technicians and more than 3,500 Repair Orders (RO’s) per month, Auspland was eager to transition to a fully automated dispatching solution.

“Our previous legacy DMS provider had a hybrid solution that didn’t allow us to specialize like we can with Auto/Mate’s system, and it required heavy modification to make it work,” said Auspland.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the previous DMS dispatch system was that the service director and shop foreman didn’t have complete control over what their technicians could view. The techs could search for open ROs, assign themselves to jobs and view what other techs were working on.

Auto/Mate’s auto dispatch system allows skill codes to be assigned to each technician and the computer system assigns the techs to each job based on their skill codes, who’s available and when the car is promised. Techs no longer have the ability to assign themselves to jobs and can only see RO’s that include their skill sets.

Auto dispatching increases service department efficiency by freeing up a manager’s time that was previously spent figuring out who is available to work, balancing work loads and monitoring progress on the various jobs. For Rowe Ford, it has also improved warranty submissions and repair times. “For warranty submissions Ford requires certain jobs to be done by certified techs,” said Auspland. The auto dispatching system eliminates situations when techs assign themselves to work they are not qualified for, thus increasing the shop’s warranty reimbursements.

Auspland relies on the route sheet in Auto/Mate’s Service Front End System. The electronic route sheet displays the status of all jobs in one easy to understand, color-coded screen. “I can look at the whole store and see the status of all repairs, how many waiters we have, if we’re giving customers accurate promise times and living up to them, when a vehicle will be finished, and so much more,” said Auspland.

Though the transition to Auto/Mate’s auto dispatch system is relatively recent, Auspland can already see the benefits. “Writing an RO is twice as fast, putting a customer into the system is twice as fast,” he says. “It’s still early but I can see more potential and I would never go back to a hybrid solution.”

To see a demonstration of Auto/Mate’s Auto Dispatch solution, stop by Booth #333 at the NADA Convention & Expo in Orlando, FL from February 8^th – 11^th.  Make an appointment at www.automate.com/nada or call 877-340-2677.