Bodyshop, Car Rental, Insurance, Mobility, People, Supplier, Technology, Training, Vehicle Repair and Words
Three more stellar names within the automotive aftermarket industry have been confirmed for the inaugural Motor Claims Showcase Event, which will take place at the CBS Arena on Wednesday, 29 June.
Marc Holding, Managing Director, The Vella Group; Nick Sweetman, Head of Vehicle Repair & Service Operations for UK & Ireland, Enterprise Holdings; and Rebecca Winterhalder, Vehicle Damage Manager, Ageas Motor Claims are the latest names been added to an already impressive line-up of speakers.
They will take part in a panel debate titled, ‘A Sector at a Crossroads’, which will consider current market conditions and the multitude of factors that are now and will shortly impact the motor claims process – and how businesses can best navigate their way through an ever-evolving landscape.
The session is part of a quality line-up of ‘free to choose’ activities throughout the day, which includes four keynote sessions on the main stage, four partner showcase sessions in the designated Showcase Arena, a Next Generation Meet & Greet session, an expo featuring over 30 key sector exhibitors, and plenty of networking opportunities.
Mark Hadaway, Managing Director of ILC and Co-Founder of ARC360, said, “The latest names revealed as part of the agenda add to what is already a stellar line-up of names supporting this all-encompassing event.
“To have brands such as Abacai, Ageas, ElectriX – powered by LV General Insurance, Gemini ARC, Tesla, Thatcham Research, The AA and Trustpilot, amongst others, join the agenda is testament to how vital the evolution of the sector is to a far wider audience.”
Covid 19, Environment, Supplier, vehicle sales and Words
New UK car registrations fell -20.6% to 124,394 units in the second weakest May since 1992, after the 2020 pandemic-hit market, as supply shortages continued to hamper new purchases and the fulfilment of existing orders, according to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
The decline, compared with the first full month of reopened showrooms in May last year, demonstrates the impact of continued global supply chain disruptions, with the market -32.3% below the 2019 pre-pandemic level despite strong order books.
While private consumer purchases fell -10.3%, their market share increased year-on-year by 6.1% to 53.2%, in part due to manufacturers striving to fulfil deliveries – particularly of electric vehicles – to private buyers, with the commensurate effect on the business and large fleet sectors, which now comprise 46.8% of the market.
May saw registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) rise by 17.7%, representing one in eight new cars joining the road last month. Plug-in hybrids declined -25.5%, while hybrids were up 12.0%, meaning deliveries of electrified vehicles accounted for three in 10 new cars.
Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, said, “In yet another challenging month for the new car market, the industry continues to battle ongoing global parts shortages, with growing battery electric vehicle uptake one of the few bright spots. To continue this momentum and drive a robust mass market for these vehicles, we need to ensure every buyer has the confidence to go electric. This requires an acceleration in the rollout of accessible charging infrastructure to match the increasing number of plug-in vehicles, as well as incentives for the purchase of new, cleaner and greener cars.”
UK light commercial vehicle (LCV) registrations recorded their fifth consecutive month of decline in May, falling -25.1% to 22,000 units.
Bodyshop, Environment, Mobility, People, Supplier, Technology, Training, Vehicle Repair and Words
The latest ARC360 webinARC centred on the broad remit of products, equipment and services, considering how each is being impacted by post-pandemic demands, supply shortages and rising inflationary costs.
Taking part in the on-demand session were two of the UK’s biggest repair operations represented by Peter Randhawa, General Manager at Steer Automotive Group, and Dave Sargeant, Managing Director at Gemini Accident Repair Centres.
Equipment
Overseeing large and growing multi-site operations, when discussing equipment both identified mobility, and specifically the access to courtesy cars, as the single greatest issue.
Peter said, “For me, equipment includes courtesy cars and that’s one of our biggest headaches at the moment. The business is growing and while you do inherit courtesy cars from the acquired business, we are still running a hybrid system where we own some of our cars, lease some of our cars and then use Enterprise as a back-up service. But when the cars are due back there’s nowhere to get replacements. We’re trying to do deals with our current suppliers to extend usage, but it’s not easy.”
He continued, “I’d hazard a guess that we’ve got somewhere in the region of 1,000 courtesy cars and the idea is to consolidate them, but these things take time so mobility is the biggest thing we as a group are facing.”
Dave agreed that it is a challenge, and suggested that it has actually been exacerbated by the technology built into modern cars making so many of them undriveable when something goes wrong.
“Around 40% of the cars we get are immobile now,” he explained, “but you can’t get more courtesy cars to cover that increase – and because of our size we need a lot of them. I think now that the whole mobility solution needs to be looked at. Insurers need to see if there’s a better way of doing things other than bringing cars on site and putting customers in courtesy car unnecessarily. That’s not the way forward.”
Services
Another area under strain is service – with a growing gap between the service expected and the service that can practically be delivered.
Peter suggested that both the end-customer, the driver, and often suppliers are demanding service levels comparable to pre-pandemic and do not appreciate that the repair industry is still rebuilding.
He said, “Customer expectation is very high, but our industry is still recovering from the pandemic, so there is very much an imbalance between what we can deliver and what is being asked of us. In terms of suppliers, we need of a bit of tolerance when it comes to service level agreements and repair times. We’ll get through all this much quicker if we understand and support each other.”
Parts
Alongside staffing issues, the most obvious factor impacting service is parts supply, which Peter says has increased from two to three days before the pandemic to seven to eight days now. He says that while this is manageable, it does bring higher overhead costs while also dramatically affecting returns policies.
He explained, “If I’m buying parts now I’m booking two weeks ahead, so if that job is cancelled or anything interrupts the flow of it or we find additional damage which changes the basket of parts we need, it’s too late, we’ll have fallen out of our returns policy. That’s one issue. The other issue is payment. If you have 30-day payment terms you may be paying for those parts even before the job has arrived on site. With cashflow being what it is, that’s not workable.”
He called for more cohesion and collaboration between repairers, supplier and insurers, and while Dave agreed that greater cooperation is critical he also suggested that bodyshops could be more proactive themselves in finding solutions. He said that while suppliers and distributors were able to raise prices upstream, repairers sometimes saw themselves as the dam at the end of the river.
“But we can do something about that,” he said. “We can take a different route. We can ask if all the links in the chain are efficient and if they add value, and if they don’t then we can take them out and go direct.”
Innovation
It’s that level of innovative thinking that is required throughout the business at the moment, as costs continue to steeple and the challenges around staffing, supply and service persist. However, single, catch-all solutions do not exist and instead the way through this appears to be by taking many steps with marginal gains.
Dave highlighted just one that has been yielding rewards for a decade – rewards which continue to mount as energy costs rise.
“We’ve been roll priming for the past 10 years,” he explained. “We never put a car in the spraybooth to primer it and bake it. Why would you do that? It’s beyond me. It costs us 67p to roll prime a car compared to £8 to put it in the spraybooth. That adds up over a month.”
He believes there are many such gains available to bodyshop managers who take the time to go over all their processes, and encourages them to take the same approach with suppliers.
He said, “We need more product innovation, so you have to ask them if they have anything new, if there is anything better you could be using that could make you more efficient. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.”
Meanwhile, Peter explained that innovation must not just been consigned to products, but entire ways of working. As one of the fastest growing groups in the industry – if not the fastest – he said that the level of inefficiency he’s discovered in back-office functionality is alarming.
He said, “I’d like to see less double-entry, where systems aren’t talking to each other. We probably run seven portals and two or three platforms, and not one talks to the other. This really needs to improve; duplication must be something of the past, not the future.”
Bodyshop, Covid 19, Environment, Insurance, Mobility, People, Supplier, Technology, Training, Vehicle Repair and Words
While it’s impossible to know for sure, the famous saying that a car is ‘a computer on wheels’ must now be nearly a decade old. The amount of technology within modern vehicles has probably doubled since then, and the evolution is still just getting started with automation, connectivity and electrification all still in infancy.
As such, the products and equipment required to repair the modern vehicle is having to move on too, taking skills and processes on the journey with it.
Handling such rapid and significant shifts is no easy thing, especially for a sector still rebuilding from the impacts of Covid-19 and, on top of everything else, fighting with competitors from within the industry and without for their most prized possessions – staff.
This demand for skills has seen wages rise by as much as 20% in some areas but still, according to the latest NBRA Repairer Market Summary: “Bodyshops are having daily conversations with technicians leaving for other repairers or industries requiring similar skills.”
The challenges are not confined to vehicle repair either. While transformation here has been extensive, no less significant a transformation has been taking place in customer service, with consumer expectations elevated by the almost instant response and delivery times offered by leaders in other industries.
Service
With technology now enabling similar outcomes in our sector, service levels have become a point of difference like never before – and the gap between those who ‘delight’ the customer and those who don’t is only going to get wider.
“We repair cars,” said Ranjit Gill, Director at Fix Auto Slough & Uxbridge, during an exclusive ARC360 podcast, “but how can we make the experience for the customer better? We’ve got a culture now where customers don’t want to wait three days when they can have it tomorrow. They want instant reactivity. So businesses have to evolve to fulfil that requirement. Because as much as we think we’re in control, we’re not; the consumer will dictate how the market evolves.”
Automation is playing a growing role, but Ranjit believes there is low hanging fruit for bodyshops seeking cheap and immediate benefits in terms of customer relationships. For example, he explained how his site now communicates with customers via WhatsApp, a seemingly small innovation that is delivering big benefits.
Ranjit said, “Who wants to have a phone call? Even emails are getting old. So we’re just catering for what our customers want, which is instant reactivity. Also, it speeds up the process our end because it enables us to identify total losses, vehicles that are non-driveable, and what recovery we need to arrange. All that is done at the outset.”
Pandemic
But while that is an easy win, quick and convenient communication won’t make up for a slow and inconvenient repair. Unfortunately though, that is the reality as customer expectations have rebounded much quicker than the sector’s ability to meet them.
“Customer expectation is very high, but our general supply of staff and clientele of suppliers is still recovering from the pandemic,” explained Peter Randhawa, Group General Manager at Steer Automotive Group, during the most recent ARC360 webinARC. “There is very much an imbalance between what we as a sector can deliver and what is being asked.”
A lack of repair capacity is one factor, as is a lack of skills. Across all industries, 33% of employers say their workforce now lacks key skills and a further 41% expect to face the same problem within 12 months, while the Institute of the Motor Industry reported in March a 51% increase in vacancies across the sector.
“We need more staff,” Peter continued. “We’re actively recruiting but everyone knows recruiting is difficult right now.”
Sharing a platform with Peter on the ARC360 webinar was Dave Sargeant, Managing Director at Gemini Accident Repair Centres. He explained that a commitment to apprenticeships has protected his group from the most severe affects of the current skills crisis, with 17 new apprentices recently qualifying and now mentoring the next intake.
He said, “We’re not a company that struggles for people. We do look after our staff and have very little churn.”
Parts
But possibly an even greater stumbling block to delivering the service customers expect now is the disruption to parts supply. The NBRA has suggested that current delays could well become the ‘new normal’, and even get worse before they get better.
“It would seem our parts supply chain issues are set to continue if not worsen for a long time,” it warned, adding that lead times have now ballooned from five to 15 days to 15 to 45.
Peter backed this up, revealing that what used to be a 48-hour window for parts supply has now stretched to over a week, with those delays unavoidably passed on to the customer. Furthermore, any subsequent changes to the repair which mean additional parts ordering knocks the whole process back to square one.
The growing popularity of recycled parts among certain insurers shows they’re alive to this problem and seeking solutions, but the use of green parts is not yet accepted universally so can’t provide a quick fix.
Peter said, “We need a bit of tolerance from suppliers in terms of SLAs and repair times. The only way we’ll get through this is if we understand and support each other. It’s a joint challenge and the quicker we join forces the better.”
Equipment
One knock-on affect of longer repair times has been a greater market requirement for courtesy cars.
However, it is not the only thing placing strain on mobility options available to customers because while customer demand has gone up, supply has gone down – dramatically.
To understand exactly how severe the supply constraints are, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders spell it out clearly. It reported that car production in the UK was down by 32.4% in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021 – and 2021 was hardly a bumper year itself, down 6.7% on 2020 and a whopping 34% below pre-pandemic 2019.
Peter said, “Getting courtesy cars is one of our biggest headaches at the moment. Our business is growing and while you do inherit courtesy cars from the acquired business – I’d hazard a guess we’ve got somewhere in the region of 1,000 courtesy cars now – we are still running a hybrid system where we own some of our cars, lease some of our cars and then use Enterprise as a back-up service.
“What we’re finding now is the cars are due back and there’s nowhere to get replacements. We’re trying to do deals with our current suppliers to extend usage, but it’s not easy.”
Dave agreed, describing mobility as a huge problem simply because of the unavailability of new cars.
He said, “It’s being exacerbated by the fact that about 40% of cars we’re getting at the moment are immobile because of the technology on them. I think now that the whole mobility solution needs to be looked at. Insurers need to see if there’s a better way of doing things other than bringing cars on site and putting customers in courtesy car unnecessarily. That’s not the way forward.”
Innovation
Of course, facing down obstacles is nothing new for the automotive repair industry. It again proved its resilience during Covid-19, and adaptability and innovation in both product and process could well be the way through the post-pandemic challenges.
While no one can magic new vehicles and additional staff out of thin air, there are other areas of the business where creative thinking and a willingness to implement new things can improve processes.
For example, Dave explained how Gemini has for the past decade been roll priming instead of putting the vehicle in the spraybooth to primer and bake it, reducing costs from £8 to 67p. They have since gone back over all their processes to see if there are other marginal gains that can be made.
He said, “I think a lot of bodyshop managers could walk around their own shops and ask if the way they’re doing things is still fit for today’s world.”
In terms of production innovation, they have actively approached suppliers to ask for new solutions that could improve the business. Taking a similarly proactive approach is Ranjit, who revealed that one improvement came from the most unlikely of sources.
He explained, “I recently saw a glue-pulling system on Instagram. It was made by an America company, but I got in touch with them and we’re now incorporating that technology into our company. If you stand still, you fall by the wayside. You have to continue to evolve and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our business.”
Support
Fortunately, not all innovation needs to be unearthed. When it comes to world-leading manufacturers, they will bring it to you.
BASF is strengthening its claim to be the world’s most innovative company in the chemical industry with a new digital solution that it believes will raise bodyshop standards, improve efficiency and drive profits.
Rob Ghey, Head of Strategic Account Management (BASF Automotive Refinish UK & Ireland), said, “Refinity is our all-new global value proposition for automotive refinish customers. It is a cloud-based platform designed to provide our bodyshop customers worldwide with a cohesive digital experience, driving efficiency in the entire bodyshop process.
“From providing painters with technical support and assessed training modules to giving transparency to bodyshops through management metrics and insights, this will truly enable independent bodyshops and multi-site operations to make the sound business decisions needed to improve performance, profit, and growth over time.”
The single platform solution requires just one set-up and one password to provide full access. Its Business Applications will provide complete transparency into consumption and profitability metrics for each repair, while also enabling bodyshops to set their preferred portfolio of products, manage pricing and stock levels, and automatically generate recommended orders.
Refinity will also include links to offers from selected partners.
Rob continued, “Today’s bodyshops use a number of different software solutions across various systems in their daily operations, which often leads to an inefficient use of time and resources. With the launch of Refinity, BASF will become the first refinish paint company in the world to offer a single digital platform that incorporates all customer solutions in a secure, one-stop shop offering with a simple user interface and designed for the bodyshop environment. This leap forward in technology means Refinity is always up to date, with no onsite maintenance required.”
While it’s true the sector is changing rapidly, and change in one area is creating a need for change in another, the evolution that has already taken place should inspire confidence that the sector can remodel itself to continue to serve the customer safely, efficiently, and profitably.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when creating them.”
Environment, Finance, People, Supplier, Technology, vehicle sales and Words
Carzam has gone into administration just 18 months after launch, with co-founder Peter Waddell blaming the collapse on a wider lack of faith in the future of online vehicle sales.
Waddell formed the Peterborough-based company with Cox Automotive International President John Bailey in November 2020, investing £50m of their own money and promising a 24-hour nationwide delivery service.
However, outside funding has been difficult to secure as investors have become increasingly cautious about the future of online vehicle retailers. This has been reflected in falling share prices for the likes of Carmax, Carvana and Cazoo, plus the news that Dennis Publishing’s Autovia division will no longer operate its online car retail platform, Buyacar.
Speaking to The Times, Waddell said, “Business is all about taking a chance. We tried. It didn’t work. We didn’t get the funding.”
Adam Stephens and Greg Palfrey of Smith & Williamson have been appointed joint administrators.
