Tag: Critical Analytics

Focus on the Future of Automation

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Most dealerships I talk to are hyper-focused on building a better business for their employees and customers. The most successful automotive groups I work with are always one or two moves ahead. They’re putting in the work to make sure the tools and technology are streamlining workflows so they can focus less on the busy work and focus more on their customers and staff. It’s not always easy. But the tools and capabilities exist to ensure the success of your business—and with the right partner at your side, you can most certainly get there. If you’ve partnered with a DMS who has your best interests at heart, they can help you get there. Here are some of the key areas of focus—in my experience—that will ensure the overall success of your dealership.

Focus On Delivering a Better Payment Process

Simply put, you need to take a hard look at the number of slow, manual processes taking place at every transaction, payment process, and accounting capability within your business. And then modernize it. Conveniences like point-of-sale and contactless payment in our day-to-day life are normal and expected everywhere else—why shouldn’t they be expected within your service lane? If you can both improve cash flow to your dealership via email billing services and get paid faster, why wouldn’t you? I would take this concept one step further (if you’re not convinced) and explain that automation and digitization of payment processes not only will reduce human error, but also creates digital receipts for all your transactions. Everything a dealer can do to protect themselves and improve accuracy is a major win in my book.

Focus on Digital Documentation

As we’ve seen over the past several years in the automotive industry, compliance and security rules are becoming stricter. In my opinion, this trend will continue to the benefit of both the dealer and the consumer. Protecting yourself as a business is going to require you to become more and more diligent as contracts and transactions are digitized. The good news is that, with the right DMS partner, you should have the ability to sync back your data every time you engage with your customers. Whether you’re capturing signatures automatically within the DMS or auto-filling form during the financing process, you’re not only offering more convenience for your buyer, but you’re also creating a (digital) paper trail that helps protect both parties. A secure document management solution will streamline your workflows and simplify your back-office operations. Compliance and fraud risk are real issues that are, unfortunately, a matter of when, not if, they will occur for most dealerships.

Focus on the Data That Matters Most

The daily data battle has long been an issue for dealers. I don’t need to remind you that your DMS is a gold mine of information that can help you make informed business decisions now and in the long run. But knowing which reports to run and where to begin to optimize efficiency without wasting your time can save countless hours. First, if you’re not partnered with a business consultant who has your best interest at heart, I feel for you. A Performance Manager with years of real dealership management experience can hold your team to task on things such as data extraction, KPI tracking, and goal setting. Are you tracking your Effective Labor Rate in the Service Department? How are you managing your contracts in transit in the business office? Are you using Dealertrack Digital Contracting to improve your cash flow? While everyone likes to review information differently, your DMS has the data, and your Performance Manager can help you manage it.

Focus on People Power

In my experience, staff turnover continues to be one of the biggest challenges for dealers, whether times are “challenging” or not. In fact, last time we checked, a dealership will need to rehire and retrain over 80% of its sales team every year. Your back-office team has a difficult job. Hiring and onboarding are only part of their role. If you’re considering optimizing any one key area of your dealership this year, it needs to be your HR and Payroll. Tax laws, compliance rules, and payments get beyond complex the more your business grows. As you add rooftops and expand your business, your needs will grow—and change—consistently. Your investment in this area will pay off immensely if you can integrate the technology you use into your people solutions as you make onboarding more professional.

Technology is never a “set-it-and-forget-it” process. Fortunately, the technology capabilities exist, today, to adapt. My team is constantly learning how to empower our dealer partners and set your dealership up for continued success. If you’re interested in learning how to optimize and streamline, your Dealer Management System for the future, reach out today.

Ready to move your business beyond busy work? Keep your most important initiatives front and center with new solutions from Dealertrack. Learn More.

 

About the Author | Jade Mitchell, Sr. Manager of Client Performance Management

Jade Mitchell is a Sr. Manager of Client Performance Management who works with dealerships to maximize DMS utilization, as well as drive processes and profit improvement. Jade believes that the Automotive Industry is a game of inches in today’s world, so taking a deep dive with our dealers into their financials and processes by using the data that the DMS provides can make a huge impact on their success. Jade came to Cox Automotive in 2019 after working in automotive dealerships for over two decades. He started washing and detailing vehicles when he was only 13 years old which led to him becoming a finance manager at a very young age and spending the next decade in management. In addition to his passion for the Automotive Industry, Jade runs his nonprofit organization: Stay Positive Stay Aggressive Inc, which he established in 2013 to assist local families struggling with medical bills due to life-threatening illnesses. Recently, Jade and his wife Aubrey welcomed their first child into the world so between Dealertrack and daddy duty he is truly working 24/7 these days.

 

 

Seven Ways to Optimize Your Back Office

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“The right controller can mean the difference between dealers that thrive and those that are struggling to survive.” – Karli DeVall, CFO, Tim Dahle Nissan

 

Your dealership’s back office is easy to overlook when things are going well. But behind the scenes, accounting managers and controllers work hard to keep the lights on and the budgets balanced. Identifying a rock star controller—and elevating potential leaders—can empower your accounting team to improve profits and elevate your entire dealership’s operations. Here are seven quick ideas to build up your accounting team for the optimal back office.

1. Prioritize Training

Give your team a structured onboarding program and ongoing training opportunities to keep them engaged. When your accounting team and controllers are well-trained and have a clear path to high performance, they can see their role in the dealership plan and contribute to the bigger profitability picture.

 

2. Improve Communications

Give your accounting team the tools they need to communicate more efficiently with each other and with your technology. Better communication can empower your team to boost efficiency and evolve with time and new technologies.

 

3. Adopt Paperless Processes

Provide your team with the infrastructure to adopt paperless processes and digital document scanning. Going paperless improves communication between your teams and departments, and creates efficiencies throughout the dealership.

 

 

 

4. Unlock the Data in Your DMS

Your accounting team has access to troves of data, but they need a way to filter it down to metrics that matter. Empower your team with technology that makes month-end reporting accurate and timely, while also helping them to meet monthly sales and performance objectives and trends.

 

5. Invest in Automated Technology

Embrace digital technologies that eliminate manual processes. When your accounting team is free to work without restrictions that slow their progress—and ultimately reduce the risk of error—they flourish and thrive! New reporting tools that streamline reports and manually compile data with fully automated General Ledger mapping, like Critical Analytics, are designed to increase efficiency and free your accounting team from the burden of manually compiled spreadsheets from multiple locations that add hours to your team’s workload.

 

6. Help Your Team Embrace Change

Change can be difficult for accounting team members. But truly great leaders can help them to see their vital role in how technology is implemented and used at the dealership level. When they’re better able to embrace technology, the entire dealership stands to benefit by becoming more efficient and more profitable.

 

6. Identify Accounting Team Superstars!

Identify true leaders among your accounting team—those who use and embrace technology. Empower them to take the lead when it comes to training new hires, being an ambassador, and rolling out new technology. Find ways to connect your leaders and super users together to unlock the true potential of your team and technology.

To learn more quick ways to build up your accounting team and thrive as a dealership, visit the Controllers’ Hub.

 

 

 

 

Information is Good. Knowledge is Critical.

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Working in retail automotive, we hear a lot about data. It’s practically everywhere—troves of it. In fact, most dealer management systems are filled with all the data we could ever need. And if we had time, we could dive in, all day long, and consume it.

It sounds like a joke, but when it comes right down to it, a lot of us simply throw our hands up. Instead, franchise dealerships operate month-to-month—most of the time looking back at past performance. How did we do? Where did we fall short? Were we close to hitting our goals? Just imagine if we could flip that. Harnessing predictions, unlocking data’s true potential, and influencing key-decision-making would make it possible to act fast, and take swift action based on data, not just our gut feelings. The events of 2020 and 2021 taught many dealers a lot of valuable lessons about the ability to pivot and adapt to change. But if we can’t leverage data—without always being reactionary—the true cost to our business will always be realized in hindsight.

Actionable Insights We Can Use

As a Performance Manager, I have the privilege of spending time working one-on-one with franchise dealers, helping them get the most out of their technology. Whether we’re standing up a new Dealer Management System, working out a new integration, or updating processes, there’s almost always a rough spot or two to work out. But there’s never a lack of data to sort out. One of the more rewarding parts of the job is seeing the “lights turn on” for those new hires and team leaders who’ve tapped into their DMS and found data and analytics that deliver action-based insights. And that’s kind of the whole point. If your reports aren’t easily digestible, organized by role, and flexible enough that senior leaders have access across departments, then they probably won’t see much use.

KPIs that Drive Productivity

Everyone who has worked in a dealership has been frustrated by underperformance. Yet, the push to “just do better” or “increase production” rarely does the trick. Upping the hours your service team works doesn’t result in higher profitability. It usually results in burnout, overworked staff, and a net loss. Data from your DMS—when paired with Critical Analytics—works like a high-powered calculator. With detailed dashboards and reporting modules, our partners get drill-down KPIs into the daily performance output of team members across the dealership. This is the kind of data that you can use to take small steps, day-by-day, month-by-month, to improve by setting benchmarks and goals that result in sustainable productivity. So you can ditch the guesswork and help your employees, all the while avoiding burnout.

The Future is Data-driven

Data is not a temporary technical advantage. It does more. And we’ve yet to unlock its potential within the dealership. Right now, we’re at the tip of the iceberg of how data analytics can improve our industry. When it comes to understanding where our revenue comes from (or why it’s suddenly going to crash), we need to use data to look six months or further into the future of our business projections. Critical Analytics within the DMS provides monthly predictive dealership pacing, based on how you’ve performed so far. So, for example, when those cars come back onto your lot to sell, you can be prepared. But, our team is still thinking bigger. Imagine harvesting DMS, CRM, F&I Data all together to look even further. There’s more to the picture that we’re not seeing. The insights are there.

Data from your DMS matters more than ever. Automotive technology is more integrated, more interconnected, and more powerful than it’s ever been. If we can make the mindset shift from hindsight to foresight, our ability to drive change before a disaster will be unmatched.

Ready to learn more? Schedule a demo with your Performance Manager to uncover the data within your DMS using Critical Analytics today.

About the Author

Tom Tellepsen | Dealertrack DMS Performance Manager

 

Tom Tellepsen is a Performance Manager at Dealertrack DMS with over 18 years of experience helping franchise automotive partners reach their goals by optimizing budgets, building better operational procedures, and obtaining the right mix of tech and talent. Prior to joining Dealertrack, Tom worked as a General Manager and General Sales Manager in some of Virginia’s leading franchise dealerships.