A car repair shop needed to introduce e-invoicing to stay compliant – but scratching that surface revealed quite a lot:
A business still running on phone bookings, a paper notebook for customer data, and a binder of receipts handed to the tax advisor by hand. With a generational handover on the horizon, “just add e-invoicing” turned into a full digitalization project.
I ran a workshop to map the risks and opportunities, then built a roadmap covering cloud-based CRM and accounting, e-invoicing, a rebrand, a new website with online booking, and two years of hands-on support – all without disrupting service for existing customers.
The result: a shop that’s fully operational in 2026, digitally accessible to customers and suppliers, and considerably more attractive – and valuable – for a smooth ownership transition.
Client
KFZ Szymanski
Year
2026
Scope
Requirements Assessment
Gap Analysis / Target Setting
Solution Scouting
Implementation & Setup
Coaching / Training
Support
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Tech
Wordpress
WooCommerce
Paypal Integration
Calendly Integration
Sevdesk
The Challenge: Skilled Trades, Unskilled Systems
The shop’s tech stack — if it could even be called that — hadn’t been touched in 20 years. Customers could only book appointments by phone or in person, even for routine jobs like an oil change. Customer records lived in one notebook, supplier details in another. The tax advisor received a loose-leaf binder of paperwork each month.
The EU’s mandatory e-invoicing rollout was the trigger that made the scale of the problem impossible to ignore — and it landed at the same time the owners were starting to think seriously about business succession. A company that runs entirely on notebooks and phone calls isn’t an easy one to hand over, or to value fairly.
Pantone® 532 C
C71 M65 Y64 K72
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Pantone® 1795 C
C19 M90 Y79 K9
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Pantone® 128 C
C3 M14 Y76 K0
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Pantone® 663 C
C02 M01 Y01 K00
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The Approach: Modernize Without Breaking What Works
The managing directors joined a one-day retreat to work through two questions: what are the risks of staying as-is, and where’s the actual upside in digitalizing? From there, we built a digitalization strategy built around the coming succession – with one hard constraint: don’t disrupt operations for customers who are already happy with the service.
What We Built
⸺ Workshop & Roadmap
Mapping digitalization potential, use cases, and a phased implementation plan
⸺ Cloud-based CRM & Accounting
E-invoicing, fully compliant with the new EU requirement; integration with supplier portals, direct connectivity to DATEV and the tax advisor, standard services, hourly rates, and parts inventory built into the system, digital payment support (card, PayPal, Apple Pay)
⸺ A Modern Public Presence
Rebrand: logo, typography, color palette
New website with online appointment booking (inspections, tire changes, oil changes, and other standard services) plus a chatbot for quick questions
⸺ Employee training
... to make the new systems stick.
⸺ Two years of ongoing support
The Result
The shop enters 2026 fully digitalized: customers and suppliers can interact with it online, day-to-day operations run through modern CRM and accounting tools, and the paperwork bottleneck to the tax advisor is gone.
Just as importantly, the improved transparency around customer and supplier relationships — paired with a modernized IT setup — makes the business meaningfully easier to value and hand over to new ownership in the coming years.
