How do you handle parts requests from repair shops without losing the whole day?
What saturates a parts counter is almost never the volume of requests: it is how scattered and incomplete they are. A request comes in by phone, SMS, WhatsApp or email, with no vehicle, no position, no urgency — and the real cost is not handling it, it is chasing it. Winning time back therefore means acting upstream: capturing every request in the same place, and making sure it arrives complete.
Director of publication : Florian Précigout
The real cost is not the request, it is the back-and-forth
A complete parts request is handled quickly. An incomplete one sets off a chain: call the garage back, wait for someone to walk back to the vehicle, get the photo, check again, quote again. Meanwhile, three more requests have landed.
That is why "hiring someone for the counter" rarely helps as much as expected: you add capacity to a process that is losing its time somewhere other than in the handling itself.
The four leaks of a parts counter
Scattering. Phone, SMS, personal WhatsApp, email, the physical counter. No overall view, nothing you can prioritise, and requests falling between two channels.
Incompleteness. The garage writes the way it talks. The engine variant, the position, the side, the urgency are missing — and nobody blames them for it: it is the system's job to know what to ask.
Double entry. What was understood in the conversation is re-keyed into the ERP. Every re-keying is a chance to make a mistake and a dead stretch of time.
Lost trace. Three days later, nobody knows what was promised, at what price, or where the order stands. That is where disputes are born.
Where to start, in order
1. A single point of entry. As long as requests arrive through five channels, no improvement is measurable. Bringing the flow into one place is the precondition for everything else.
2. Structure on the way in, not on the way out. A request must become vehicle + part + position + urgency the moment it is received. Whatever is not structured on the way in will be paid for in follow-up calls.
3. Remove the re-keying. What has been understood must reach the management system without being retyped.
4. Make what happens next visible. Status, goods receipt, discrepancy and dispute must stay consultable without calling anyone.
What PartnAir takes on
PartnAir extends your counter into the messaging app each partner garage already uses, with nothing for them to install or learn. A team of agents understands the request (message, photo of the plate, voice note, reference stamped on the part), structures it, checks references, equivalents, prices and availability against your catalogue sources, then prepares the quote.
Your team takes over at the sensitive decisions — that is the rule, not the fallback: margin, commercial gestures and the relationship stay yours. The quote or the order then goes to your system of record, depending on adapter coverage and the acceptance testing agreed with you. Status, goods receipt, discrepancy and dispute stay visible in the cockpit.
What PartnAir does not do: replace your ERP — prices, stock and orders stay governed by your own tools.
FAQ
Do my garages have to install an app?
No. That is precisely the point: the garage writes in the messaging app it already uses, the way it talks. Nothing to install, nobody to train on a new tool.
Does it replace my ERP?
No. Your ERP remains the system of record for prices, stock, customers and orders. PartnAir is an execution layer that extends its reach all the way into the conversation with the garage.
Who decides price and margin?
You do. Decisions that commit margin or the relationship go back through your team before execution, and prices stay traceable.