NACE 2007 was all about “Taking Care of Business.” You know, like the Bachman Turner Overdrive hit of the 70s! Elvis’ tagline! TCB yogurt!

Complimenting that theme, the educational session  DRP Self Management Best Practices took on taking care of business. Pete Tagliapietra, NuGen IT, presented a ‘how-to” class to help collision repairers self-manage their DRP relationships. For the third consecutive year, this was one of the most popular sessions at NACE.

Bob Jones from RJones Body Pros Des Moines, Iowa, sits in the session taught by Pete Tagliapietra (R), NuGen IT, Poway, CA (photo: Janet Chaney)

In DRP relationships, insurance companies are continuously improving their methods of keeping score on shops that participate in their direct repair programs. Tagliapietra teaches that self-management, through technology that is now available will help collision repairers effectively and efficiently manage their businesses, particularly with insurance companies.

“The reason for this is that insurers are looking for relationships with shops who are top performers,” Tagliapietra stated. The top performing shops will ultimately receive more cars through the door. Shops can become these top performers by understanding and implementing DRP administrative best practices. By definition, best practices means “performing a specific task(s) or process in the most effective and efficient way possible to achieve optimum results – and offering meaningful Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurements.

KPI metrics that are being monitored include, but are not limited to: repair severity, alternate parts utilization, cycle time, parts as percentage of labor, repair vs replace, estimating compliance, supplements, days late from projected completion, and more.

Tagliapietra began to unfold the complexities of performance metrics and how the collision repairer must have an environment to constantly monitor real-time performance. This is accomplished by gathering all pertinent information from the electronic estimate via Collision Industry Electronic Commerce Association (CIECA) standards. It is critically important to merge this estimate data with cycle time events, CSI, repair quality, and administrative compliance.

NuGen Dashboard Display

The technology now exists to pull information from various sources and combine them into the significant information reporting which Tagliapietra referred to as Performance Indexing. Performance Indexing will have more significance in representing best practices and cementing relationships with insurers than KPIs can do.

Bob Jones from RJones Body Pros, Des Moines, Iowa, sat right up front. Jones, an industry leader and one of the original 3M ARMS Instructors said, “I wanted to talk to Pete about this technology for my shop. In the future we are going to need information at our fingertips – we have to have the systems that allow us to do that.”

One BASF Color Source jobber from Texas really saw value in this message. Cristobal Batarse, Luis Color Supply, said, “This was the best class at NACE. As soon as I got back from Las Vegas I called Pete and asked him to come to Houston andhow this product to my managers.”

“What this is all about is allowing the shops to be able to concentrate on what they do best – which is fix cars,” Batarse continued. “It creates a consistent relationship with the insurer – I am going to get all my shops on it.”

With such popular educational sessions, the final assessment from NACE is that “we hit the bulls eye by providing collision repair professionals from all industry segments with outstanding education networking opportunities, and the latest products and technologies.”