Through an innovative partnership, two industry innovators are seeking to up the ante when it comes to connecting schools with professional partners and upping the quality of auto body education in high schools and postsecondary institutions.
Each organization brings varied existing online infrastructure to the table. WrenchWay’s School Assist program is a platform that connects schools with industry support, and the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence’s (ASE) Adopt a School program puts schools in proximity with those looking to hire. Their combination on the School Assist platform means a bigger user base and more reach across the industry.
Dave Johnson.
“WrenchWay had this really cool online platform for doing the same things (as the Adopt a School program),” ASE CEO Dave Johnson told Autobody News. “We thought, ‘We need to get together.’ I will admit, it started out as me saying, ‘I hate those guys!” because they were doing these things that I thought ASE should have been doing. But hey, if you can’t beat them, join them.”
What the Partnership Means
It was this line of thinking that led WrenchWay to want to make sure its platform was accessible to more users. Access is free for schools: instructors can post shadow and tool donation requests, internships and ask for class speakers. Industry members like shops and dealerships can post donations like extra engines that might otherwise be scrapped.
“It’s not a complicated process, but what’s complicated is getting everyone onto one platform. That is key to what we wanted to do with WW and ASE,” explained WrenchWay co-founder Mark Wilson. “We feel strongly that for industry to properly support schools, you have to get everyone to one place … There needs to be kind of a hub for that to happen.”
Mark Wilson.
The ASE online presence wasn’t as strong as WrenchWay’s, according to Johnson, which was part of the reason the organization decided to combine its focus with WrenchWay. Earlier this year, the two organizations met and began grinding out partnership points.
The joint effort will do several things for the platform:
• It ups the program’s centralized aspect for industry partners.
• It’s a place for the ASE’s Education Foundation to invite its 2,000-plus ASE accredited schools to participate, although all schools, even non-accredited ones, will still be allowed to participate for free.
• It allows the platform to offer a lower price point for industry partners like shops and dealers. The current option, which is $1,800 yearly, provides access to School Assist, along with a job board recruiting tools and best practices. The partnership will bring about a lower pricing tier of $750 per year for those who want access only to School Assist.
• It’s an opportunity for WrenchWay and ASE to build out additional programs together.
The fact that the platform is still free for schools and caters to institutions not accredited with ASE means lots of accessibility for smaller programs, Wilson said. Some schools don’t even have auto body programs, he said, but the platform is in place to make sure general tech education teachers can tout it as a career.
And it’s a time-saver for industry partners, too.
Jay Goninen.
“We can save you a ton of time on making sure the schools in your area -- you have access to them and their requests,” Wilson said. “Just the time savings to create those relationships but then also manage them every new year and new semester easily covers that cost.”
Ongoing Updates
Recent tweaks and updates have made School Assist more accessible for users. A mobile app lets users flip between individual and organizational views. Shops can also record assists -- the instances in which they’ve helped schools -- slightly differently now, Wilson pointed out. Assist documentation can now remain open for addition of more information until a school decides to close it out. Other improvements like quick links and dashboards for schools have made user experience more streamlined, he said.
Moving forward, there’s room for growth as the merge progresses. WrenchWay CEO Jay Goninen sees that fact as par for the course as the platform develops.
“There are a lot of things that you assume are just automatically going to click or take off, and then, once you build it, you identify those points where you thought something was going to go a certain way and didn’t, you really can fine tune and tweak things, and I think our team has done a really, really good job at that,” he said.
Industry Accessibility
The companies plan to continue platform buildout, welcoming audience feedback along the way, Wilson said. They’re also working together on the Voice of Technician Survey and Report, along with a technician pay tool, in which auto body techs can enter their actual pay amounts for industry research. Joint events and webinars and an online community are in the works, too.
The platform development though, is a key focus in making the industry accessible for the next generation, though, Goninen said.
“Core to our mission as a company, which I think ASE works alongside of us very well with, is to promote and improve technician careers,” he explained. “And the more that we can stoke the fire for any student who is looking to get into our industry, the better our industry is. I think there are a lot of students who have the desire to get into our industry but don’t have the program that gets them exposure to what it is that we do.”
Elizabeth Crumbly