MOPAR Masters Guild Committee Visit at Elite EXTRA: The Value of Customers Coming Together

By: Ross Kleiner, Business Development Manager

Last week Elite EXTRA had the honor of hosting a selected committee of four MOPAR Masters Guild (MMG) members for an annual meeting and update of our collective industries.  Since this is EXTRA’s first full year as a MOPAR Masters Guild top tier vendor,  this was the first of these meetings and we honestly didn’t know what to expect.  The four attending members; Steve Hofer of Park Chrylser Jeep Dodge in Burnsville, MN (MMG President), Rick Montiero of Jack Powell Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Escondido, CA (Committee Chair), Ken Kokoszka of Christopher’s Dodge World of Golden, CO, and Joe McBeth of Dallas Dodge in Dallas, TX, are all current Elite EXTRA Users and valued customers, so we certainly wanted to impress them with our hospitality, facilities and operations.

As current users of EXTRA, the Committee was certainly familiar with our system and how it currently operates.  So it was decided that the focus of our talks would be on Elite EXTRA’s continuous strive for excellence and our plans for future enhancements and updates.  And what we received from the Committee in return was an unexpected outpouring of knowledge and consideration toward enriching EXTRA’s product and success.

The value of having customers with a knowledge base like this in our board room was made known right away as we started to examine a long list of prospective enhancements and updates planned to the burgeoning EXTRA software as a service by the end of 2012 and into 2013.  The MMG members quickly identified the processes that would not only suit their auto parts wholesale and delivery model back home, but would enhance the routing and tracking process for users nationwide in both the wholesale and aftermarket side of the business.  This, in turn, helped us at EXTRA prioritize our list of updates by moving the features more pertinent to the success of our Users toward the top of this list.

On top of assessing the value of each individual plan for EXTRA’s future, this meeting which now took a turn to a more ‘think tank’ setting, began to spawn brand new ideas for EXTRA Features in which the EXTRA Team had not even conceptualized yet.  Ideas for features that we could only receive from people who know and understand the Fixed Ops business along with having an idea of how our technology should work to improve efficiencies while gaining ROI were brought to the table.  These new ideas will not only enhance the value of Elite EXTRA to its users, but also maximize its usage for not only Dispatchers and Drivers, but Mangers, Salespeople, Wholesalers, Customer Service Representatives, and so on.

When reflecting on our meetings this week with the MMG Committee, I should have only expected these kinds of outcomes from a group like this.  Three years ago Elite EXTRA was built on the knowledge of potential users who were looking to implement a software as a service to increase efficiencies and ROI through optimization, routing and tracking.  Since then EXTRA has become the standard in automotive parts delivery routing and tracking while moving into several other markets.   But what is more important are the users and groups like MMG who’s knowledge and willingness to share further solidifies EXTRA’s success in continuing to be the best high-tech, low-cost solution out there.  And EXTRA believes that no one knows how our solution should run better than our customers.