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National Auto Center
Narrative Description
National Automobile Centers are nationwide full car services business units, such as Midas, Autozone, Monro Muffler Brake, and Diamond Triumph Auto Glass. They mainly involve in car repair, body work and general car services, like mechanical repair, painting, dent reshaping, state inspection, oil change, filter replacement, balancing, wheel alignment, brake services, and so on.
About 130,000 companies in the US are involved primarily in auto repair/body, with combined annual revenue of $75 billion. The industry is extremely fragmented: the 50 largest companies hold less than 10 percent of the market. Most auto centers are small to medium sized businesses operated as sole proprietorships, small partnerships, or closely held corporations. Some car repair work is also provided by 45,000 gas stations; 24,000 new car dealerships; and branches of chain stores, like Sears and Kmart.
The profitability of individual companies depends on convenient location and good marketing. Since there are too many companies involving this business, and most of them are simply and manually organized with little IT systems; moreover, the competition is rigorous. Therefore, with better location, financing, marketing, information systems, and managerial strategies the business will stand out. But because it has characteristics of occasionlity and many customers don’t have preference for their car services, it’s important to create a national auto service chain and their reputation. In this case, ERP systems will be very important for this business strategy. Among current national auto centers, sears auto centers partly integrated ERP systems, especially supply chain manage ...