FirstStop Workshop Management

Leader in Mechanical Workshops

FirstStop is one of the leading vehicle repair shop chains. With a presence in more than 25 countries and a network of 2,000 workshops, FirstStop enjoys maintaining a non-negligible market share, especially in Spain.

FirstStop‘s main business model is franchising. Independent workshops offer mechanical service under the name and quality guarantees of FirstStop . As in many other aspects of this type of business relationship, the franchisor makes available to the franchisee all the resources that the franchisee needs to develop the activity.

One of these resources that FirstStop makes available to franchisors is workshop management software. This suite allows technicians to manage the entire life flow of a mechanical intervention, from the first customer registration to the final management of the invoice and subsequent warranty.

Need for Renewal of Workshop Management

FirstStop‘s workshop management system presented was the high level of technical debt. The system was based on a PowerBuilder desktop application. In order for the workshops to have access, the company implemented an adaptation of Citrix so that said desktop application could be interacted with from a web browser, but the limitations were more than evident.

The main difficulty faced by FirstStop workshop managers was the difficulty of interacting with the application. By having to communicate through a Citrix system, many of the functionalities a user is accustomed to in a web application were not available. One of the most critical was the impossibility of opening the same intervention sheet on different devices simultaneously.

Aware of the problem that this technical debt represented for FirstStop , TechsBCN was asked to create a web system that would modernize the workshop management software infrastructure. The system had to meet a series of very specific requirements, among which were ease of use, agility and the possibility of scaling, both in functionality and users.

One of the main challenges that TechsBCN faced when designing this product was the large number of users who interacted simultaneously with the application. All FirstStop franchised workshops have similar business hours, and all of them make an intensive use of the system. That is why, among other important decisions, the system was implemented using a dockerized infrastructure based on Kubernetess , which guaranteed that the system could scale with the needs of the business.

Another very relevant aspect of the project was stability and resilience. FirstStop simply cannot afford to release its Workshop Management software that negatively affects its franchisees. That is why TechsBCN incorporated a strict quality gates policy into the life flow of the application, in addition to implementing various batteries of tests at different levels (unit, integration, end-to-end , performance, load, etc.).

The Result

Thanks to the effort invested between TechsBCN and FirstStop, the wide network of workshops have an agile, reliable system that effectively solves the technological problems faced by mechanics.

FirstStop Workshop Management , franchisees’ information flows are much more agile and efficient. This guarantees that they can focus on the service that really adds value to the business: carrying out mechanical interventions on their clients’ vehicles.

Do you want to know how we can help you at TechsBCN, just as we did with FirstStop? We encourage you to contact us and explain your case to us. Thanks to the experience that this and other digital transformation projects have given us and the commitment to innovation and technical excellence that is something that is peculiarly ours, you are in good hands.