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Auto Body Shops’ To-Do Lists���������������������
Two brothers were driving from Connecticut to Maine, and they decided to spend the time brainstorming instead of playing 20 Questions or the license plate game.
It’s a 4.5-hour trek, so to kill time they began talking about difficulties in the auto body industry and how it has lagged from a technological perspective for many years.
That journey turned out to be highly productive for the Koutmos brothers, Yanni and Alex, because by the time they reached their des-
tination, the pair had an idea for a product that could help any collision repairer track consumables usage and get paid for them by the insurance companies.
They named it EagleMMS and were excited about their new baby and how it could change the collision repair industry.
EagleMMS is a technology company committed to providing collision repairers with the insight needed to run at peak efficiency. From family-owned independent shops all the way to large MSOs, EagleMMS is a materials management software saving shops thousands of dollars month after month.
Yanni is a seven-year veteran of the auto body industry, having spent nearly one year as a certified appraiser from the insurance side and six years as a frame tech and master body man.
Alex is a former Amazon software engineer, currently one of the leading experts in the Elixir programming language community, and has spent more than a decade developing reliable and robust software systems.
After a highly productive brainstorming session, Yanni and Alex sought to develop a lightweight, high impact solution to address the disparity regarding stagnant insurance rates and rising materials costs to help business owners in their mission of providing excellent car care and customer service, without sacrificing their bottom line. After nearly a year and a half of intensive development, they were poised to offer the industry a cutting-edge solution that can help shops reclaim lost revenue on items and products they used on almost every repair. That car ride has turned into a product gaining traction and receiving five-star reviews nationwide. “We started out venting about the industry and all of the problems associated with it,” Yanni said. “The insurance companies are always going to be playing Brothers Yanni, pictured, and Alex Koutmos developed with labor rates and ignorEagleMMS, a software program that can help shops get paid for materials and other expenses related to every car repair ing things like inflation and supply chain issues. Their numbers are consistently outdated and arbitrary. The paint companies have informed the shops earlier this year that they’re going to raise their prices significantly. “In addition, it’s harder and harder to find qualified people to fix these vehicles and it’s more and more difficult to recoup their costs for materials. We knew if we could come up with software that could help shops to recoup their costs, it would be a hit.” Yanni’s mantra is “If something comes into your shop and it costs you money, it should always make you money on the way out,” he said. “Too many shops have gotten used to not charging for things, so we’re re-educating them. Once they see how much they can recover, they realize how much money has been bleeding out of their businesses for literally decades.” By creating precise documentation that clearly states the products being used down to each piece of sandpaper and every ounce of rubberized undercoating, for example, EagleMMS is also educating the insurers.
“The system builds an invoice and as the tech scans every QR code, it goes into the document,” Yanni said. “Every product you use is invoiceable and once your people become familiar with that concept,
By building a comprehensive and detailed invoice on every repair, EagleMMS is saving shops thousands of dollars every month
it becomes part of their daily lives. Then once you get the insurance company onboard, they will normally stop fighting you.”
Simple is one of the best adjectives to describe EagleMMS, Yanni said.
“Getting started with EagleMMS is easy and straightforward. After adding all of the materials that you want to track into EagleMMS, you’ll be able to generate QR code tags to put near your materials. With your QR tags in place, all your technicians need to do is scan a QR tag,” he said. “Technicians scan the needed material QR tag and then provide checkout details. The technician selects the repair order and the quantity used, and it’s immediately added to the invoice. After the scan is completed, the repair order invoice is automatically updated. All that’s left to do is submit the shop’s EagleMMS invoices in order to get adequately reimbursed.”
In addition to providing accurate repair order material usage invoices, EagleMMS also enables users to manage all aspects of material management from the shop floor.
“Technicians can report low or out of inventory items, so that your parts people can order more inventory before running out,” Alex said. “You can also analyze your data to
See EagleMMS Software, Page 40
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