Going In-House

Arrowhead Yacht Club & Marina (Ranked 10) uses Total Control Software for its parts inventory and warranty and service repair orders, but dealership personnel still felt there were areas where the company could benefit from additional computer-based resources.

Arrowhead took the proactive end of the stick and utilized part of its talent pool to delve into some in-house software development, and the benefits are now evident throughout.

Tracking technician efficiency is paramount to improvement, so Arrowhead’s service team developed and designed a program to do just that. It keeps track of efficiency for the entire shop as well as each individual technician on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. This home-grown system also manages technicians’ speed for repairs and the overall profitability of the service department. The company’s service department also uses a service-scheduling program, developed in-house, to track daily service jobs and availability.

There are also programs that retain customer product information and customer maintenance records.

But the centerpiece of Arrowhead’s technological innovation is its Customer Positioning System, or, as the dealership refers to it, CPS. At its most basic, the CPS is a map containing the location of all Arrowhead customers’ boats, most of which mainly reside amongst the many twists and turns of Grand Lake in Oklahoma.
The key to the CPS’s usefulness is that it’s detailed and interactive, bringing together much of the information from Arrowhead’s other in-house programs. One click and employees have customer contact information, boat location information and specifics on his or her boat, engine and other relevant data.

“[CPS] allows us to always be informed as to the maintenance needs of our customers in a moment’s notice,” said Joe Harwood, Arrowhead owner and president. “We cover a lake that spans over 1,700 miles of shoreline and service over 1,000 active customers with 13 full time technicians, not to mention we travel miles away to many other lakes to service our customers.”