Fast forward a year, we took a trip from the 2013 SEMA show to head out to compete in the Global Time Attack Superlap Battle at Button Willow with the MSA EVO. We had several days between the end of SEMA and the SLB event to visit shops around Los Angeles. Since Specialty-Z had given our free trial a shot, we made a point to visit them in person. We managed to make it out to their shop right before they closed and Sebastian was gracious enough to stick around and talk with us.
We spent about an hour checking out their 2400 sqft operation and talked shop. They specialize in Nissan performance, with several 300ZX being worked on as well as some GTRs. They handle all aspects of the builds including repair, engine building, and they had an in ground Dyno for tuning. Sebastian has 3 other guys on his team in addition to himself so they make good use of the layout of the shop. We spent some time also showing Sebastian and his team the new features within MSA they hadn't seen from when they originally signed up. The in person demo along with the desire to make their shop more organized sparked them to give it another try.
Here we are now 2 years later, Sebastian took a few moments to give us some feedback on how it has been working for them. When asked how has MSA helped them, Sebastian responded "It has tremendously helped keep track of our labor time and parts. Its been very helpful in situations where labor time may have been underestimated and we can make a change if need be. Keeping track of the work to be performed and making notes is also a tremendous help. Losing paperwork and written notes is a thing of the past." Its clear his team have utilized MSA to improve their process'. By using task timers and notes they can better estimate and bill customers moving forward. Tracking parts on jobs is key, and this is a great way to do that which the Specialty-Z guys have found.
We asked Sebastian if there was any feature in particular they liked and he said "Our main "like" is tracking feature of old completed jobs. If one takes the time to enter the data its great to look back at an old job to remember a certain function or part used". Documenting work is critical in every industry so mistakes aren't repeated. Sebastian realizes this and above all else pointed it out as their favorite feature.
We look forward to continuing to work with Specialty-Z, and we thank them for taking a few minutes of their day to answer our questions!