Caruso Ford Lincoln, a family-owned dealership in Long Beach, CA, sought to modernize its Fixed Operations department amid tightening margins, rising costs, and operational strain. Led by Fixed Ops Director Shannon Eckel, the dealership needed a data-driven solution to improve pricing consistency, advisor performance, and overall profitability, especially during facility construction and challenges with reduced service traffic.
Challenges
Shannon identified several issues limiting profitability and customer experience:
- Outdated service menus not aligned with manufacturer recommendations
- Inconsistent and non-transparent pricing across advisors
- Low-confidence service presentations and missed sales opportunities
- Lack of visibility into margin erosion
- Limited bandwidth to diagnose and correct systemic problems while running day-to-day operations
Improving Customer Pay ELR was a key goal, but Shannon recognized price increases alone wouldn’t fix structural process issues.
Solution: Fixed Ops Mojo by Frogdata
Shannon partnered with Frogdata to deploy FixedOps Mojo, a real-time analytics and service operations management platform. Frogdata worked alongside Caruso Ford to develop strategies that would increase parts and labor sales at the same time helping to improve profitability.
Key components included:
- OEM-aligned service menu redesign
- Market- driven ala carte menu pricing which helped raise effective labor rates, increase parts sales, and optimize profit margins for both labor and parts.
- Daily monitoring of labor and parts performance
- Real-time alerts to catch pricing deviations and margin losses
The Fixed Ops Mojo platform provided consistency, accountability, and visibility across the entire fixed operations team.
Results
Despite a 23% drop in R.O. volume, Caruso Ford Lincoln generated substantial profit improvements:
- + $48/hr increase in CP ELR translating to $32K/month → +$384K/annually
- +2.5% Labor GP → +$68K annually
- +2.7% Parts GP → +$50K annually
- Total Impact: +$502K annualized gross profit improvement
- The benefits to Caruso Ford Fixed Ops Team resulted in higher levels of advisor confidence through presenting an OEM-specific a la carte menu with competitive and transparent pricing, resulting in greater sales, reduced discounts and improved Customer Satisfaction.
Client Testimonial
“Frogdata’s FixedOps Mojo is a real game changer. Without these improvements, we would have been significantly down in gross profit. This tool has allowed us to gain clarity, consistency, and profitability.”
— Shannon Eckel, Fixed Ops Director
