Making Sense of All the Information Out There

Making Sense of All the Information Out There

Mitchell 1’s Ben Johnson Featured in Motor Age Interview

With so much information available to auto service professionals these days, it can be overwhelming. In the May issue of Motor Age Magazine, Mitchell 1’s Ben Johnson, director of product development, talks about latest industry trends in the aftermarket and how to make sense of all that information.

Below is the introduction by Tschanen Brandyberry, managing editor, followed by some key excerpts and take-aways from the interview:

Today’s repair shop owners are inundated with information: new parts, new technologies, training opportunities and business management and marketing techniques. We recently spoke with a former shop owner who now works to make some of this information more accessible to owners and technicians.

Ben Johnson is director of Product Management for Mitchell 1. He is a former automotive repair shop owner and has been involved in leadership roles in the automotive aftermarket for more than 24 years. He explained some overall industry problems, solutions in general and what Mitchell 1 can offer.  

Excerpts:

• “…an overall theme that I’m hearing a lot these days goes back to the basic need to get vehicles through the bays faster. I know that sounds familiar — like old news even. But there are some new dynamics that affect productivity, and shops are facing an assortment of challenges they’ve never dealt with before.”
• “What has not changed is the need to keep cars moving through the bays. Customers still expect to have their car back the day they drop it off, or at latest by the next day.“
• “The issue for technicians is no longer about availability of data to fix cars, but how to find the right data — and more importantly, how to find it quickly.”
•  “…to be most efficient, technicians should be able to search for repair information once from a single source. At Mitchell 1, we’ve been working hard to consolidate all these types of repair information into a single application, so technicians have everything they need together in one place.”
• “…sometimes techs do face vehicles with issues that defy the common fixes. In those cases, they can reach out to their peers and await an answer. At Mitchell 1, we’ve had a very active online community of professional techs for decades, going back to the tip system in OnDemand5, our legacy repair information product. Over time this has evolved, and we now have a very dynamic group of techs actively participating in the SureTrack Community to help each other out of tough repair situations.”
• “Today’s repair professionals are getting more and more technology savvy – they simply don’t have a choice given the complex diagnostic and business challenges they face every day.”
• “Shops should research their options and select the information partner that will help them increase their bay throughput, allowing them to satisfy their customers and open the bays to accommodate the growing number of vehicles on the road today.”
• “Remember, it’s not about the quantity of data. Rather, shops can be most successful using a source that delivers OEM and “industry-generated” information together, and invests in technology that makes it easy for users to search those millions of pages and quickly find the information they need to meet their specific diagnostic challenges.”

Read the full article: Q&A with Ben Johnson of Mitchell 1

Source: Motor Age Magazine