CAR WASH News
Woodie's Wash Shack Finds Fast Access to Metrics that Matter
3 minute Read
Kristie Wolf, Woodie’s Wash Shack Manager of FP&A was used to working with complicated data sets and running analysis on those to help make better business decisions. But she didn’t find that same level of technological capabilities when she first joined the car wash industry.
“We were working with technology that was built for other industries and we were making it work for us,” Wolf said. “We were finding it difficult to work with our POS data and as we look to grow our business and improve our operations, the number of requests we were handling meant I was spending a lot of my time pulling manual reports and analyzing them.”
For Wolf, that time added up to nearly a full work day any time she wanted to pull reports to get a look at cost per car numbers or wash volume by location. And because no real software solution existed, the first natural step is to throw people at the problem. “Last summer we had interns that spent days pulling reports for us to then analyze,” Wolf said. “But anytime you’re doing all of that manual work, you’re bound to run into issues and then you’re left wondering how reliable your data really is.”
Woodie’s Wash Shack implemented WashMetrix to help them get a more comprehensive and immediate look at the data. And return on investment in both time and money have been realized immediately.
According to Wolf, the cost per car module that WashMetrix provides is able to save her 2 hours of time each time she wants to pull that information. When she adds the WashMetrix busiest day module that helps identify volume by location by hour, she saves an additional 4 hours of her time per wash. Consider that Woodie’s is approaching 15 locations and growing and you’re talking about the ability to get back some 60 hours of time just in being able to analyze wash volume by location … per time you want to look at the data.
“WashMetrix gives me everything I need in an easy view,” Wolf said. “I can see how many times customers wash a month, percent of cash transactions, operating hours, cost per car … all helpful data as we plan our business and make big business decisions.”
Now, Wolf and the entire team at Woodie’s are able to see the data at a glance and not worry about whether the information is lagging or accurate. And that means everything they need is ready when they need it. “Being able to see those busiest times and forecast on a per wash basis is crucial for our business as we grow,” she said.
For Wolf, a major factor in choosing WashMetrix was in the expertise and credibility of the team that built the product. “We knew that they had car wash expertise and for us that was important,” Wolf said. “They knew the KPIs that mattered and even helped us discover some additional KPIs that we could track to make sure we were operating the way we wanted to.”
“WashMetrix has given us the ability to look at our data in ways that just weren’t possible before,” Wolf said. “And knowing their team has been so responsive and so forward-thinking … in some cases helping show us metrics we didn’t even know we were looking for.”
