Star Warning System s- Detailing Dates

Monday June 7 Lunch ( for staff ) with Josh from Star Warning - at Auto Barn

Monday June 14th - at D&T Auto
Monday June 21 at Petes Paint

After lunch ( so try to plan so you can eat & learn courtesy of Star ) there will be some opportunity to do a few detailing calls with each salesmen from that store. They have a special demo truck ( like the one pictured here )

ALL WEEK LONG afterwards you will have a special IN STORE display rack - that should help push extra sales, the next wee the next store gets it.

Note - CARQUEST only has a few sku;s in their line SWL - Auto Sense has approx 150 in their warehouse and we have access to Star for the thousands of sku's available. We are asking your store manager if they want the 150 sku's from AS added to Exploris.

The Star web site is >>>>star --click here Please have a look and see what is new

change payments - it works

Several have mentioned the change payments --and Ryan tested - and Rhonda tell us it works fine

FYI

Problems with R Thibert and Morco

Since Morco was purchased by R Thibert - hmm ... we continue to have problems with product as advertised ... example that Auto Barn and now D&T show --receiving trailer drums without the bearings & seals ....

Please let us know - please make sure you claim the missing parts.

Interesting that Greg Guyitt told me that Tom Kurtz was calling him back - and I see that Ryan is saying Tom doesn't call him back. I do NOT think I have ever spoken with Tom - will have to try ... I was ignored a the first dozen calls I made to the DC OPs Manager ( he claims he is too busy to call back ... )

Things to learn in Next-Gen E_CAT

We have a LOT to learn on the features in Next-Gen E-CAT

for example - do you want fluid type & volumes --in Activant it was at the END of the section --in NEXT-GEN it is a SPECS tabs --- important.

Also - do you know you can widen ( or shrink) many columns -- like Excel if you have sued Excel ... and if you haven;t -=-then you need to have someone SHOW YOU ...the images show the result of such a change --revealing the missing data ... I have spoken with Jake - Ryan & Greg G - see them if you need more help

Oil Recommendations

Here is a link to a Shell Lube Match Website. It may help you find lubricant listings.

http://www.shell.com/home/page/lubes/lubematch/app_lubematch.html

Thanks to Ken Niefer

Please - understand how GADWIN helps us

Can you PLEASE make sure that you have installed gadwin on your PC .... It is a handy way to make a more precise screen capture ....

April 2008 Blog Entry - Click here

Tips

Open the FREE version -- and change a few things to the way you like
Preferences - what hot key ?
Source - I wish you would select RECTANGLE AREA - when you use it - you will see why
Destination - send to where ?
Image -- PLEASE --change from default .bmp to .PNG ( as a favour to me and other Mac users )

Hitch Company - smart thinking for brake controllers

Hitch Company just does ONE THING very well-- trailer hitches and related items - click on the IMAGE to make larger - these are from page 100 and page 101 of their 2010 catalogue - on customized wiring for brake controllers and the DASH LOCATION to find your location ... have a look - worthwhile - and you look much smarter


******* edit *******

had a e-mail from another supplier saying they TOO have something similar - they are sending us their cat;s on it ... cute to see some suppliers also reading this

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CQO Oil Stickers

a new part # CQO SERVICE for a pac of 50 oil change stickers - we will try to ensure they are sold at our COST as a service to our customers. If levels were not set in your store - they will be as of today

New Updated Oil Cheat Sheet

In the EVER CHANGING world of OIL - Barry from D&T has updated his much appreciated cheat sheet. This is an ever changing situation with part numbers constantly changing. Your store manager has a copy ( paper ) in their mail slot or e-mail barry for an excel/openoffice version - or you can copy the image ( click on it to bring to large size ) to your desktop - it is a .png file that should open on all PC's

Payroll

I will be doing payroll on Thursday, May 27th. Please make sure all timesheets and vacation/sick days are sent in BEFORE that.

Thanks.

WRE Alt & Starters - LIFETIME Warranty

effective today all car & light truck units in WRE have lifetime warranty -see the CQ-Link for more details ( under marketing link )

new promotions on CQ-LINK --see marketing tab for details

Count List - Multi Store - Google Doc's

We set up a Google Doc's ( excel type spreadsheet ) for the lines we set to count by month. Greg H has gone thru and weeded many obvious problems:
- some line duplicated that need not be
- missing lines especially for X lines ( outside purchases )
- some line now obsolete ( these marked with an X in the month to count
- some lines are NOT NORMALLY stocked - we marked these with a 13 in the month to count

PLEASE --if you see something that needs to be corrected - see your store manager ( or staff member at Petes as they also have edit permissions )

PLEASE - do not change unless you know it is right for all stores

EAST PENN Roadside assistance info

In a recent e-mail CARQUEST Toronto mentioned an 'onsert' on batteries with roadside assistance ... OK --what in the heck is an ONSERT ....

Since March the units ( 60 - 72 & 84 mth ) have been stickered on the side with this peel off customer card info for the 2 year road side plan - we will still need the hand out info for any battery not so stickered --and it will take some time to work all sku's thru the system --thanks to Matt for the image

How to give BETTER customer service in Filters

We just ran our first MOVEUP in CFI ( Wix Filters ) and in reviewing the actions can see some problems ---

First - lets explain what a MOVEUP is ... and how we do it
-every line is reviewed once a year in Raleigh by Mike Deals group and an updated movement code is set --thing become more or less popular and the movement code is changed to reflect that.
-we set our stock depth - in a typical line we might have a stock depth of 5.7 ..so everything more popular than that will be suggested to add a level.
-we can identify parts OUTSIDE that range that sell X times ( adjustable by us ) - but that sometimes creates as many problems as it tries to solve ( eg - customer does one time order for 5 widgets - do we want to stock one ?
-staff can review the parts being selected for return and if oyu see something you need - you can re-set the ORDER POINT - not a workable solution but sometimes you get lucky

Options for filters ( and similar ) >>> if you get a customer who needs us to stock a filter for his use -- and you think we might get tripped up on a MOVEUP -- especially if the filter is a movement code 8 ( 8.1 thru 8.9 ) !! you can set the flag to DO NOT FORECAST. See the image ... there is a very similar option STOCK PROTECT and when we asked the help desk - these seem to do the same thing --so we had to pick one --and DO NOT FORECAST seems as good as any.

The image is from the HELP SCREEN - take a minute and get comfortable - sometime the search works well- but for me - since I have skimmed the PAPER version sitting in the office ( a 4" binder - available to see ) I use the known headings and can find the data.

On a related note--we are days away from seeing the first test fleet survey WALL POSTER - we can get more of these wall posters for our customers by sending Gerry Leaman the excel data and he will have the poster printed for us. See Ken Niefer for details.