As dealerships realize and start focusing on their inventory reconditioning cost, it becomes really important that there is one single person tracking the entire process and holding all departments and vendors accountable to the reconditioning cost and time at the dealership.
The automotive landscape today is more competitive than it was a few years ago. With increase in comparison shopping sites online there is very little room for dealerships to increase the sale price of their pre-owned inventory. So with limited ability to change the top line number the only way to increase the bottom line is to decrease the cost. Cost can primarily be broken down into purchase price and reconditioing cost. There isnt much control over the purchase price either, especially if majority of your inventory is acquired from auctions. So the ability to control cost really boils down to the inventory reconditioning cost as well as the number of days it takes to recondition your investment.
If you are targeting a 60 day turn cycle, the more days it takes to recondition your inventory, the less days you have to sell that vehicle before having to wholesale it.
So you can see why the it is so important to make sure reconditioning cost and the time to recondition vehicles is managed effectively.
While tools like
Simple Recon
can help track the process, it only as good as the information entered into it.
This is why it makes a lot of sense to have a designated "Recon Advisor" or a "Reconditioning Manager" or a "Chaser" that is responsible to make sure the information in the system is accurate.
This includes making sure that each department and all vendors are updating the system. If they miss an update the recon advisor should follow up with their managers. Raising a red flag when due dates are missed.
The recon advisor will also help provide insights into daily progress and overall department perfomance as well as identify areas of opportunity.
Read more about Simple Recon Workflow
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