Vehlo’s Service Lane SolutionsVehlo’s Service Lane Solutions

As dealerships lean more heavily on their service departments to boost their bottom lines a plethora of software tools is popping up, promising to streamline the service department to boost profits.

How to decide what works? More than 30,000 dealerships have turned to Vehlo, an umbrella company with a stable of cloud-based and text solutions to streamline the service experience. Those solutions range from all-in-one service platform Dealerlogix to mobile-first customer engagement platform TEXT2DRIVE to reconditioning flow software Rapid Recon.

Vehlo products generated some 60 million repair orders in 2024 and processes more than $8 billion annually in service payments, according to the company.

In April of 2024, Vehlo appointed Josh Weis as its new CEO. His background in software and payments highlights the growing role software solutions play in creating the best customer experience in the service department.

Weis and Euwart Anderson, Vehlo’s executive vice president and general manager of its dealership business, spoke with WardsAuto about Weis’ move to Vehlo, how it gets ideas for new companies to add to its platform and where it sees growth opportunities. An edited version of our conversation follows.

WardsAuto: Josh, what did the Vehlo board see in you, and what did you see in Vehlo that made you right to be its CEO?

Weis: I have a background in software and payments in high-growth companies. That is what Vehlo is. The board recognized we already have tremendous automotive experience in our C-suite (and) technology is playing a bigger and bigger role, especially in the service lane.   

WardsAuto: What gaps do you see in the service experience on the technology side?

Weis: I saw this in other industries (as well). The technology is just not connected. It is disparate. (Vehlo) is end-to-end, from scheduling the appointment to (repair order) creation to payment. The customers love it.

WardsAuto: When you say end-to-end, where does Vehlo’s offering start and where does it end?  

Weis: It is literally going to be scheduling your appointment, coming in and checking in. We scan every VIN to create an RO (repair order). In the entire Vehlo system we saw about 60 million ROs last year.  

As the RO is created, that will dispatch a parts order and a text to keep the customer engaged and up to date.

A lot of times, those texts offer additional or recommended services that are easy and frictionless for a customer to accept. Then, when they’re done, you pay for (the service) and pick up your vehicle and go home.

WardsAuto: Where do you see room to add new companies on the Vehlo platform?

Weis: An opportunity we have to serve (our customers) better is on the payment side, where we can interact and provide more robust payment solutions that also offer better reporting to the front office.

WardsAuto: Do you seek suggestions for new products from dealers, or get feedback from them?

Anderson: We get ample feedback from dealers. We engage with them at a cadence to see if they are getting maximum value. We do have dealers suggest product improvements.  

WardsAuto: How is Vehlo funded?

Weis: We have private equity backing from some very notable investors who just care about building good products that help everyone win.

Anderson: If a company is talking to us, they are likely at a pivotal milestone personally or looking to solve a problem they can’t figure out. The ideal outcome is one plus one equals three.

WardsAuto: Aside from growth capital, how does a company benefit from becoming part of Vehlo’s suite of offerings?

Anderson: With Josh’s background in private equity, that’s a benefit founders get out of joining Vehlo specifically. We come from a typically PE-driven background, which makes us a bit more creative at times in solving issues and how we attack some of the challenges that founders have worked really hard to overcome. Some of those challenges are functional day-to-day operations and some are relationships.

I’ll give you an example. One of our companies, Dealerlogix, was recently accepted by General Motors to their 3Synergy service lane tool program. That’s something any individual-point solution might have been really, really challenged to overcome.