How Helms Bros Mercedes-Benz unlocked $88K in 45 days.
Helms Bros. has been selling Mercedes-Benz in Bayside, New York since the 1950s. They've done the real work — the craft side of the trade — for longer than most dealer groups have existed. What they hadn't done was connect the craft to the warranty desk.
The problem
Like most single-rooftop franchises, the warranty AR was a slow, silent drag. Work happened. Claims happened in the general direction of happening. Rejections sat. Nobody on the team owned it as a P&L, because it wasn't anyone's single job.
What we did
- Connected the DMS to our warranty engine.
- Pulled four years of backlog and reconciled every line against current Mercedes-Benz policy.
- Filed the fixable ones, chased the rejections, and set up a live dashboard for the service director.
- Flipped the default: new work now files automatically the day of the RO, not at week-end.
What happened
In the first 45 days, $88,000 of previously-stuck receivables cleared to the store. That's not new revenue — it's revenue Helms had already earned. Annualised, the run rate is roughly $700K off this single rooftop.
More quietly, the cycle time on new claims dropped from an average of 60+ days to under 20. The service director stopped spending Friday afternoons on warranty and started spending it on technicians.
What it means for operators
A single-rooftop Mercedes-Benz franchise is not a small business. It's a medium-sized business with a large business's cash flow profile. Six figures of stuck receivables is not a rounding error — it's a full salary. If the money is already yours, collect it.