Building your network by Jeff Smit Do you have any idea where you and your workshop are heading with the increase in technology in which our aftermarket industry is struggling? The solution you are looking for may well be collaboration. For those like me who have been in this industry for many years, the dramatic changes in vehicle technology that never seem to end are hard to believe, and even more difficult to keep up with. Technology really has taken over the modern motor car — as if you hadn’t noticed. The only logical reaction by workshop owners and their technicians must be that we all have to change the way we approach everything we do during our working day. This applies particularly to the process of diagnostics, which has really become our main trade. We have progressed from those early years of fierce independence and secrecy by learning how to network. This has 2 6 CAPRICORN IGNITION JUNE 2022
made the working day more tolerable, but is that enough? If not, what’s next? The next step has to be ‘collaboration’. But what’s the difference? The broad definition of collaboration is the process of two or more people, entities or organisations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal — just like cooperation. Collaboration has long been one of the main drivers of business success. More often than not, businesses that put in place the right strategies and tools to promote and facilitate collaboration in business and knowledge sharing are more likely to come up with innovative ideas, form beneficial long-term partnerships and move ahead of the competition. Within such businesses, employees are often asked and even expected to collaborate, both internally and externally.
Professional aftermarket workshops need to adopt a program of collaboration now, to cope with the future. In my view, the most meaningful collaboration begins with employees. Internal collaboration involves individuals within the workshop or company working together on a problem car or project. This is otherwise known as teamwork, with workshop owners, managers and technicians playing like a team, even though their skills may be diverse. External collaboration, on the other hand, refers to the exchange and sharing of knowledge and expertise outside the workshop walls, with the aim of helping to solve diagnostic problems. Along with the technicians, different parties can be involved in this process, ranging from suppliers to other workshops who in the past might have been seen as competitors.
