The ORION IN-STORE CONSULTING PARTNERSHIP is a full-service, in-house consulting program built to enhance the Guest Experience and Improve Fixed Operations Profitability. ORION works with you to build a clear plan that addresses the specific challenges in your dealership, then works with you to implement that plan together. Expect improvements in Guest Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, Customer Pay Sales, and Net Profit. Our goal is to help you improve the long-term health of your dealership.
Business Analysis
ORION’s BUSINESS ANALYSIS looks at the opportunities available to you. Looking at your most recent performance metrics, ORION will project the growth opportunities attainable for your dealership. Our Business Analysis, together with our experience working with more than 30 dealership consulting partners, guides our recommendations for where to take action and how to attain these results.
Improvement Plan
The IMPROVEMENT PLAN defines the action steps needed to enhance the Guest Experience, Employee Experience, and Culture in your service department.
We work together with your leadership team to develop and implement each part of the IMPROVEMENT PLAN. We find that each team we work has many well-run areas of the department but further benefit from our guidance about how to improve and add to the positive structures already in place.
The PLAN should include a system for enhancing the Guest Experience, so that we can create happy guests who are comfortable doing business with us and telling their friends to do the same.
It should include a system for enhancing the Employee Experience by addressing workflow and profitability obstacles that plague many service departments. Often these frustrations with workflow get in the way of team members feeling successful and accomplishing their sales and financial goals, prompting them to consider whether this is the job for them. Addressing these issues promotes employee retention and continued skills development, benefiting the employee’s and the department’s bottom line.
The plan also needs to include a system for promoting a growth culture that continues to improve the team and the department. Our system promotes fun and positive energy for your team and creates a path for consistent touchpoints to coach your team for continued improvement.
Development of the Improvement Plan includes a deep dive into the financials, DMS reports, guest traffic patterns, staffing levels, and facility specifics. ORION will complete this research before we arrive on site. After completing our research, we spend our first visit getting to know your whole team so we can build the relationships needed to implement lasting change. We use this time to listen and understand. We also review a large sample of repair orders so we can understand more deeply what business opportunities are present. Having completed all this research, we can more effectively make recommendations to the leadership team and develop the plan together.
Plan Implementation
Before the PLAN IMPLEMENTATION starts, we take every effort to ensure all parties involved receive the communication they need to understand and buy in to the plan. Without buy-in, changes for improvement often fail. We start with this communication so we can get participation and buy-in from the whole department.
With our guidance, the PLAN IMPLEMENTATION takes place in stages over a few months, ensuring your team members understand each part before the next part is introduced. The ORION Team will be on site for a week each month to assist with process implementation, staff training, leadership training, and communication.
We then help transition to practicing the processes we have implemented together. Consistent practice with meaningful feedback leads to continued long-term results.
Financial Planning & Forecasting
ORION FINANCIAL PLANNING AND FORECASTING takes a look back at two years of data to help plot the course forward for the next year. We look at repair order counts per month and per day, hours sold, hours per repair order, effective labor rate, sales, gross, gross profit percentage, mechanical labor and maintenance labor sold, sales per day, dollars per repair order, advisor staffing counts, advisor repair orders per day, technician staffing counts, technician proficiency, unapplied labor, controllable expenses, and net profit.
With the look-back data as reference, we forecast each month using ‘sounds-true’ testing to ensure the forecast amount is attainable with the employee staffing and customer traffic levels. This creates a plan for the year that give the leadership team targets for each of the key metrics each month, how to staff accordingly to achieve the forecast, and daily objective targets for both the department and each employee.