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Looking back lends valuable insight to industry future |
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Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
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Page 2 of 2 Estimating system concerns
Another thing that hasn’t changed in 15 years is collision repairers’ concerns about various aspects of the estimating systems. It’s difficult to read the words of Jim Murphy, an executive with ADP in 1992, responding to ongoing and vocal griping from the industry about ADP’s new-in-1992 “Parts Exchange Salvage (PXS)” product and not hear echoes of other representatives of the “Big Three” estimating in more recent years.
“It’s being announced in our San Ramon office today that we’re making some major changes in personnel in the salvage product area,” Murphy an-nounced at CIC in mid-1992. “We should apologize to you for making you speak so loud to be heard. But you have been heard. To make PXS successful, there has to be four winners: shops, insurers, dismantlers and consumers. We’re going to try to do everything we can to make sure there are four winners. I think you will see some real changes in the next three months.”
All three estimating system providers have had to make similar ‘mea culpas’ in recent years for such blunders as trying to encrypt data or adding adhesive bonding labor time for operations in which the automakers don’t endorse that procedure.
Trade association rifts
Conflict within and among the industry’s trade associations was alive and well in 1992. In Oregon that year, for example, members and directors of the Oregon Autobody Craftsman Association were defecting over internal disagreements regarding the association’s stand on insurer direct repair programs. Some in the group left feeling the association was not taking a strong enough anti-DRP stand; others resigned from leadership positions feeling their voluntary efforts and leadership were not being respected.
Such bickering within the industry is not something that has gone away. One industry discussion board features regular criticism of the largest industry associations and the fight over “Right to Repair” legislation also has found national groups on opposing sides.
But there is cause for hope. ASA, SCRS and AASP increasingly join together to issue statements, work on projects and take stands – far more regularly than any two such groups did 15 years ago. All three, for example, this winter announced the joint formation of a “Database Enhancement Gateway” to work on estimating database issues.
Not all predictions correct
Certainly some of the other issues the industry was grappling with in 1992 have not gone away. “Point-of-sale” controls on refinish products were being discussed then as now. CAPA was certifying – and decertifying – non-OEM parts with much the same level of industry confidence in the process then as now.
And one industry observer certainly got it wrong in 1992 when he said, “My conviction is that four or five years from now there will be a wide variety of very healthy, beneficial relationships between shops and insurers. I don’t think we will call it DRP because that will refer back to the bad old days when we were experimenting as we are now and must be. And those relationships will be based by-and-large on mutual savings and mutual trust, not on negotiated discounts.”
It’s hard to fault someone daring enough to look into the future and share their vision for the collision repair industry. But looking back can be a useful exercise in helping the industry move forward in a positive direction. Because as visionary Alan Kay says, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He can be contacted by email at
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