Location/Region: Lubbock, TX
Industry: Car Repair
Apps implemented: Inventory, Appointments, Sales, SMS Marketing, Contacts
Software Replaced: Quickbooks
Number of users: 10
Company size: 8
Hosting type: Odoo online
Car owners across the country know firsthand how frequently vehicles need to be serviced and repaired to remain in good and, more importantly, safe condition. Bringing a car in for service can often be a daunting and overwhelming task, with a lot of car owners not having the depth of knowledge about their cars to know what repairs need to be done and at what expense. This makes the decision of which car service shop to use all the more important. Quality repairs and top-tier service are critical, and companies such as Spallholz Moterwerks are dedicated to exceeding these expectations.
Spallholz Motorweks, an auto-repair company based in Lubbock, Texas, specializes in servicing European cars. The business handles everything top-to-bottom outside of dealer-specific or proprietary aspects of the car (such as anything that has to be security-coded). In 1996, Brian Spallholz founded Spallholz Moterwerks after a slew of jobs that he felt he didn't have a future with. Driven by a fiery entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to be his own boss, he invested in the fruitful potential that an auto-service shop offered– and hasn’t looked back since.
28 years later, Spallholz Motorwerks continues to expand its operations, with a recent exciting venture into servicing the premium Japanese automobile space as well. With steady growth, the company knew it needed a comprehensive ERP system to match its business needs. Enter, Odoo.
With its early years dating back to the pre-Internet era, Brian says the company used free, very rudimentary accounting software from 1996 to 2005. While this system was extremely basic, he explains that it worked for his customer base at the time, which was fairly small. In 2005, as technology became more advanced and accessible, Spallholz Motorwerks turned to Quickbooks for its business needs. Brian was able to use the platform not only for accounting purposes but also to manage customer information. He was happy using Quickbooks for almost 18 years until, in 2023, Quickbooks switched from a self-hosted desktop version to a web-based subscription model.
Around this time, the software began running out of space for Spallholz Motorwerk’s inventory. The company’s inventory is constantly changing and extremely extensive, with a large number of parts and products needed to service the variety of car makes and models it deals with. This makes inventory a critical capability for any business management tool that Spallholz uses.
However, the breaking point that finally led Brian to seek out an ERP solution was when he noticed that the shop’s customers were regularly missing appointments. Brian was eager to implement an established appointment reminder system, and Quickbooks simply didn’t have this capability. Quickbook’s overall disruption in operations, lack of functionality, and increased cost for the new pricing model were collectively the final straw and ultimately led to the end of the road for Spallholz’s relationship with the software.
[It was] relatively expensive, and for the amount of money that I was spending, the return on the software wasn’t quite what I had hoped Quickbooks would be.
As an avid public radio listener, Brian heard an advertisement for Odoo one day that piqued his interest. He began researching Odoo and reached out to the company’s team to learn more about what the software offered. After about 4-5 months of careful deliberation and consideration, Spallholz pulled the trigger and decided Odoo was the best way to go.
Spallholz Motorwerks gave itself a 6-month transition period to wind down its Quickbooks operations and transfer all of its data over to Odoo. In January 2024, Spallholz Motorwerks officially went live with the new software. Brian says that the implementation process was tough but ultimately worth it. It took almost the entire six months for him to feel comfortable within the system, and even now, he finds himself continuously learning new aspects of the platform. Brian points out that their Odoo consultant, Ghislaine Zaghloul, was “fantastic” and that he “loves everything she does” for the company and its transition to the new software system.
One of Spallholz Motorwerk’s biggest pain points with Quickbooks was the limitations of its inventory management system. As a company that relies heavily on its inventory data to perform services, Brian emphasizes that this capability was absolutely critical in a new software:
At the moment, we essentially have an unlimited volume of items that we can enter into [Odoo’s] database, and that was one of the things Quickbooks was not going to allow us to do without transitioning to a different platform at a different price level.
In the shop, Odoo has drastically changed the company’s efficiency on a day-to-day basis. Brian explains how he really likes Odoo’s communication capabilities, which allow his technicians to communicate directly with their customers. Before, with Quickbooks, technicians would have to physically go into the office in order to access Quickbooks and the client information that existed within it. Now, with Odoo, the technicians are able to pull information from the software directly from their work stations. This has gotten rid of the tedious back and forth that wasted valuable time and energy.
Additionally on the customer-service side of the company’s operations, Odoo’s SMS Marketing module has been extremely useful for reminding customers about appointments. Missed appointments was an issue that Spallholz was facing previously with its old system. Furthermore, Odoo has been particularly beneficial when it comes to the business’ repeat customers who continue to use the shop for repairs. Odoo’s Contacts module allows technicians to pull up a specific customer’s contact page, which is automatically linked to that customer’s past invoices and work orders through the Smart Buttons feature. Many customers will often choose to do half of a service now and half at a later date, and the integrated nature of the Contacts application allows easy access to the history connected with each and every customer.
For a company that prides itself on quality customer service and auto repairs, Odoo has been a beneficial partner for Spallholz Motorwerks. With 28 years of experience under its belt, the company only continues to grow, and Odoo is prepared to grow with it.
Driven to Succeed: How Spallholz Motorwerks Shifted Gears with Odoo