Separate buildings and SORs

[AIIVESINCE85]

Hey everyone.
Our dealership split up the shop and service drive and our service advisors are literally 2 football fields away, so communication is sometime difficult. Is anyone else in a similar situation and what have you done as far as special order requests? We have been allowing the advisors to just call us to order parts, but if something doesn't get ordered, it becomes a he said she said situation, so I prefer a paper trail. Thanks!

[possum]

What DMS do you use? Do they have an e-message system that records on the RO? Or they could note it on the comments of the RO like "sp-ord parts from Mike in Parts on 11/10/17" and then they could snapshot and e-mail those to the parts manager to follow up.

[greenthumb-38]

old-fashion email ??

[tmundal]

I would use email. That way there is some kind of record... Depending on how big your parts department is, I would setup an email address that goes to more than one parts person that service can use for orders and p&a's etc.

[B964]

I bet your DMS has the solution built right in. Even the cheapest ones have something that can be used.
Training of how the DMS you are paying for works is needed.
All the information ever needed is a finger click away from service advisors and parts counter persons.

Parts and service need a game plan or mental flow chart in place and follow it. Then manage the exceptions not them all.

Email can work but is still using another system to cover for not using the first one correctly.

[gmsubparts]

Just started using Google Sheets, its just like excel but free and web-email based.
You can create a list for each advisor and input parts on order, when parts arrive, the advisor also has access to see and make changes such as add appointment times to a name/part.
Really helps for advisor to see what they actually have on order and to see how long parts have been sitting here.