Latest from Tim Moran

Dealers struggle with a shortage of certified FCA technicians, worsened by training cutbacks during Chrysler's bankruptcy. FCA says it's taking steps to relieve the shortage -- letting techs do work above their official certification level and adding schools -- but doubts persist.

There's a general consensus in the industry that there's a serious shortage of technicians able to work on today's advanced cars and trucks. Now, some analysts and experts say that simply recruiting more technicians won't help. Dealerships today are losing technicians too fast for recruitment to make up the emerging gap.

In 2003, Neal East was handed a solution and told to go find a problem it would solve profitably. Eventually, he found his problem: scheduling service appointments at dealerships. Xtime now processes more than 2.5 million service appointments each month for dealerships. Here's how East brought Xtime to market.