ALLDATA held a media day event at its headquarters in Elk Grove, CA, on Apr. 3, to celebrate its latest accomplishment — 70,000 customers — and to spotlight how ALLDATA is helping automotive service professionals boost their business success.
ALLDATA President Jeff Lagges and other company executives discussed how ALLDATA is reinventing itself for a changing market. Their presentations addressed ALLDATA’s commitment to providing high-quality OEM repair information and business solutions for automotive service professionals to help them increase their competitiveness in the marketplace, elevate their productivity and profitability, and forge stronger relationships with their customers.
ALLDATA executives also discussed today’s market challenges, how ALLDATA’s product suite can turn those challenges into opportunities and as well as the company’s vision for the future.
Lagges opened the event with a video presentation he produced that took the audience on a walk down ALLDATA memory lane, from its humble beginnings in 1986 as the pioneer of auto repair data, to a full-fledged provider of service and diagnostic information, shop management software and customer relations tools for the automotive repair and collision industries. It included both customer and employee testimonials.
Lagges pointed out that one of the major components in the company’s success, and an impressive 90% customer retention rate, has been to always maintain direct contact with customers, primarily through a direct salesforce. “We measure our success by our customers’ satisfaction,” he said.
As the company looks forward, its goals are to continue to build more awareness in the marketplace, focus on the health of the industry in general (ALLDATA is growing, while its market is shrinking), continue to help improve productivity at the fender and the counter so that shops are growing and not just surviving, and to continue its mantra of focusing on customer service and support.
Steve Gill, vice president of program development, echoed similar remarks in talking about industry issues and the need for best practices for shops to remain competitive and survive. He emphasized that the most pressing issues facing shops are vehicle reliability (which can be offset with proactive maintenance), diagnostics representing an increasing portion of repairs, the continued need for tech experience and training, and new vehicle technologies where integrated system repairs will require OEM data.
Gill offered ‘best practices’ advice that encompassed profit margins and ways to increase net profit, shop work mix, productivity, aggressive marketing programs and insurance relationships.
For more information on ALLDATA, visit www.alldata.com.