Using Technology To Increase Your Shop’s Efficiency With James Krakower of JMK

James Krakower is the Director of System Development at JMK Computerized Tire Dealer Information System. He has an extensive background in technology, and his operations experience has allowed him to discern what works and what doesn’t work on a day-to-day basis. James started his academic career leading a graduate course on how to market tires.

In this episode…

Are tire and auto repair businesses lagging behind other industries regarding the effective use of technology? According to James Krakower from JMK Computerized Tire Dealer Information System, many tire and auto repair shop owners are not utilizing various forms of technology that would make their lives abundantly easier. How can you use technology and the latest software to maximize the efficiency of your operation?

On this episode of Gain Traction, Neal Maier and Matthew Peters welcome James for a conversation about how available software and technology can benefit tire and auto repair shops. They talk about how their industry has been slow to embrace software that can ease the process of tire and auto repair shops’ customer service, inventory tracking, accounting, and other aspects of operations. Don’t miss this enlightening and informative discussion!

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• James Krakower provides background information on Tire//SMART, powered by JMK
• Why tire dealers have a difficult time changing their point-of-sale systems
• How many businesses can sell the same product and deliver a similar service but operate so differently
• Is there technology that would make tire and auto customer service more efficient?
• How the resurgence of QR codes can positively affect the tire and auto industry
• Where James gets the inspiration to operate and build progressive software

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• James Krakower on LinkedIn 
• Tire//SMART
• Neal Maier on LinkedIn 
• Matthew Peters on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Neal Maier:

Hi, this is Neal Maier and I’m joined today with Matt Peters. We’re the hosts of Gain Traction, where we talk with top automotive business leaders about their journeys.

Before we jump in with today’s guest, this episode’s brought to you by Tread Partners. At Tread Partners, we provide digital marketing for multi-location tire dealers and auto repair shops. By using our strategy, branding and marketing, we help shops sell more tires and put more cars in bays. So what are you waiting on? Contact us at treadpartners.com.

Today we’re joined by Jim Krakower, director of system development for Tire//SMART, powered by JMK. Jim has an extensive background with technology and is incredibly knowledgeable about what works and what doesn’t work in day-to-day operations. Jim, welcome to Gain Traction.

James Krakower:

Thank you very much, Neal. A little background on Tire//SMART. I started off in the academics as a graduate course on how to market tires. Ended up selling tires, importing tires from Europe, importing tires from Korea, one of the first Kumho dealers in the country, at one time, the biggest Michelin dealer in Central Illinois with multiple stores, and then ended up writing a lot of articles that appeared in the major trade magazines and starting our own software company, which is now called Tire//SMART. And so we have experience both as a user and also as a developer. And-

Neal:

I imagine along the way, that experience has greatly informed what you’ve built.

James:

Well, thank you. We can see the project on both sides of the fence, both as a tire dealer using the system and as a developer developing the system. And it’s exciting to have the opportunity to share our thoughts with you today.

Neal:

So, Jim, I know we talked briefly about it, you’ve spent some time thinking about why tire dealers have a tough time changing point-of-sale systems or even considering a different option. What’s your take on that decision-making process?

James:

Well, from my experience on both sides of the fence and also the articles and talking to viewers at the SEMA Show, the decision is sometimes based on one or two points of knowledge, but they forget to look at all the points of knowledge. So they make assumptions, they assume everything else is going to work fine and that can be misleading. And then once you decide on a system, it’s not as simple as getting a PC-based software product that you would pick up at the store.

You have to do many things. You have to convert your data from your old system or you should convert your data, you don’t have to, but you obviously don’t want to lose your data. You have to train your staff on how to use the new system. You have to set up your back office bookkeeping system to actually accommodate the new system. You have to set up system parameters, system of order, the steps involved. And all those things are important and they can be easily forgotten. And also after the sale, you’re hitting on the vendor to spend the time with you to customize the system to your application. Sometimes the system is rigid and so you have to change the system’s application, which can cause much more stress to you. So that customization is really critical to the success of the system.

Neal:

It’s amazing to me how so many businesses can sell the same product and effectively deliver a similar service, but yet they all operate so differently. I imagine you see a wide variety in that.

James:

I do. I was sharing thoughts with people that just recently I had a conversation with a dealer who thought one thing of a system and then realized later after he got into it, it’s sort of like buying a radio for your car. You say, I just bought a car. You say, does it have a radio? Sure, it has a radio. Okay, check that off. Yes, but radios have different capacities and some radios sound better than others, but they’re all radios. So, yes, you can get a system and check off a feature. You’ve got this feature. Sure. Well, wow, maybe it operates differently than the other system, a different feature. The problem is, is that most tire dealers don’t have anyone to go to for a reference point for advice. So they sit down, but they’re busy with their own task and they don’t have the patience to go into detail on every system and then later on realize what they didn’t get or did get. That is a problem.

Matt Peters:

Jim, through the years I’ve talked to a number of business owners across the country and they all seem to have the same issue, which is what you just described. What I would tell them is that it’s a good idea to put pen to paper, write down the features that you have now that you must have, the features that you’re looking for that you don’t have, and then for each system that you’re interviewing or vetting out, make the system provider demonstrate the features that you require, and then talk about the features that you want and see if they have those. And I tell them that it’s good to vet out multiple providers to find the system that’s going to best suit your business. And you’re right, there really isn’t anybody in the industry that I’ve come across that is available to help guide business owners and their senior staff through the process of selecting a good point-of-sale system.

James:

In the last 20 years, I’ve written dozens of articles and I was the speaker, as you know, at the national convention. And many of the articles are geared exactly to what you said, Matt, are geared for a recipe on how to buy a system, but people don’t always put that due diligence in. So I commend you, I agree with you what you said, and sometimes you don’t know what you don’t have. So people will accept something and put up with it when they could have had something else if they had gone and researched it.

Matt:

Because sometimes, Jim, they get so far down the rabbit hole that they feel there’s no way for them to escape and move to another system to get them what they really need. So then they just kind of go through the motions and belly ache and complain and make their life harder than it needs to be. I mean these systems are really designed to make your business more efficient and if it isn’t working the way that you need to create that efficiency, and I realize the dollars have been spent, but you’re costing yourself more time and money by continuing to work with a system that isn’t meeting your needs.

James:

I agree. On our development, we have we feel a very robust system. We’ve been adding to it quite a bit in features, but lately we’ve added features that can be used by other systems without changing the system. So we’ve added features that are standalone that can be appended to an existing dealer system to allow them to maintain the consistency that they have in place already, but embellish it, specifically towards smartphones. And smartphones are ubiquitous now and they are the future for the technology because desktops have become not as popular as smartphones, the mobile world. So we see that type of a situation where a dealer can keep their current back office system, even if it has limitations, keep their current point-of-sale system, but embellish it with smartphone-oriented features. And I can get into those if you want to hear some of them, but they’re innovative features that give the dealer an angle with their customers for either efficiency or for loyalty or retention.

Matt:

Jim, that’s really fantastic. I mean, providing external tools to tag on to existing systems is a great way to help that dealer advance their technology solutions within their business and help their staff become more efficient. I know these dealers work at the sales counter, but they’re in the showroom talking to a client or they’re out in the parking lot and having these tools available right from their smartphone or their tablet that can be powered by Tire//SMART and the JMK system makes a lot of sense. That’s a really great idea.

James:

Actually, we took the angle from two different sides of the street. In one sense, we have features that the consumer can use to link them back to the dealer to tether their loyalty. The customer can use a feature on their smartphone to be loyal back to the tire vehicle service dealer. And the other side, we have features that the employees can use with their smartphone to be a better informational tool for their own system. For example, they can use their smartphone while they’re in the stacks to quickly read the UPC code on the tire label and change the quantity on hand and document the differential. So they can take inventory right from their smartphone as an employee without the traditional way of going in and having a separate reader and having a separate process and having many steps. So now the employee has a less stressful situation, so they are happier to be there and there’s accuracy for everyone to know what’s in stock.

So the smartphone goes both ways, both as a consumer, a customer to the dealer, where they can use the smartphone to look up their service history, make an appointment, get a coupon. Follow the pattern of Amazon actually where they have a follow-up after they have it done. Follow the pattern of your dentist’s office where they have a confirmation of an upcoming appointment and a one-tap response. So they see the dealer as being modern and being in the smartphone world. And that’s an add-on that can go onto anybody’s system. That’s not something that requires our core system. It’s an add-on that is attached to anybody’s existing system.

And then on the other side, having the employees have the feature where they can track the inventory or, for example, if they’re working on vehicles, use barcodes like have been around for the last 40 years, but not commonly used in a lot of shops where they can hit the work order with each step on the barcode and then tell the front counter the status of the work order of what’s been accomplished so they can talk to the consumer and also be organized at the front counter. If you have many bays, if you’re in a shop that’s got more than eight or 10 bays, it can get very confusing as to what the status is of every car, especially if you’re busy and you waste time tracking down something you could easily find out. Again, the smartphone is the answer.

Neal:

Jim, I came from a 17-bay facility, we had a 17-bay shop at a 10-bay shop, and you’re making me feel like a true dinosaur as you’re talking through these advancements because we did all of these by a convoluted system of colored flags and paper and a lot of post-it notes. So I think, if nothing else, you’ve put a dent in the post-it note consumption in business. That’s incredible.

James:

And thinking about it, the interesting thing is we’ve also incorporated scanning into our system where we can scan documents. So we actually scan the actual document, make it available, so the bank, if anybody has a bank account, you know you can look at checks and deposits, they’ve been scanned for years. If you go to make an appointment, you know if you go on the website for airplanes, you get a picture of all the seats and you can pick a seat you want. Well, we’ve incorporated that same, we copied that same style into our appointment schedule so you can see visibly what’s out there available to you.

All these things that I talk about are not earth-shattering. Smartphones have been around taking information for years, but having the ability to hook up and get your inventory count and read the UPC label and then make a quick adjustment, I’ve never seen that before, and having the ability to track progress on the work order and feed it back into the sales counter. You said something very on target, Neal. When you’re in a big shop with 17 bays, it’s going to have some pretty strong geographics. It takes a long walk to go to the third route. Well, at your bay, if a customer says, “What’s the status of my car?” You have to call three people on the loudspeaker and then interrupt them and find out. That’s not needed today. The technology is so available and so obvious, but not being used. And that’s the secret of it because people don’t know enough to even think about it. And now when you mention it, oh, yeah, that’s a great idea, but it’s been around for a long time. It’s not really a new idea, it’s just an application to our industry.

Neal:

I was 20 pounds lighter from all the running back and forth to check on a vehicle or come look at this. But I keep going back to the inventory. When an inventory count was wrong, I would usually go up front and change it after about the fifth time it bit me. It’s just one of those things that there’s so many things going on, it’s easy to overlook the obvious. So, you putting those tools and that technology right in front of someone or literally in their hand, now you’re making life way easier.

James:

Yes, I agree. It comes back to a comment you made at the start. The problem is, is that sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t know enough to ask for something and you may not have the patience or time to read through all the articles and literature. These podcasts are wonderful because they sure open your mind up to new ideas. But I think the secret, I would say, and this is back from my experience of talking to dealers over the last many years, and also writing articles and the last SEMA Show, always coming with sour grapes because they didn’t realize something that they wanted and didn’t have. Comes back to your words and Matt’s words about making a written list.

The key thing here is written because it’s easy to forget something when you don’t have a written. It doesn’t need be typed out, it can be handwritten. And then taking the time to get exposure to systems by going to visit and watch them in operation and talk to people using them. Don’t just talk to the owners. The owners only know the reports. They don’t know the functionality of the counter, but the people in the troops know the functionality of the counter, and they can speak to some frustration of some feature that we wish they had to look up past history or whatever, or look up inventory count or look up on the car.

And we’re doing a lot also with QR codes. The restaurant industry is interesting because when they had the pandemic, if you’ll know, a lot of menus now have QR codes where they use their smartphone to look up the menu. But we did the same thing with cars. We actually have a QR code for the windshield the size of a postage stamp, so it’s very innocuous. And the consumer can look up and see everything about the car. They’re past service, pie charts, bar charts, make an appointment, get a few coupons, save a dollar, make a text message right to the store if they want to or a phone call right from their smartphone. And that sophistication is so important in the 25 to 45-year-old bracket, which is the most active bracket for traveling because it establishes a level of credibility that shows that you’re modern as a store. And that technology’s very available. It’s just something people don’t know enough to even ask for in the tire store industry. So that’s what we’re finding

Neal:

That QR code is something. That’s one of the things COVID gave us is the resurgence of that technology. And it’d been here forever. Really, I think all we needed was a good reason to embrace it. And that being integrated into a camera on a phone, that is really, really handy. And I’m sure things like that help dealers build trust and loyalty with their customers.

James:

It shows sophistication. We started developing on it 10 years ago and back 10 years ago, QR codes were not built into the phones. Smartphones only had about 30% of the market. Steve Jobs when the iPhone came out in 2008 or so, ’07, ’08, it was just the beginning of the market and then there was the super upheaval to get smartphones. And now QR codes are ubiquitous and our exposure to it gave us the background.

But you’re absolutely right, and I think this COVID was a very bad thing, but one of the good things about it was that people got familiar with doing things remotely and that’s never going to go back now. The mobility on their phone is so powerful that it’s just a wonderful tool, as I said, both for the customer to be tethered back to the dealer and for the employee to use their phone to be a better efficiency in the office, in the shop. For both, for many things. And that is a benefit for both sides. And nowadays, where it’s hard to get employees and keep employees, if you give them a less stressful situation, it makes for a better experience, I think on the work level.

Neal:

Well, I think at home, the technology in our lives progresses so rapidly. I think there’s a natural expectation that the software we use at work does the same. So I agree. I think that probably goes far for retention and also just showing that you’ve got a progressive mindset as both an employer and as a business owner.

James:

Yeah, absolutely. And other examples of even something as simple as bookkeeping. I talk to dealers who are using computers basically as a cash register when they should be using it as a full accounting system, especially dealers who have multi corporations, multi locations. And transfers in key locations involve accounting issues with expectations of repayment from one location to the other and so forth. All those can be fully automated and yet they’ll accept a manual component of that. So they’ll spend hours of staff time that’s both precious staff time, because you can’t get the good staff and also you have to pay them, doing redundant entries that could easily be automated if they thought about it and got the right software to handle those fringe cases of them, especially when you’re dealing with tire fees for the state disposal fees or taxes or taxes on certain goods.

Certain states have certain taxes on these goods and other goods or during the year when they have tax holidays, all those cases can be easily programmed to save them the trouble of doing it manually while you’re staffed. And that’s why I said that sometimes talking to the owner if you’re researching on a system isn’t always the best answer. You should talk to people using it in the field because the owner sees the results of the work, but the people in the field have to do the work every day. They have to live with it and they know the extra steps they’re taking that they wish they didn’t have to take. And so that’s why that approach is sometimes more productive to talk to the people using it, and follow Matt’s advice, to follow a written guideline to make sure you don’t forget something.

Matt:

All good points, Jim. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had those conversations with dealers with those needs on the backend and managing transfers and they get themselves tied into a system with the promise and the hope that they’re going to be able to manage it much easily, but they don’t do the due diligence to follow through to make sure the system can handle it. And I have found that there are a lot of systems that specialize in the tire and automotive industry, but not all of the systems have the sophistication that’s required to manage what you’ve just described.

James:

Tie in what you said there, Matt, I find that when I talk to someone at the SEMA Show, I’ll ask them, “What is your position in the company?” And they’ll say, “I’m the office manager.” Okay, they’re going to ask me questions about accounting, about taxes, about things like that. Talk to someone on the sales manager. They’re going to talk all about the point-of-sales side, but they’re going to forget the office side. And then the office side has high stress. So sometimes people will talk about what’s the most important to them without looking at the full picture. And the full picture is going to be every part of the company, both the front office, the back office rather and the front sales counter have to both work together and use the system efficiently and make sure that the issues are not forgotten about and make assumptions.

And don’t go by the radio concept where you’ve got a radio, okay, I got a radio, they’re both the same. If someone says, “Can you do this feature?” “Sure.” “Okay, show it to me. I want to see the details. Let me talk to someone using it, one of your people using it.” And then you’ll learn more about the frustrations they have and all the steps they have to go through. I talked to one dealer who said they’re doing an oil change. They have to do many steps, in their case it was over 15 steps of mouse clicks and boxes and so forth, when other systems are highly automated that in three or four taps and clicks they can recover past experiences and so forth. They’re both doing an oil change process on a sticker, but one’s doing a lot more work to get it done.

Matt:

Right, exactly.

Neal:

Jim, I have a question. I mean you operate and have built such a progressive software. Where do you look for inspiration?

James:

I guess to tell you that’s a very intelligent question. I was a tire dealer. As I said, at one time I was the biggest Michelin dealer in Central Illinois back in the middle ’80s. So I had my own shop and I had inspiration, but lately I find my exposure around the country to get from other tire dealers. Learning things has been my best inspiration. Had a recent experience with a major tire dealer that I’ve known for many years where we released a new feature that was quite positive. But they said, by the way, what about this and what about that? And we hadn’t thought of it. And even though I’ve been in it for so many years, you can’t think of everything.

So to answer to your question, my inspiration comes from our clients, from our tire dealers, and when I go to give a talk or write an article or I get feedback, I actually take all the ideas I get and I pack rat them into my system. People think they’re my ideas, they’re not my ideas, they’re someone else’s ideas that I just made use of. The good example is the QR code. That was something that I got from a family member who had gone shopping at a big box store back in 2012 and they said, “This is really great here, but I don’t know much about it.” And I said, “Well, how can I use that?” And that’s how we got the idea for the windshield sticker.

It’s like the smartphone taking inventory. I went to Walmart and saw they were using inventory with a Zahn machine that they had to take to a spot and download it to their computer. I said, look at all those steps that are going on there. Why don’t we just use our smartphone? Well, of course, the problem with that is you can dream up whatever you want, but you have to get the staff to build it, the intelligence staff. So sometimes you can architect a building that’s beautiful, but you have to get the builders. So there’s obviously many steps involved in making it work. But as you said correctly, Neal, at home, you look at something and you watch these dances, but then you go to your work job and sometimes it doesn’t have the same advances at the work job. And that is a problem because that adds to frustration. And then, if you can’t keep your employees happy, they want to move on to somewhere else where they have less stress.

Matt:

Especially in our recent environments through COVID.

James:

Yes.

Matt:

Absolutely.

James:

Good point, Matt.

Matt:

Yeah. Listen, I really appreciate you coming on with us today.

Neal:

30 or so podcasts and that’s the first time I’ve had to stop for my dog barking.

Matt:

Your dog?

Neal:

Yeah.

James:

Well, he likes you and you’re a wonderful guy. You give him good value.

Neal:

I don’t know about that. All right, so I’m going to pick back up and, Jim, I want to ask you a question, I’ll ask it for real, but I want to a ask you about the best piece of advice you’ve received. And then from there we’ll wrap it up and I’ll thank you and ask you where people can learn more about Tire//SMART and we’ll let you get on with your day. So, Jim, one of the questions I’m always interested to ask is, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve received through the years in this industry?

James:

Well, I think the best piece of advice is to be open-minded to new ideas and not be thinking that your way is always the best way. And I gave you the experience where I brought out some software and I thought I had it right and I had it right sort of, but I had things I had forgotten. And so I got some feedback from other people that said, why not this or that, and I improved it. So I think the best piece of advice is to be open-minded and make the decision based on a broad range of evaluation and spend a lot of time deciding because once you get with it, like Matt said, you’re kind of stuck with it going down a rabbit hole and it’s very hard to make another choice.

Second to hiring an employee, which is also very important, I think hiring software is really the next major decision after hiring an employee. And if you make a mistake, you can easily cost you a lot of money, both in efficiency and also in running the business where you know what to buy, what stock to have. We incorporated something called J-Dash, a dashboard like you’d have in your car with charts and graphs. But we did it in a way which is super simple to access and gives the people at the front counter visual data to let them find something quickly without having to read a lot of numbers, and the people on the other side of the counter, the customer’s visual data, so they can learn what they’ve spent on their car, and the people in the back office, visual data so they can learn about their marketing for a zip code and customer type and so forth and what to buy and if they had to meet a quota.

So this technology with visual data is so dynamic. The problem in the past has been difficulty to access it. We resolved that by using my experience in the industry. Everybody’s got a different attitude. Like the front customer wants to see it one way, the salesperson at the counter want another way, the back office one way, and of course the guy on the road making a sales call to a truck fleet, see it his way. The secret is to make it as amenable as possible to each audience so they see it the way they want to see it. As I said, back to your point here, the big thing is to keep an open mind and research heavily before you decide on a system because the support you get for setting it up and data conversion and training is very easy to get forgotten about until you get into it.

Neal:

It’s one of the greatest decisions you can make in a business. I understand. Well, today we’ve been joined by Jim Krakower of Tire//SMART, powered by JMK. Jim, where can people learn more about Tire//SMART?

James:

Well, our website is very informative. It’s tire-smart.net and we would encourage people to go to that. And there’s a place on the website to submit questions and we encourage that. We’re a 24-hour/365 support and the website also shows you our development staff. We have program developers in four states and we cover 24 hours. We cover customers from Hawaii to New England.

Neal:

Fantastic.

James:

That’s where you’d want to be is our website.

Neal:

Excellent. We’ll put a link in our notes. And, Jim, thank you. It’s been a pleasure talking to you today.

James:

It’s an honor to talk to you both, very knowledgeable people. Thank you.

Matt:

Thank you, Jim.

James:

Thank you.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.

• Gain Traction
• Gain Traction Podcast
• James Krakower
• JMK Computerized Tire Dealer Information System
• Matthew Peters
• Neal Maier
• Tread Partners

Transcript