Get to know All Coast Tyre Solutions
Recently Microhouse visited one of our longest-standing clients, John and Peter O’Leary from All Coast Tyre Solutions, at their very successful and busy Yandina Store on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Together, the brothers have over 70 years combined experience in the industry since growing up in the Darling Downs farming area (Chinchilla, Queensland) where their knowledge and experience with large tractor, earthmoving, truck and 4WD tyres originated.
After many years harvesting their skills on agricultural and truck tyre sales and servicing in the Chinchilla district, the brothers decided to make a move to the Sunshine Coast and purchased the Yandina store in May, 1996 where together, they grew from a two-man store to a five-man store. With business going well it was the perfect opportunity to expand and they soon acquired another tyre and mechanical store in Maroochydore and have now progressed to a 16-man team.
During our visit, John was happy to run us through the team’s processes and smooth operations. He starts with a simple question, “Do you follow Rugby League? Because business is just like a game of footy, and that’s how Peter and I run our businesses. We have structured our team to allow efficient operations in the office, workshop and out on the road with our six commercial service trucks.”
He takes us out the front where we look up and admire the grand looking store and the tour begins with the commercial servicing bay.
“You see, a team is made of people who all have different roles and responsibilities, your workshop tyre fitters are like your football forwards, they do all the grunt work in the workshop, the commercial service fitters are your backline/second row, and the sales & marketing team are like your halves who control the game.
I’m the team coach, so I need to sit up in the coach’s box where I can see the game being played and that’s where COSTAR comes in. While my brother, and business partner, Peter is on the ground alongside the front line and halves while overseeing the second row, our service fitters.
The COSTAR software system is what helps our team set up the game plan for everyone to follow. And like all successful teams, they need to play the game to impress the customers/supporters who become the businesses raving fans.”
John begins to discuss KPIs. He explains how they are just like full-time stats and showed us their monthly management reports, which are a collation of reports exported from COSTAR.
“After seeing the full-time stats or sales figures in our case, even if I don’t know the score, I can work out who’s winning or what products and services are performing, and which need improvement.”
“We are a process-driven business”
Over the many years in business, John has designed a number of signs displayed throughout the workshop that are used as process reminders/how to’s for the team and has in-fact sold them to similar industry professionals.
The tour of the grand operations comes to an end and we are back in the coach’s box watching over the players and checking out the daily, weekly and monthly stats with COSTAR reporting, we asked John a few final questions about COSTAR.
What are your favourite/most used elements of COSTAR and why?
1. Sales Analysis
“The Sales Analysis is a great tool to see how the day/week/month/year is tracking. At a quick glance, you can see what products are selling and where your margins are both in % and $. You can also set the budgets and your break-even every day, this has allowed us to keep the sales and management team on track and focused on business activities.”
2. Appointment Scheduler
“The Appointment Scheduler assists with the running of our day to day business as smoothly as possible to make sure we can satisfy our customer needs in a timely matter. It also helps us forecast days ahead so we can maintain a consistent workflow with knowledge of what’s in front of us for the coming days/week. This allows us to manage our team and gives the customer a good experience as they can rely on us keeping to their time schedule.”
3. Customer Specifics
“The Customer Specifics tool allows our marketing team to keep track of where our new business is coming from as well as measuring customer retainment. It’s a great tool to measure how the various marketing platforms are performing, from sponsorship’s, social media, Google Ad Words, and directory advertising. In turn, this allows us to reevaluate our marketing budget and focus frequently.”
4. SMS Reminders
“Through COSTAR Specifics Reporting, we can consistently monitor our customer retainment. We have found the SMS reminder to be one of the most effective ways to remind our customers to return for tyre or mechanical maintenance services. A simple ‘item’ set up and we can text our customers a particular message on a particular date. SMS is always good for setting up reminders for appointments the following day. This helps us ensure we keep the workshop used to full capacity at all times.”
5. Search History – Document & Inventory
“Some of our largest customers are fleet customers, such as Claytons Towing (Netflix Series Towies). Claytons towing have over 75 trucks all over South-East Queensland, to them, it’s important their tyre needs are taken care of in every way. From replacement, maintenance and measuring CPK (Cost Per Kilometer) on all tyres fitted to their fleet to ensure the most of their tyre investments. Having the ability to complete an in-depth search of vehicle, customer and stock history, we are always on top of our game making sure we are providing the best possible service.”
COSTAR Integrations
1. Tyro
“Tyro eliminates/minimises the human error factor at the point of sale. Day End procedure is more accurate, we don’t waste time tracking down the discrepancies such as sold off to account but was an EFTPOS sale or sold off to cash but was an EFTPOS sale. We believe we have saved 30 minutes a day when doing Day End.”
2. Repco Navigator Pro
“Repco Navigator Pro integration is probably one of the biggest time-saving features inside the invoicing of COSTAR for the mechanical side of the business. From integrating straight into Navigator Pro from an invoice/quote and having access to the parts list for the vehicle, compiling an order list from Navigator Pro and then returning the parts (and setting up inventory items if required) to the live invoice/quotation for the job to be invoiced/quoted. Also, the ordering of parts, once approval has been obtained to proceed with the job, is seamless going from an invoice to creating an order in COSTAR then sending the order online to Repco.
This in turn, when everyone follows the process, we don’t have any missed charged or returned unused parts sitting on the bench. Everything is tracked. This helps keep our profits up.”
Thanks to John and the team at All Coast Tyre Solutions for the tour, you’re truly running like a well-oiled machine!
If you’d like to share your story we’d love to hear from you! Please get in touch with your COSTAR Business Manager or simply email sales@microhouse.com.au
