Realistic, Real-Time Flat Rate Pricing

United Equipment Dealers Association readies its new online, interactive flat rate pricing guide for commercialization after months of development.

Screen shot of the OPE Flat Rate Guide
Screen shot of the OPE Flat Rate Guide

The United Equipment Dealers Association (UEDA) announced the development of its new interactive OPE Flat Rate Guide at GIE+EXPO back in October. Since then UEDA has been working with dealers to test the software and ready it for an official launch sometime this spring if all goes according to plan.

The online OPE Flat Rate Guide is designed to provide dealers with a secure web portal to find and report OPE flat rate repair times with more current and accurate information than what is typically provided by OEMs. With this information, dealers can increase their productivity and profits while improving customer relations.

"This is the only industry resource that factors actual dealer times into a flat rate calculation used to determine job pricing," says Kim Rominger, executive vice president and CEO of UEDA. "This project is not just important to members of UEDA, but to all dealers selling and servicing the machines found in the OPE Flat Rate Guide."

Dealer Dale Magie agrees. He’s the president of Moe’s Outdoor Equipment & Supplies with two stores in Liberty Township and Springboro, OH. Magie has also been serving as president of UEDA’s board of directors. He played an instrumental role in helping to advance this concept of an interactive flat rate guide.

“Flat rates in general are increasingly important to a servicing dealer,” Magie says. “OEMs like to reimburse dealers per hour at their shop labor rate, but consumers want to know that ‘a new belt put on this mower will cost me this much.’”

Magie says his service department has been utilizing UEDA’s original flat rate guide—originally available in printed form or CD-ROM—for many years. Staff used that guide as a framework to develop its own dealership-specific flat rates. The concept of the guide now being online and interactive is intriguing to Magie.

“Our dealership can continue to provide its own input on what the flat rate times should be, but other dealers can too,” Magie points out. “This is great because we can compare ourselves to other dealers. Plus, since other dealers are helping to provide the data, we don’t have to do all of the work ourselves to keep our flat rate pricing current. Finally, when more dealers are providing the times, it is much more credible information to present to the customer or manufacturer.”

Another dealer who played an instrumental role is Scott Muehlhauser of Scott’s Power Equipment with three Missouri locations and a fourth in Illinois. Muehlhauser is an example of a dealer who is not within UEDA’s four-state territory of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky—but still wants to utilize the flat rate guide in his business.

“We’ve also been using that old printed flat rate guide for many years,” Muehlhauser says. “I really like this idea of it going digital. Rates can be updated more quickly and easily. Plus, 80-90% of what dealers are doing today is happening online, so it just makes a lot of sense.”

Another benefit is that the service departments across Muehlhauser’s four stores each have easy access to the exact same information. The information is up to date, which allows for consistency and increased efficiency across stores.

Dealers giving it a test drive

Dealer interest during the initial unveiling at GIE+EXPO was tremendous, Rominger points out. UEDA quickly began signing up dealers to participate in the pilot testing. "By the end of 2016, we had all of our existing flat rate data uploaded into the new system," Rominger says. "Then we started getting dealers going with testing it in early February.

Training is very important with something as new as this. UEDA laid out a plan to remotely train 10 dealers at a time on how to use the system. Once the first group was trained, it was turned loose. UEDA then took the dealers' feedback and reports of any technical bugs to improve the software. Then a second group of 10 dealers was trained and deployed. The goal was that, by the third wave of dealers, things would be running smoothly and more dealers could be deployed at a given time. It’s expected that a total of nearly 100 dealers will help test the system.

"We want to make sure we have this thing right before we put it out in the marketplace," Rominger says. "We don't want anything to surprise us. That's why we wanted to take our time with the testing and rollout. The goal is to have everything fine-tuned and ready for launch by the spring selling season."

Dealers set the times

The interactive OPE Flat Rate Guide is the latest iteration of the original flat rate guide developed in the late 1990s. A guy named Bill Bohmer had actually helped UEDA (OMEDA at the time) to develop its first Ag & OPE Flat Rate Guide in printed form in 1998, later being made available on CD-ROM.

The Ag & OPE Flat Rate Guide was in the process of undergoing its third update a few years ago when Rominger and his staff determined it was time to take it online and make it more interactive. "The discussion with our partner on this, Charter Software, actually happened over a dinner meeting," Rominger shares. "That's all it took and we were moving forward." Dealers Dale Magie and Scott Muehlhauser were also part of that dinner meeting.

The basis for the flat rate times comes from that original Ag & OPE Flat Rate Guide, which is entirely based on actual data provided by dealers, as opposed to OEM recommendations. Realistic flat rate times factor in conditions resulting from wear and tear like mud, grass, rusty bolts and other issues faced by dealers every day. The difference now is that, because the OPE Flat Rate Guide is online and interactive, dealers can upload their own time information into the system, and also add new product models as manufacturers introduce them.

"There are always new product models coming out," Rominger says. "We can get those model names and specs from the manufacturers, but we can't get the repair times. That's the nice thing about the interactive nature of this system. Dealers can help us compile new data in a very timely fashion." When a dealer uploads a new product model and its repair times, UEDA staff will review that upload, verify product details with the manufacturer, and add it to the system.

Charter Software has been the technological driving force behind the development of this OPE Flat Rate Guide. So naturally, the Guide works seamlessly with Charter's Aspen business management system. It's important to note, though, that Charter Software has put the OPE Flat Rate Guide on a universal platform so it can also work seamlessly with other business management systems.

“This project is very exciting because it is a technology tool that is managed by a dealer association for dealers," says Anne Salemo, president and CEO of Charter Software. "Our goal is to get as many dealers as possible to subscribe to the OPE Flat Rate Guide. As a result, our API, available through UEDA, allows any business system to integrate with the OPE Flat Rate Guide without any charge from UEDA or Charter Software."

"We have had a couple of additional BMS providers express strong interest," Rominger adds. "There are obviously others and we'll be working on that too. We're giving this information to a BMS provider free of charge because we want it out in the marketplace for dealers to use."

On that note, Rominger says it is very likely that dealers outside of UEDA's territory of Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio will be utilizing the OPE Flat Rate Guide. "We have had agreements with most of the regional dealer associations with our old flat rate guide from the late 90s, and that is going to continue," Rominger points out. "The national Equipment Dealers Association (EDA) would also like to be a part of it because EDA has an outdoor power equipment council within its broader membership.”

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