MPi's World Class Inspection Program Helps Auto Dealers in Down Market with $20M Additional Upsell per Month

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 11, 2008 -- With declining vehicle sales nationwide many auto dealers are struggling for profitability. What was once considered the "backend" of their business, the service repair shop, is now considered to be the "backbone" of the turnaround necessary to keep many dealers in business. MPi, a leading provider of profitability tools for auto dealer service departments, today announced a milestone for its World Class Inspection(TM) (WCI) program. For the month of June '08, dealers using the WCI program inspected over 189,500 vehicles, generating an additional $20 million in customer parts and labor upsells. This figure has doubled in less than a year, up from $10 million in August of '07, proving the success of the program in service departments nationwide.

"With declining sales and fewer customers, dealers need to find ways to grow their service customer pay repair business. Traditionally dealers have used vehicle inspections processes to identify additional sales opportunities. The problem with inspection processes in most dealerships is a lack of discipline to adhere to a standard inspection process and the inability to effectively manage or implement change in this process," commented Les Silver, MPi Chairman and CEO.

The World Class Inspection program, launched in Jan. of '07, offers real live process measurement for vehicle service departments and provides service departments with the tools and processes needed to measure, manage and coach desired results. It includes Implementation/Training, Hardware, a Measurement System, Software Tools and Field Support. The program is strongly endorsed by many successful service departments including Robert Corman, Service Director at Arrigo Dodge Chrysler Jeep in West Palm Beach, FL. Since implementing the program the dealership has been enjoying anywhere from $45,000 to $60,000 per month in upsell on return business.

"I've been in the business 16 years and this is the first time I've ever seen a system where you give a customer a piece of information that is worth something to them. They say anything printed off a computer is real, well I guess the proof is in the pudding -- our upsell per 30-day return is tremendous -- we see almost $2,000 a day in return revenue from vehicles inspected 30 days ago," said Corman. "The World Class Inspection program is wonderful because it allows our customers to know exactly what their vehicle needs when they leave. Before, we were in the archaic days, like cave men, scribbling things on the back of repair orders. We would just give it to our customers and say, 'well here, you need a thousand dollars worth of repair,' with no explanation of how and why we got there," Corman added.

Dealerships use MPi's customized Electronic Dealership Generating Solution EDGE(TM), (formerly known as ARGIS (TM)) to conduct the inspections. The EDGE system is a proprietary inspection software solution that delivers a World Class Inspection process for the service advisor and technician. The inspection results in a professional, one-of-a-kind customer inspection report for the customer to take away that details what was performed and the results of the inspection with a price estimate in an easy-to-read document called the Know Your Vehicle Report(TM).

EDGE integrates with most Dealership Management Systems (DMS) to easily pull the vehicle RO information into EDGE in order to quickly and precisely conduct vehicle inspections based on the OEM recommendations and dealership offerings. The system operates in the service department from an installed network server that transmits the EDGE information to the service advisors and technicians on their local computers. EDGE replaces an archaic, somewhat unprofessional paper process with a sophisticated electronic system.

"With vehicle sales off and brand loyalty disintegrating, procuring more customers is no longer the answer for improving service and parts profits. Selling all the legitimately needed work to your existing customers is the key and MPi has found that dealers who use their World Class Inspection(TM) product are realizing an additional $100 a repair order in customer pay sales. This is the difference between staying in business or not for many dealers," said Silver.