Kaylee Felio [00:00:01]:
Hey, it's Kayleigh. You know me as the parts girl and I work here at PartsEdge. Thanks for following this awesome journey as we highlight thought leaders and trailblazers, share best practices in fixed ops, and cover success stories of how dealers sell more parts and service. This is the PartsEdge podcast with Kayleigh Figlio.

Scott Rutherford [00:00:25]:
Welcome back to the FixedOps Roundtable. I'm Ted Ings. We are in Dallas, Texas at the Snell Motor Company at their Jaguar Land Rover dealership. I'm here with kaylee Filio from PartsEdge, our great friend at the roundtable. And Kaylee, I'll ask the folks who are with us here today to introduce themselves, starting with this gentleman right here.

Kaylee Felio [00:00:45]:
Zach Carter.

Zach Carter [00:00:45]:
I'm the parts manager for Land Rover Frisco.

Romeo Chaitis [00:00:49]:
My name is Romeo Chaitis. I'm the assistant parts manager at Land Rover Dallas.

Sean Cawthon [00:00:54]:
Sean Cawthon, parts manager, Land Rover Dallas.

Scott Rutherford [00:00:56]:
And Kelly, the Snell Motor Company is a client of yours at Parts Edge, am I correct?

Kaylee Felio [00:01:01]:
Yes. Yes, they are.

Scott Rutherford [00:01:03]:
I know you had some questions to ask the group today, so if you don't mind, I'll let you. I'll let you get things started.

Kaylee Felio [00:01:08]:
Absolutely, yes. I wanted to ask you guys, what about PartsEdge or what has PartsEdge done to help you become more efficient? And I think I want to start with Sean because our relationship goes back to 2008 working with PartsEdge so long time.

Sean Cawthon [00:01:22]:
I've been with PartsEdge for a long time and it was great for me to be able to get PartsEdge to come in here because of the efficiencies and things that they brought in my past. But with PartsEdge, with the sourcing and availability, the reports, they make a parts manager's job a lot more doable without having to spend hours and hours looking at spreadsheets or data. It puts everything into a nice sourcing table to be able to read it and save time and process orders faster. Sell parts easier because you know where they're at.

Romeo Chaitis [00:01:59]:
Romeo.

Scott Rutherford [00:02:00]:
But what about you from your perspective, the Parts Edge?

Romeo Chaitis [00:02:02]:
My perspective, I typically, I'm on the end of it. I do all the parts ordering, so it makes my life a lot easier. Instead of spending hours going through an order, find out what I need to order, not need to order. I just run a report and it just breaks it down to a simple report and I just go through it. Take me minutes to go through it. Just process the order and submit it instead of spend an hour looking at it.

Scott Rutherford [00:02:27]:
And Zach, your location is a different JLR location. Tell us about from your Perspective, it's.

Zach Carter [00:02:32]:
Really freed up a lot of my time that I was spent, you know, looking at returns and obsolescence and trying to, to manage that aspect of it. I was, you know, spending, you know, multiple hours a day looking at different, you know, looking at the sources that I did have and, you know, what was aging in it and what wasn't. And now I'm able to, you know, spend an hour and nail down what, what I need to send back.

Scott Rutherford [00:02:58]:
Sean, how is, how important is it in this day and age for you to be able to find efficiencies in parts and to make your day more efficient and again, you know, have that trickle down throughout your organization and also.

Kaylee Felio [00:03:11]:
Too, if I may add, how does that equate to value and profit too? Because I think a lot of time what happens is parts. I don't think a lot of people realize how much time the parts manager takes to read the data and look at and dig for what they really need to dig for to make decisions.

Sean Cawthon [00:03:28]:
So, so reporting is a big part of it and the availability of partsedge to be able to call them and ask them for help or find specific data. But looking at source tables and stuff like that, finding day supply or sales or any of these items that, you know, a parts manager would look at on a normal basis to be able to have it done for you have parts movement within a RIM source or a non RIM source and, and just look at that data and be able to identify with it and move on and not spend all day trying to dissect it, what it means or what it looks like. You know, one of the biggest things it's done for me is at one point we were over a million dollars in inventory since parts edges came in and helped us ratify the, the sourcing tables. You know, I've been able to drop my inventory down to about 830,000. Still have a really high turn rate. So our investment is a lot less, but our turn rate is really high and we're not losing sales per se. It's, you know, the turn rate's way high. So it's a lot more cost effective for the dealer group in that manner.

Scott Rutherford [00:04:36]:
Romeo, a lot of people in the dealership wonder what the parts manager actually does. But still, lot of your time is spent, like Sean just says, at looking at these tables and all that. Talk to us about that a little bit, if you would.

Romeo Chaitis [00:04:47]:
Well, from my perspective, freed up a lot of our time. Now I go back to. Takes us a few minutes to, for myself to run Go through the order and decide what I need. And now I can get up and walk around and manage people. Look at what's going on our day to day. We have a body shop. I take a day a week. I go to the body shop and spend a day at the body shop just to make sure that everything productive over there as well.

Romeo Chaitis [00:05:15]:
Sure. So that's what it's done for me. It just frees up time.

Zach Carter [00:05:17]:
Zach, from your perspective as well, time, I mean, it's. Time is key. And you know, spending time with my employees and training them and growing them in the business and not having my day just tied up, digging into the numbers, I'm able to actually, you know, interact with my, my personnel and, you know, grow them with the business.

Sean Cawthon [00:05:38]:
I think the biggest part about that is, is we're spending time working on the business, not in the business.

Scott Rutherford [00:05:44]:
I like that. Yeah, I like that.

Romeo Chaitis [00:05:46]:
It gives us time to grow our people. Before we sat behind the desk looking at numbers and now we have time to get up and find out what's going on and see if they need any help or coach them along the way. Everybody needs help sometimes.

Scott Rutherford [00:06:00]:
We all need a coach.

Romeo Chaitis [00:06:00]:
Right?

Scott Rutherford [00:06:01]:
Everybody needs a coach. And if you're tied up with a lot of administrative tasks and looking at the numbers and the data, Kelly, what else would you like to ask these folks here?

Sean Cawthon [00:06:10]:
I wanted to piggyback on that. You're talking about everybody needs help. So the deal with PartsEdge is I started with them in 08. I was a brand new parts manager, then got into the business, had a big head, didn't think I needed any help. My CFO came down and said, hey, we're going to bring these guys in to help you with your material. I said, I don't need that help. I got this. But he came in and Chuck.

Sean Cawthon [00:06:36]:
I've known Chuck for a long time. And anyway, Chuck came in and he started teaching me. He taught me about all the things a parts manager needs to know that doesn't ever get taught because we get tossed into the position, said here, handle it. And there's no training per se, but Chuck really took his arm around me and helped me out and grew me. And it has helped me exponentially in my career.

Kaylee Felio [00:06:58]:
Yeah, and that's a great point because that happens a lot sometimes. You know, I, I talk about parts such a lot and they're like, well, I don't. Why do I need this? I don't really. Everything is going great. But it just kind of goes to show just hearing what you Guys talk about is just the time savings and having that support and actually someone that gets you and gets parts.

Sean Cawthon [00:07:18]:
And I will say on that also is that, you know, it's great for young parts managers and people. I mean I've been doing this for 30 years and it's great for experienced parts managers. It alleviates time to do something else. It is just a wonderful program that helps us on our day to day.

Scott Rutherford [00:07:37]:
And gentlemen, I would imagine there are a lot of parts managers who say, you know what, I don't need any help. Right. I can do all this alone, you know, but having a partner like PartsEdge can make a difference. Absolutely, absolutely.

Sean Cawthon [00:07:50]:
Y.

Kaylee Felio [00:07:51]:
So I also wanted to talk about just, you know, going full circle, talking about everything, just the inventory management or the return process, kind of digging in a little bit deeper of how we help support you guys in that. Is that something that you guys want to touch on?

Zach Carter [00:08:07]:
Yeah, just as far as the return process on my side, I mean we, we have parts that and obsolescence and yeah, absolutely. We have parts that are protected through the RIM program that we buy from the manufacturer and then there's some that aren't. Prior to Parts Edge coming on, all that was mixed together so we really didn't have a, a grasp on, you know, what we could and what we couldn't return to to jlr. So by putting by bring a parts edge in now I'm able to see what's in rim, what's not in rim. I'm not wasting money on protective parts, sending them back to jail or I'm letting them, you know, I'm just letting that naturally happen and I'm able to, you know, keep the inventory clean with the money that we do get.

Kaylee Felio [00:08:50]:
Yeah. So like giving you the data, the reports to help with that. And so would you say your obsolescence or do you know, kind of average how much obsolescence you have or how much it's decreased since you started using us?

Zach Carter [00:09:02]:
So prior to parts age, I mean I was sitting, I would say probably around 20 to 25,000 in obsolescence and. And now I'm just under 6, 5 to 6,000. So.

Kaylee Felio [00:09:14]:
And some. Most of that is.

Zach Carter [00:09:16]:
And most of that's just a kind of clothing knickknacks, merchandise that you see out here that.

Kaylee Felio [00:09:19]:
So basically you have zero offset.

Zach Carter [00:09:21]:
Right. From a parts, you know, an actual hard part. I mean there's. I have really none.

Kaylee Felio [00:09:27]:
Yeah. And same with you.

Sean Cawthon [00:09:28]:
Yeah, we're same way, you know, we use it to get rid of our obsolescence helping this and figuring out how to order parts efficiently and correctly and, you know, moving fast parts and this and that and really growing. The obsolescence that we can use is a huge game changer, especially for the Land Rover side of it and that.

Kaylee Felio [00:09:47]:
Investment that the dealer makes, you know, it's huge not to have obsolescence. That's wasted money.

Scott Rutherford [00:09:53]:
Hello. Well, gentlemen and Kaylee, on behalf of the Fixed Ops Roundtable and our community, thank you so much for telling us about your experience with PartsEdge here at Stell Motor Company in Dallas, Texas. And by the way, congratulations on being a Fixed Ops Roundtable certified dealer. We appreciate all that you do for the industry and congratulations to all of you as well.

Romeo Chaitis [00:10:13]:
Thank you. Thank you.

Scott Rutherford [00:10:14]:
And Kaylee, congratulations to fixedops Round Hipple certified partner now.

Kaylee Felio [00:10:18]:
Thank you.

Scott Rutherford [00:10:19]:
All right, I'm Ted Ings. I'm here with Kayleigh Filio. We are here in Dallas, Texas at the Snell Motor Company. We will be right back.