Collision repairers have been hungry for information on PartsTrader’s impact and what to expect if the program enters their market. But State Farm has not released any quantitative data illustrating how the program is working and little has been said by repairers actually using it. So FenderBendersat down with four repair professionals using the program in four separate test markets to dig into the operational and financial impacts they’re experiencing. Note: the opinions of the individuals interviewed are their own and are not representative of the views of FenderBender or ours.

FB: What impact has PartsTrader had on your shop from an administrative perspective?

McDaniel: Administratively, the program was very difficult at first. There were several technical problems, such as firewall and program glitches. It also required the rekeying of estimate information several times for every job. We had to manually transfer information back and forth between PartsTrader and the estimating system, which was time consuming for 20-part jobs.

Those issues definitely created administrative delays, but have since been resolved. New features have been added to the PartsTrader application that have eliminated some redundant steps. For example, there’s a tool that automatically exports all information from PartsTrader into the estimate. The upgrades have made the program pretty easy to use overall.

The biggest impact PartsTrader has had in the front office is productivity improvement. Without the program, we spend time actively communicating with vendors to source parts. With PartsTrader, we’re able to enter information into the system and walk away. We capitalize on the quoting period to accomplish other things—write another estimate, follow-up with a customer or check on repair statuses. That’s time that otherwise would be spent making phone calls and sending emails.