Endings and Beginnings

The end of the year, despite the hectic pace of life in December, beginning with NACE and staying in high gear right through New Year’s Eve, nevertheless is traditionally a time to evaluate how things are going and to make some New Year’s resolutions aimed at improving the quality of your life.

I am not quite bold enough to list my resolutions here for all to see. (Our readers can grade me on my reporting but let’s not discuss my successes and failures in the self-improvement department!) However, we can all look back on 2002 and see that our Collision Repair Industry has been generally resolute in pursuing important goals during 2002.

ASA’s efforts to convince automakers to make service and technical information available to independent repair facilities has resulted in a landmark agreement. While, of course, common sense dictates that the new situation will need careful monitoring and possibly some further negotiations, nevertheless ASA has taken a giant step and deserves high praise for the resulting agreement.

CIC committee work during this past year has made for excellent conferences. Meeting attendees have certainly been impressed by progress made in several important areas, such as parts, anti-fraud, and e-commerce, to name just a few.

The generosity of numerous businesses and individuals has been overwhelming all year in support of the Camp Mak-A-Dream project backed by the NABC and SCRS. It is amazing what we can accomplish when we work together!

INSIGHT can probably say, "Told you so!" Judging by our predictions of key industry issues for the year, published in January 2002, our crystal ball has been working well. As our feature this month indicates (and as we predicted) consolidators have switched their focus to productivity improvements.

Also as we foresaw, diminished value, insurer cost concerns, aftermarket parts usage, and Allstate’s purchase of Sterling have been big issues this year.

Our Who Pays for What? survey comes to shop owners with this issue. Please get it back to us before January 1st for our February feature article about insurer payment of p-page items. Call us if you need us to fax you a form.

A Happy and prosperous New Year to all our readers!