Online OE Parts Ordering
Read any issue of a body shop publication or web magazine, and there are bound to be articles about choosing between OE and non-OE parts. Try Body Shop Business' Point Counterpoint article from February 2008, or ABRN's May 2009 update on Ford offering repairers more OE parts at competitive pricing. The OE versus non-OE parts "war," as it's frequently referred to, is now on a more even playing field. How? With dealers using automaker incentives to competitively price OE parts through OEConnection's CollisionLink.
Using CollisionLink every day, Joanne Victory, Shop Owner and Office Manager of Judd's Body Shop in greater Grand Rapids, Michigan, reveals how parts procurement has a chain-reaction affect on repairs. She says, "Using OE parts has a positive impact on cycle-time, and CollisionLink helps us more easily get OE parts at competitive pricing against aftermarket or salvage. Genuine OE parts get delivered faster, and because they are higher quality parts the repairs go faster and smoother. This leads to drivers getting their cars back on time – or sooner. Installing more OE parts using CollisionLink truly impacts cycle-time, which improves customer satisfaction, which leads to increased revenue and profitability."
Leading the CollisionLink Implementation Team for OEConnection, John Haluch explains how the program works. "We've built automaker incentive programs into CollisionLink. It takes just seconds for a shop to convert estimates to parts orders and send orders to their favorite dealers. Dealers instantly see the complete order which includes the non-OE parts and the OE equivalent parts designated by the automaker as having incentives. Then the salesperson determines if and how much they can discount the parts based on their automaker incentive funds. They contact the shop to make the offer so shops make informed decisions to either purchase the OE parts or proceed to using aftermarket or salvage. All this is done easily online, helping shops use more OE parts on repairs."
Judd's dealers include Dan Pfeiffer Lincoln Mercury and Berger Chevrolet. Both participate in their automaker's incentive programs, and both reply quickly to Judd's CollisionLink orders with automaker program OE parts. Gerry Rozeboom, Berger's Parts Manager elaborates, "These automaker programs have many names: beat the competition, bump the competition, price matching, conquest, you name it. But they all do the same thing – help shops get OE parts at competitive pricing so they can improve their cycle time, speed repairs, and get drivers into good quality parts. With CollisionLink price-matching, we've eliminated looking up parts one-by-one to see if they qualify, and moved to responding quickly and easily online. Many of our shops even put their non-OE parts ordering on hold until they see what we can do for them."
From a shop's perspective, Joanne says it best with, "There are so many reasons to use CollisionLink. I get immediate onscreen notification of OE parts available at competitive pricing, we know they'll be available and delivered with no damage, and the overall time savings means we can fix more cars. All of this leads to improved cycle-time and improved profitability. That's a good thing!"
ABRN’s May 2009 update on Ford offering repairers more OE parts at competitive pricing
Body Shop Business’ Point Counterpoint article from February 2008
Click here to register for CollisionLink (dealer-provided service)
Email a member of the CollisionLink Team so they can call you.
Call a CollisionLink Specialist at (888)776-5792, ext. 1948.
