By Chris Aiello
One of the MHEDA’s 2024 Material Handling Business Trends states, ‘Technology is profoundly impacting the material handling industry including artificial intelligence, digital automation, data-driven decision-making, and the integration of advanced systems that optimize efficiency, productivity, and safety. Members must have a clear understanding of emerging technologies.’
Let’s dissect that statement, in particular explore the topic of ‘data-driven decision making.’ In our ever-evolving industry, the ability to make informed decisions swiftly and accurately can be the difference maker in running a successful dealership and remaining competitive in the market. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the operations of your service department. The service department is tasked with maintaining, repairing, and optimizing the end customer’s equipment to ensure the customer’s warehouses and logistics operations run smoothly. The service manager is responsible for managing the department’s productivity and profitability. Therefore, the importance of data-driven decision making cannot be overstated.
Gone are the days when service departments relied solely on intuition or past experience to address maintenance issues or plan repairs. Today, the availability of data and advanced analytics tools empowers service managers and technicians to leverage valuable insights in real-time, leading to increased efficiency, reduced downtime, and ultimately, improved customer satisfaction.
However, most dealerships I visit live with silos of data that do not integrate with each other. The cost and difficulty of properly connecting all of these data sets becomes a struggle for even the largest dealerships. If you must deal with orderly silos of data, it is important to identify the purpose of each data set. Then inside of those data sets identify what things need to be managed the most. Often service managers are tasked with manually running their own data reports to analyze.