Diversification was the key word of the final ARC360 webinar for 2020 when bodyshops were encouraged to go out and find new work rather than relying solely on existing providers.
Lee Johnson, managing director of LD AutoVogue Accident Repair Centre in Norwich, urged bodyshops to make the most of their facilities – and their vast investments in training and tools – by seeking out new revenue streams to support existing ones.
He said, ‘We still need our work providers, of course we do, but volumes are down and will be for a while. Will they ever come back to what they were? I’m not sure. Bodyshops need to diversify and not be so reliant on insurance work. We need to look for other revenue streams because there are opportunities out there.
‘We haven’t got time to sit back and rest on our laurels now. We have to keep looking forward and keep changing. Instead of waiting for the work to come to us, we should get out there and get it or we won’t be here.’
That go-forward attitude is part of the reason he has invested in ADAS equipment recently, and from the first week of January plans to bring inhouse all the jobs he is now having to outsource.
People
However, investing in technology is only half the battle. Fellow panellists Paul Sell, insurance claims consultant & director, Service Certainty and Richard Taylor, European business development director, asTech, agreed that good technology without good people is useless, and the reverse is also true.
Paul said, ‘The purpose of technology is not to replace the experts, just to make their jobs easier and get more from them. For me, technology is about providing the experts with all the information they need to make the best and quickest decisions. That’s what we’ve been trying to do this year, and we’ve shown we can reduce movement and cost, while also getting the best out of people.’
Richard agreed: ‘We’re living in a tech-driven world, but the tech is there to assist people.’
However, he warned of potential problems coming down the road as the technology within vehicles could leave behind not just the technician, but also the tooling they are using. Richard warned that this could be a particular concern around ADAS and diagnostics.
He said, ‘The technology scares me a little, because people believe in Utopia while Utopia doesn’t exist.’
He warned of a basic lack of knowledge creating liability issues around using parts no longer fit for purpose and suggested it will be the supply chain’s responsibility to protect the repairer.
He said, ‘I’m no expert, but the lack of awareness will be one of the biggest impacts in the next few months. It’s our job to make sure that when people plug in a device they are 100% sure it’s going to do the job properly.’
Data
Meanwhile, the webinar also collated the headline data from various industry studies carried out recently to assess the state of the market.
According to TrendTracker, the UK vehicle body repair market has fallen from a total value of £4.87bn in 2019 to £3.57bn this year, a drop of £1.3bn. Its research also found that the average price of a repair (across all streams) in 2019 was £1,123, up from £786 in 2012.
Further, Audatex Solera predicted a 30% fall in claim notifications via its system this year, while CAPS found that unique claims fell from 74% of pre-pandemic levels in October to 69% in November, with supply chain transmissions down from 70% to 68% in the same period.
A live online ARC360 poll backed up those numbers, with 92% of respondents claiming volumes had remained static (24%) or gone done (68%) in the past fortnight.
Optimism
Faced with these figures, it would be easy to assume the second national lockdown has deflated a market already short on oxygen. In fact, further research from TrendTracker found that in September 33.9% of bodyshops were ‘very confident’ of withstanding the impact of Covid-19, while 50% were cautiously confident, while a second ARC360 poll during the webinar found 92% of attendees had some level of confidence ahead of 2021.
Paul said, ‘Every year there has been something our industry has had to adapt to. At the moment there are lots of things happening at the same time and it’s very difficult to predict what’s coming, but this industry, from bodyshops to insurers, has always found the answers.’
Richard concluded, ‘2020 has been a massive learning curve but if Covid had taught us one thing it’s taught us to take stock of where are and prepare for what’s coming over the hill. We’re super excited about 2021.’
ARC360, in association with I Love Claims, is supported by corporate partners BASF, BMS, Copart, EMACS, Entegral, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Mirka, Nationwide Vehicle Recovery Assistance, S&G Response, Sherwin Williams and CAPS; partners asTech, The Green Parts Specialists, Indasa, Innovation Group and Prasco; and strategic partners AutoRaise; NBRA; RepairTalks; and TrendTracker.
