In case you missed out feature in the January issue of the magazine here's the chat we had with SCRG.
Strategic Collision Repair Group
Sites: 13
Employees:150
Type of work: All collision repairs
Established: 2019
No of apprentices:12
Funding: Privately funded
Sites in: QLD, NSW
Dominic James is SCRG’s CEO and he gave us the group update. Mulling over the last 12 months he said: “I think it’s been not without its challenges. We’ve seen the technician shortages as well as some of the pressures around parts and generalised inflation.
“We have worked really hard to bring in and develop new relationships that we’re seeing bear fruit now, we’ve been really successful with that in the last 12 months. It means that we’re not so dependent on historical partnerships, although they’re important and they continue to be. We’re interfacing with Motoserve now, as an example, which allows us to estimate the cars, pre-order parts and plan our workflow better which means we can achieve much better key to key times and better outcomes all round.”
SCRG thinks outside the box when it comes to recruitment: “We’re constantly recruiting people, not just from inside the trade but we’ve looked further afield for people with generalised management experience, maybe from a fitter and turner background or a sheet metal worker background and then onboarding them into the business and then teaching them from the ground up,” he said. The group also employs an number of deaf technicians who could potentially mentor deaf apprentices. “We continue to invest in the industry.”
“I would also say that with some of the regulatory changes with insurance as a financial product, we’ve really tried to support and educate and train our front office staff around vulnerable customers and dealing with complaints. We have a duty to track that information, deal with vulnerable customers, particularly in a post-COVID environment and, indeed, with cost of living pressures. We need to ensure that we’re identifying those customers and supporting them the best we can on behalf of our insurance partners.
So we’ve focused inwards in the last 12 months to improve our processes, so when we go to market with a new insurer we’re able to better understand their problems and provide a solution. We’ve been able to provide an end to end solution across Sydney because of our footprint and off the back of that, certainly in the new year, we’ll be looking to leverage that into new markets and new opportunities, both in Sydney and in other states,” James said.
Looking forward to 2023 James says apprentices are a key focus. “I think that this has to be a focus and it’s incumbent on a business of our size and indeed other MSOs to continue to push apprentices and young people into the industry. We’re constantly talking to schools, associations around trying to get kids into the facilities, even in school holidays to have a look at it.
“In the next 12 months we’ll be leveraging the solid work we’ve done with existing relationships, new relationships, problem solving and end to end claims management,so that we can enter new opportunities with the support of long term, sustainable insurance partners.