JJ Stanford came to car washing from investment banking. One day, he and his now business partner visited a wash and did some quick math while waiting for their wash and saw opportunity. JJ’s Car Wash started in 2018, but from day one, he had a data problem on his hands.
“From the moment we got our first site up and operational, the first thing I noticed was challenges with data,” he said. “Somebody out there needed to have a piece of software that could give us accurate data and marry accounting software with our point-of-sale data.”
But no complete solution existed, so Stanford built a spreadsheet that required more than a full day each month compiling the data from multiple reports in his point-of-sale system that he’d then spend more than a full day each month pulling together. Then, he’d have to send that spreadsheet off to his CPA to do additional accounting work just to give him something he could use to accurately run the washes.
“It took a lot of time to get done, and by the time we got the data back, we were already to the 16th or 17th of the following month, if we were lucky,” Stanford said.
Purely from an accounting perspective, Stanford was spending nearly 20 hours per month just to pull together and consolidate reports, not to mention the time needed to then disseminate that out to the management team.
At that point, the business was making decisions about daily operations based on data that was already outdated by 6 weeks or more. Tracking to the 6 key metrics for the business wasn’t as impactful because the business wasn’t able to be nimble enough to make decisions that could have immediate impact.
The challenges extended to the management teams for Stanford as well. The bonus structures for the teams were connected to those key metrics, but what teams were tracking on at the locations could be different by the time the reports came back – sometimes as much as 3 months lagging. “We had to have some hard conversations around why the numbers were different,” Stanford said. “And that’s not great for the team and doesn’t feel good to anybody. We wanted something better.”
For JJ’s, implementing WashMetrix has had an immediate impact. Those 20 hours per month of Stanford’s time he was spending on report consolidation can now be focused to bigger business decisions. Plus, according to Stanford, his managers are saving 4 hours per week related to scheduling thanks to the dashboards WashMetrix provides.
“The savings is real,” he said. “Looking at the numbers, we are saving $0.11 per car on average over the past 30-days x 35,000 cars washed that’s a labor savings of $3,850 per month, give or take.”
Those add up quickly, and all lead to a more profitable wash.
“WashMetrix gives me real time data on the metrics we think are important,” Stanford said. “Because of that, we can see the impact our decisions are making much more quickly.”
Ultimately, that means that JJ’s Car Wash can operate with high efficiency and be able to have more control over its profitability. But perhaps more important is that the access to the data is creating a culture where team members think more like owners. “We have WashMetrix up on our big screens in the washes and our teams can see it every day,” Stanford said. “They can see the results of the different levers they’re pulling much faster and anything we can do to give our managers tools to help better run the business, that’s value add.”
And JJ’s Car Wash believes in the data so much that it has tied the profit-sharing structure to it. They’ve also been able to report on progress monthly, helping employees see those rewards more quickly. “One of the things we talk about is getting 1% better per day. Our managers have mastered opening, closing, processing a car, washing a car,” Stanford said. “The next step in their growth and development is to empower them to control things they didn’t have control over before and they can now use WashMetrix data to visualize what’s happening.”
For Stanford, WashMetrix is a no-brainer. “It saves me time on the accounting side and in the economy we’re in I think the expense side is really where profitability is going to be made,” Stanford said. “So, pushing that to the store level and giving those folks the data to be able to make decisions to help reduce cost and drive profitability … it pays for itself all day long right there.”
WashMetrix takes the real-time raw transaction level data from all car wash point-of-sale and accounting providers and unifies the information. In doing so, WashMetrix eliminates the need for manual reporting, spreadsheets, and extended lag in your reporting. It gives you the normalized and consolidated data you need, in real-time, to make more nimble business decisions while helping your teams think like an owner.
