July 12, 2019 — Toronto, Ontario–I am always a bit hesitant when I see demonstrations of new management technologies designed for collision repair businesses. While I am often impressed by the new features they provide for users, I am also wary of letting anyone know my opinions.
The effectiveness of any management software is a difficult thing to judge, as it is so very dependent on the buy-in of the team being managed by it, and the know-how of those using it. When used correctly, it goes basically unnoticed. When it is used poorly, the information it provides begins to have less and less bearing on reality.
Modern magazines, like bodyshops, rely heavily on management suites to track what story is being written, where ads will be placed, and what deadlines are approaching.
I have had some experience using a few of the competing magazine management suites, and am of the opinion that they are all effective—so long as you get used to them.
Unfortunately for me, I recently forgot about my strongly held belief. I went on a holiday, leaving Media Matters’ editorial team to keep things updated. On my return, it occurred to me that the team members who had remained were new–and not yet trained to use the software effectively.
The result was—of course—slightly chaotic. If I am to take my editorial report at face value, we have seven identically named articles appearing in the next issue—all called Pantless Dent Repair.
To the team’s credit, the online tool was updated to the best of their abilities, and they had the good sense to preserve the key bits of information separately. In fact, I was relieved to see that—without the crutch of absolute faith in the system, the team was able to recognize what information needed to be tracked.
It also reminded me that—in my own assessment of management suites—the key quality I should be basing my evaluations on isn’t about how much a system can do, but how simple it is to do what must be done to make it work.
And just for the record, so long as I breathe, Collision Repair will never recommend doing dent repair while pantless.
