Tag: DMS

Ask the Expert: New Trends in Automotive Hiring

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As dealerships continue to find new ways to overcome the challenges facing their business, one key challenge continues to loom large: retention and hiring. New digital technology helps you deliver for your clients, but your team will always remain your number one revenue generator. Dealertrack DMS has partnered with Hireology, the experts in HR Solutions for automotive, to bring integrated offerings to our dealer partners. We reached out to their team to better understand what dealers should know about the new trends in automotive hiring.

Technology’s Influence: How is technology shifting the way dealers fill roles?

We’ve seen technology become all the more important during the past eighteen months, especially in the retail automotive industry. Dealers who were able to quickly pivot their operations to online selling, for instance, thrived when the initial lockdowns from COVID-19 took effect.

Additionally, using recruitment software can help you attract a much larger number of candidates to your open positions. You can utilize more sourcing avenues, run employees through the process much faster, and get new hires up to speed, resulting in a more immediate impact on your bottom line.

The Great Resignation: How concerned should dealers be about this?

It’s a far-reaching reality. We saw over 4 million people leave their jobs in August, the most we’ve seen since 2000. You should definitely be concerned, but that doesn’t mean you should panic. You must change the way you think about employee and applicant demands and meet them where they are. It’s an applicant economy right now, meaning the ball is in their court, so you need to step up offerings (like benefits, pay, culture, etc.) to make your dealership a place they want to work.

Retention: How can dealers improve retention?

Turnover will never become obsolete, but you can curb it. Feedback is the number one way to really gauge your employees’ happiness. Anonymous surveys are a great way to do this, but you also want to encourage management to have conversations with their direct reports. There needs to be an environment of trust and open communication, and when you receive feedback, it should be addressed and changes should be made. That’s the way to keep people around.

Talent expectations: How can dealers meet and exceed candidate expectations?

Our recent State of Hiring report, where we surveyed nearly 5000 recent applicants, revealed exactly what candidates want and some actionable ways to make your dealership meet their needs. We heard from those individuals that candidates want to be valued by their manager and their organization, find a place where they can grow their skills, have flexibility, and a good work-life balance. Of course, they want to be paid competitively, but bigger picture, there are other adjustments companies need to make to attract and retain great teams.

To learn more, READ THE GUIDE FOR FREE, ONLINE: REDEFINING TODAY’S RETAIL AUTO EMPLOYEE: WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN TOP RETAIL AUTO TALENT—AND WHAT THEY EXPECT FROM YOUR DEALERSHIP.

Embracing the New Digital Era of Accounting

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In times of industry turmoil, the big tend to get bigger, and the small, well the small sometimes don’t survive. It’s the natural evolution of the industry, but that doesn’t mean small dealerships are doomed to unavoidable extinction. There are ways to adapt to industry change and stay atop the proverbial pecking order, for dealers of all sizes. And, as it turns out, the right controller and the right accounting team can mean the difference between dealers that thrive and those that are struggling to survive.

The Difference Between Thriving and Surviving Dealerships

Within the past 18 months, we have seen our own version of “survival of the fittest” in the automotive sales industry. As circumstances have forced dealers to adapt to a new way of doing business, some dealers have embraced digital experiences, while others have been less eager to evolve and have felt the difficulties of a down economy.

In general, top-performing dealers—those that have become more profitable and efficient—have accelerated their adoption of digital technology significantly more than the static dealers—those that have become either less efficient and profitable, or stayed the same.

Unfortunately, even among those dealers that have adopted digital technology, some have walked back the progress they’ve made—perhaps explaining why only 62% of static dealers believe that digital changes will create long-term benefit, compared to 83% of thriving dealers.

Communicating at the Speed of Digital

Out of necessity, the digital era has introduced a new, more efficient way of communicating within dealerships. Over the past 18 months, dealers have had to rely on Zoom calls and other modern forms of communication, just to survive. These new technologies have enabled dealers to communicate better, but they’ve also resulted in dealers communicating more—an ironic technological twist, considering we’re also working apart more than ever too. It’s easier than ever, for example, to hop on a Zoom call with a parts manager to learn new processes. If dealers thought they were communicating well before, the new digital era has introduced the industry to a higher level of communication efficiency.

In the accounting office, where communication is often done with numbers and documents, the digital era has paved the way for more paperless adoption. Prior to the pandemic, dealer accounting offices were slow to adopt digital document scanning. But now, as people work from home and can’t be near the source documents nearly as often, the industry went from 50% adoption to full adoption, nearly overnight. Even if these new processes were forced on dealerships, their benefits will be felt well beyond a window of temporary distancing because, simply put, it’s a better way to communicate long-term, and it creates efficiencies that are felt throughout the entire dealership.

Integrity of Numbers and Integration Across Channels

One way dealerships experience inefficiency is through a general lack of communication between disconnected technologies. When one department’s technology says one thing, and another department’s technology says something completely different, it can be a nightmare for accounting offices to figure out whose numbers they can trust and how to reconcile the differences.

If the goal is integrity in numbers (and it should be for every dealership accounting office), integration of technologies is hugely important in the new digital era. When technology is integrated with the help of a centralized DMS that connects every department’s technologies across the dealership, controllers don’t need to worry whether they can trust the numbers on one department’s dashboard. They don’t need to worry about why the CRM data doesn’t match the customer pay repair orders on the financial statement. Integration is automatic, and it’s more important than ever before as dealers embrace digital.

In Closing…

No matter what some dealerships believe, the digital advancements made during the past 18 months are here to stay. They have already started to separate the evolving dealers from the static dealers, and they will continue to act as a dividing line between dealers that prioritize profitability and efficiency, and those that don’t.

As your dealership continues to embrace digital, give your accounting team the tools they need to enable better, more efficient communication between your teams and between your technologies. Empower them with improved communication and integration and your dealership will continue to evolve in the new digital era.

About the Author | Karli DeVall

Karli DeVall is the CFO at Tim Dahle Nissan and Red Rock Auto Group. Prior to her current role, she spent ten years running an accounting and consulting practice in the retail automotive industry where she specialized in fixing broken accounting offices. She is passionate about the role that controllers and accounting teams play in the business and looks for ways to empower teams to connect and showcase their skills to their community.

Four Ways Payroll Integrations Save Time and Money

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Payroll is a critical function for every business. It’s also the single largest expense for most companies, accounting for 68% of the average company’s overhead1, and that’s before factoring for the hours of time it takes to run payroll on a regular basis. Wouldn’t it be nice if you and your dealership could save time and money while performing this costly and time-consuming process? A key technology trend is helping dealerships do just that with a single, simple action. Fully integrating your payroll solution with your DMS reduces does both in four specific ways.

 

1. Integrated Payroll Reduces Administrative Work

By pushing and pulling information from your DMS, integrated payroll systems create efficiencies for those tasked with running payroll. If you’re still working within multiple disconnected systems, consider how much time you’re spending setting up manual reports, entering duplicate data, and making manual reconciliations. And, as you’re probably painfully aware, if you make an error in one system, it can take a long time to discover, locate, and fix that mistake in each place that it occurs. Truly integrating your DMS with a full-featured payroll solution can help you eliminate spreadsheets and manual data re-entry, freeing you up to spend time on more important—and more profitable—activities.

2. Integrated Payroll Automatically Posts to the General Ledger

Of course, the payroll process is deeply intertwined with your dealership’s accounting systems and processes. And every payroll needs to be posted to the DMS general ledger. It’s one of the most important administrative tasks associated with payroll. Payrolls processed through fully integrated platforms post to the DMS General Ledger in real-time, with no additional manual steps required. Automatic payroll posting eliminates the need for spreadsheet uploads and/or manual journal entries common with other 3rd party payroll solutions.

3. Integrated Payroll Eliminates Disparate Systems

Of course, salaries and wages aren’t the only type of compensation within your dealership. Integrated human resource management systems go beyond payroll by helping you manage employee paid time off, benefits, performance reviews, job summaries, and much more. Integrated systems eliminate the need to track and report these items manually, or through separate, non-integrated solutions, saving you lots of time and freeing up resources for more important activities. With the right platform, you get one integrated platform and a single system of record for all human resource information.

 

4. Integrated Payroll Streamlines Payroll Complexity into One Process

Payroll is one of the most complex calculations performed by any business, and it’s even more complicated for dealerships. Factoring for sales commissions, bonuses, tech time, and employee receivables, running payroll within a dealership can be extremely difficult to understand and execute. Full-featured, integrated payroll solutions simplify the process by empowering you to review, validate, and reconcile these pay types as part of standard payroll processing, saving time and ensuring accuracy.

 

Your dealership spends a lot of money to pay its people. And the payroll process is one of the most important and time-consuming activities performed within your company. While you may not be able to do anything about the recurring cash outlay associated with paying your people, you can save time and money on the process of running payroll. By adopting a full-featured payroll management system that integrates with your DMS, you can reduce administrative work, eliminates disparate systems, and minimize complexity, saving you both time and money.

 

Want to learn more about Integrated Payroll and HR Management from Dealertrack DMS? Click here to see how your dealership could benefit.

1 https://www.zenefits.com/workest/payroll-data-priority-small-businesses

 

 

 

Bring Your Payroll and HR Into the Digital Age

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If you manage human resources within a dealership, you have two jobs. First, you do the job you were hired to do—taking care of your people. And, you also do clerical and administrative work in order for people to do their job and get paid. And, often, putting in the hours to ensure your team gets paid, adds up to…lost hours. In fact, a recent study1 on workplace productivity estimates that office workers spend 552 hours, or 69 total days, a year on administrative or repetitive tasks. The cost of that lost productivity is a staggering $2.87 trillion annually in the United States.

With such a heavy cost to your dealership’s resources and to your personal time, eliminating repetitive HR administration work should be one of your most important financial goals. Not surprisingly, technology solutions have come forward with a promise of solving this important problem, while increasing efficiency within dealerships. Modern solutions bring payroll and HR management into the digital age by integrating with your DMS and reducing the amount of monotonous, administrative HR work you have to do. By reducing duplicate data entry, automating manual processes, and streamlining important activities, an integrated payroll and HR solution helps you stay focused on your actual job.

Integrated HR: Hiring, Onboarding, and Training

As a human resource professional, one of your most important jobs is to keep your dealership staffed with quality talent. Unfortunately, the process of hiring, onboarding, and retaining great employees is filled with unproductive administrative work. You spend as much time creating job posts, reviewing resumes, filling out employee paperwork, and collecting personal documents, as you do getting new employees up to speed on their important jobs.

With the right technology, you can build brand awareness and market open roles across multiple channels to connect with top applicants and to convince them to work for you. Using an automated, integrated solution to aide in your employee search can help you look beyond your typical pool of talent to attract highly qualified candidates. And, the ideal partner will give you access to experts that can assist you in your talent acquisition efforts.

The efficiencies don’t stop on an employee’s first day of work. Integrated HR platforms make the complex task of employee onboarding much easier. The benefits of effective onboarding and job training are clear. Research performed by Hireology suggests that 62 percent of companies with structured onboarding programs experience faster time to productivity and 54 percent claim to have better employee engagement. Most importantly, 69 percent of employees that receive effective onboarding are more likely to stay with their employer for at least three years.

Integrated Payroll and Benefits Management

Better hiring practices can bring in better employees and effective onboarding can get them up to speed quickly. But there’s really only one thing that will keep your team members engaged for the long term—a regular paycheck and great benefits. A DMS-integrated, paperless payroll processing solution reduces human error, speeds up workflows, and eliminates manual data re-entry, making it easy to get your people paid. Just imagine how much time you could save with one system that compiles and organizes manual reports for ongoing payroll processing and posts payroll accounting information back to the DMS general ledger. With the ability to validate, review, and reconcile seamlessly, you avoid the manual work that eats into your time and destroys your productivity.

Just as a good compensation package goes beyond base salary, a great HR management system goes beyond payroll processing to include all benefits. In addition to managing other forms of monetary compensation, including bonuses and sales commissions, a comprehensive HR solution helps you manage employee paid time off, performance reviews, job descriptions, and more. And because you won’t have to track and report these items manually, or through separate systems, you’ll be more efficient.

It’s time to bring payroll and HR into the digital age. Comprehensive human capital management systems with payroll processing streamline administrative tasks, eliminate manual processes, and avoid costly errors, reducing the amount of clerical and administrative work that you have to manage. That means you spend less time on paperwork and more time taking care of your people.

Want to learn more about Integrated Payroll and HR Management from Dealertrack DMS? Click here to see how your dealership could benefit.

 

Source: https://itchronicles.com/technology/repetitive-tasks-cost-5-trillion-annually/ 

Data and the Disconnected Dealership

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Does your DMS provider enable the free exchange of your dealership’s data?

More and more of your business relies on the accurate exchange of data. As customers shop for cars online, they freely share their information with the dealerships they do business with. This includes sharing personal information like addresses and contact information, as well as more sensitive financial information contained on credit applications. Customers exchange this information for a more convenient and seamless car buying experience, but with the caveat that your dealership will keep it protected. And according to our study, 86% of thriving dealers agree that having accurate and complete customer data is a top priority.

If the technology driving your operations doesn’t deliver the data you need to connect people, cars, and services in a fast, secure, and accurate capacity—you need to take a serious look at the risk you’re facing

Your Right to Your Data

Under the guise of protecting customer privacy, some DMS providers believe that dealerships don’t have the right to share information between their own systems. Simply put, the debate between data security and data access isn’t an either/or scenario. Your dealership doesn’t have to choose one or the other. It can have both. Especially as the industry shifts to incorporate more digital technology (in an effort to enable a more seamless online buying experience for your customers), sharing dealership data between dealership systems is critical to business continuity.

When your DMS provider gives you free and unfettered access to your data, you can work with both customers and vendors to facilitate shared data processing, storage, and analysis, without having to navigate multiple systems just to complete a simple task. It boosts efficiency for you and saves time for your customers during the car buying process. It also allows your dealership to advance into a new age of automotive retail with data that will become increasingly important to your business’ success.

Your Right to Cost Transparency

Now that you know you shouldn’t have to choose between your data and your customers’ security, you should also know that enabling these two compatible dealership components shouldn’t be a financial burden to you. The costs associated with data integration and data security, storage, and analysis should be fully disclosed upfront by your DMS provider and justified by the value they add to you and your customers.

Your dealership’s access to your own data is self-evident. Knowing how much you’re paying for data integration should be self-evident too. Those costs should never limit or financially encumber your business. Your systems should be easy to work with. They should help you avoid the tedium of inputting customer data into multiple systems. And your tech provider should be able to clearly explain each cost with full transparency.

As your dealership continues to incorporate more digital elements and your customers continue to trust their information with you online, make sure that you have a tech provider that can prioritize both sides of the same customer data coin to give you and your customers a better car buying/sales experience.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW THE RIGHT DMS TECHNOLOGY AND PARTNER CAN HELP YOUR DEALERSHIP EVOLVE TO MEET THE DIGITAL DEMANDS OF TODAY’S CUSTOMERS, GET YOUR COPY OF THE DEALER’S GUIDE FOR MAXIMIZING PROFITABILITY.

 

 

Connected Technology Boosts Dealership Sales

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What happens when the technology that ties everything together—your Dealer Management System—integrates with your CRM? You can expect better data, better deals, and better days ahead.

Dealertrack DMS, backed by the power of Cox Automotive, is designed to fully integrate with a full suite of digital technology solutions, including VinSolutions Connect CRM.

  1. Drive Better, Data-informed Decisions – Deal Sync shares deal info bidirectionally between Connect CRM and Dealertrack DMS in real-time, creating efficiencies that result in higher profit potential.
  2. Reduce Redundant Work – When you integrate your CRM and DMS, you can reduce the number of keystrokes and busy work resulting in fewer data entry errors, mismatched customer info, and extra work for your accounting, sales, and service staff
  3. Connected and Certified – Unlike other DMS platforms, Dealertrack is hassle-free, without hidden fees, so you can continue to work with more than 180 leading Opentrack certified technology providers.
  4. Never Go Alone – With 96% client satisfaction and more than 10 years of dealership exp., a dedicated PM helps you reach (and exceed) profit potential while driving full DMS utilization.
  5. Precise Deals, Fewer Headaches – Eliminate differences in cash and equity allocation and get more accurate deal info direct from the data in your DMS.

When you streamline your dealership technology, you win. Your customers and your staff win, also. In fact, the only thing you miss out on are extra steps, manual workflow, duplicate data, and (likely) extra, hidden fees charged by your vendor.

EXPERIENCE THE UNEXPECTED FROM YOUR DMS
IT’S TIME THE TECHNOLOGY AT THE CENTER OF YOUR DEALERSHIP SERVES AS A CATALYST FOR SUCCESS.
SCHEDULE A DEMO TODAY TO SEE HOW DEALERTRACK DMS CAN MAKE AN IMPACT ON YOUR BUSINESS.

 

Empower Your Accounting Team to Build a Better Dealership

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Dealers are great at finding ways to become more profitable. In 2020 alone, nearly three out of four franchise dealers added at least one digital retailing solution to meet the needs of a public more interested in servicing their car (or buying their next one) online. But they rarely focus on their accounting team. The consensus I hear is that dealers are simply too busy to be bothered, and, well, if it’s not broken don’t mess with it! But if you’re overlooking your accounting team—missing training opportunities or recognizing objections to progress—you’re headed for trouble. Profitability, and profit retention, go hand-in-hand with an empowered and efficient accounting department.

Identify and Overcome Objections

There’s real risk in sitting back and settling for the status quo. It may be easier to focus on the quick wins and avoid disrupting the one team that always checks their task list. And change can feel disruptive, and scary, at first. But it’s worth looking at what may be holding you back.

  • They’re busy. But are they busy doing things that add actual value to your dealership? Or just busy doing busy work?
  • They get the job done just fine. Your competition does it faster, better, and it results in a better customer experience.
  • They push back on new technology. So, what are you doing to help bring in tools, training, and technology that makes their work more fulfilling?

The past eighteen months have put a lot of stress on you and your business. (And you’ve handled it in stride.) Many dealerships have added tools and processes that have improved the way we communicate across dealership departments in ways we didn’t even realize needed improvement. We’re faster at what we do—and better off for it. Now, it’s time to focus on the team that provides critical information and insights to the decision-makers at your business. With the help of your dealership’s accounting tools—specifically your Dealer Management System—your accounting team can do so much more.

Prioritizing Ongoing Training

The vast majority of industry training and education is focused on helping the dealer principal and the general manager. Controllers and accounting teams don’t often get opportunities to attend conferences or get access to new learning and training events. They don’t get to collaborate with their industry peers to see what’s working and what’s not working at other dealerships. True to tradition, they’re usually back at the dealership, dutifully performing their tasks. But given how important a well-run, well-educated accounting office can be to dealership profitability, this has to change.

Sharing knowledge is empowering, both for the sharer and the learner. That’s how accounting teams learn to take on new technologies and figure out new ways to do things, instead of just falling back on the way they’ve always been done. When we pulled together nearly 300 industry experts in one room for a rare Controller Conference, pre-pandemic, we almost didn’t need vendor trainers to help lead the group. The simple fact is, we learn better when we learn together and share what we know. And research from Harvard Business Review supports it. When we take an active role in learning (i.e. get outside our dealership comfort zones and talk with our peers), we internalize concepts better and produce better outcomes.

Simple Steps, Big Payoff

Dealerships that prioritize and invest in staff growth tend to be both more efficient and more profitable than other dealerships. In fact, 74% of top-performing dealerships make sure that their employees are satisfied and well-trained in how to use new technology, according to Cox Automotive research. Consider the following practices when looking for ways to empower your accounting team to learn and grow. Your dealership will be better for it.

  • Go Forth & Learn: Learn about new technology by having your controller and the accounting office leaders attending tradeshows, provider-sponsored events, training seminars, and other industry gatherings. Then invite them to share the information with dealer management to find ways to improve.
  • Unmask the Superheroes: Identify “super users” of your technology and rely on them to teach other team members how to leverage technology to your dealership’s advantage. Hold lunch and learn sessions across rooftops and invite these people to meet and mentor new team members.
  • Virtual Learning: Network online with industry peers, including those from accounting offices at other dealerships, through on-demand training resources like DMS360 and additional summits through your technology provider.

Understanding the ‘Why’ of What We Do

Accounting offices in car dealerships are rarely actually accounting offices. Most often, they are task-management offices, with hard-working, well-intentioned employees who have been taught to complete lists of tasks, without ever really understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing—the actual accounting at the foundation of their busy work.

Among other implications, this lack of big-picture vision can be stifling for dealership growth. When new technologies are introduced—some of which are necessary to future-proof the dealership or to ensure increased efficiency in a competitive industry—the accounting employees are often the first to push back. They push back because they’re stuck inside their list of to-dos.

On the other hand, when controllers and accounting teams have a better understanding of their roles, and how they play an integral part in the dealership’s success on so many different levels, it becomes empowering. Employees see a greater purpose and find the motivation to improve how the entire organization operates, instead of just honing task-management skills.

When accounting employees understand the balance sheet implications and the trickle-down effect of their tasks, they’re more likely to get on board with industry and dealership-level changes. The fear of change takes a backseat to the excitement for new processes and technology that can pave a new way forward. When they begin to see the big-picture and their importance within the master plan, they become more loyal and more connected, which can transform a traditionally “slow to adapt” team into one that embraces progress.

As you seek to empower your accounting team, take time to teach every member, from the controller to the most entry-level position, the “why” behind what they do. It will have a profound impact on your dealership in producing more direct results with more accurate information.

In Closing…

It’s time to adjust your focus to see just how profoundly your accounting team can impact profitability. Empower your team with the educational resources, big-picture perspective, and technologies to ensure that your dealership is operating efficiently and profitably, and you can begin to build a better accounting office and a better dealership.

About the Author | Karli DeVall

Karli DeVall is the CFO at Tim Dahle Nissan and Red Rock Auto Group. Prior to her current role, she spent ten years running an accounting and consulting practice in the retail automotive industry where she specialized in fixing broken accounting offices. She is passionate about the role that controllers and accounting teams play in the business and looks for ways to empower teams to connect and showcase their skills to their community.

Seven Benefits of Streamlined Service Lane Technology

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A streamlined service drive can boost your dealership’s profit potential, make your employees more satisfied with their work, and keep your customers coming back. But redundant data entry and technology systems that don’t connect can have the exact opposite result.

Your Dealer Management System is connected to the data that drives every decision and detail within your business. It helps you determine how well your business is functioning, where to uncover underperforming areas, and shows you how to take action to drive results. So, when your Fixed Operations software, like Xtime, integrates and shares data in both directions with your DMS? Everyone wins!

Dealertrack DMS, backed by the power of Cox Automotive, is designed to fully integrate with a full suite of technology solutions, including Xtime. Here are seven benefits to switching your DMS:

  1. Share Critical Data – The ultimate service experience ends with a happy customer. But it begins with intelligent, connected systems. Together, Dealertrack DMS and Xtime share critical service data between systems that enable an efficient workflow, reduces errors, and drives revenue.
  2. Get Grunt Work Done, Faster – With the ability to edit Repair Orders, writeback parts and labor, and order the parts your customers need in either the DMS or Xtime, your staff can get the job done without having to double-down on the details.
  3. More Opportunity for $$$ – Inventory Stocking Alerts keep your team informed of new revenue opportunities so you can secure high-value vehicles arriving for service.
  4. Reduced Human Error – Manual data entry leads to inaccurate data according to 56% of companies surveyed.
  5. Improved Customer Experience – Speed up customer interactions by reducing the need for rekeying information between Xtime, your DMS, and other systems so you can focus on better customer service.
  6. Build Trust – Even simple tasks become a burden when your DMS isn’t connected to your tools and systems.
  7. Lower Fees – Dealertrack DMS uses Opentrack integration, reducing the cost of your vendor integration fees (by a lot!).

When you streamline your service drive, you win. Your customers and your staff win, also. In fact, the only thing you miss out on are extra steps, manual workflow, duplicate data, and (likely) extra, hidden fees charged by your vendor.

Experience the Unexpected From Your DMS
It’s time the technology at the center of your dealership serves as a catalyst for success.
Schedule a demo today to see how Dealertrack DMS can make an impact on your business.

 

Five Steps for Better Change Management

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Often, when I work with Dealer Principals and Managers looking to improve profit margins and grow their business, I’ll turn their Dealer Management System, first. There are specific reports that can uncover key metrics, such as performance metrics, that in turn can result in higher gross profit. But, sadly, when I return to the dealership to follow up, I’ll find that the staff has already moved on to a new issue or process challenge that is sometimes referred to as “the flavor of the month” issue. That’s normal. Things move quickly in our business. And roadblocks can make solving smaller problems seem overwhelming. Our good intentions get lost in the shuffle. But, in my experience, if you stick to a simple, five-step process to change management, utilizing your DMS to look at clear data and results, those “roadblocks” turn into tiny speedbumps.

Step 1: Identify a Challenge

This may sound simple, but first and foremost, you’ve got to identify what problem you’re trying to solve. And simply saying, “we need to become more profitable,” isn’t a simple challenge. Make sure the problem you want to solve answers the following questions:

  • Is it specific?
  • What are the consequences?
  • What is the impact or gain?
  • How easy/difficult is it to solve?
  • Is this a sustainable or short-term fix?

Start with the data in your DMS—a Labor Profit Analysis report, for example—and look at the numbers. “I have an underperforming service advisor,” is an identifiable challenge.

 

Step 2: Determine the Root Cause

When it comes to mastering change management, we need to look at the contributing factors of the problem rather than focusing on blame. I encourage you to rank these by importance. Is this issue even solvable? Sometimes certain things are not, and that’s OK. Simply understanding if contributing factors can’t be fixed will free your team to focus on the things that can be. However, if, to use the example earlier of an underperforming service advisor, is due to an employee not understanding a policy, then you can fix it. Additional coaching, help from a manager, training, these root causes are solvable.

Step 3: Develop a Strategy

Now that you’ve identified a challenge and determined its root cause, you have the opportunity to form a plan of action. Identify who is responsible and what needs to be done to take the next steps. What resources are at your disposal (or lacking in the first place) in order to correct the issue? Set a timeline and determine how long it might take.

Step 4: Implement the Plan

It’s not enough to just manage a plan. Real leaders need to take ownership and ensure that processes are seen all the way through. Ultimately it’s our responsibility to make sure everyone moves towards positive change. Aligning implementation with goal and strategy means we have to make sure that the rollout fits the timeline and objective. Are we solving the right problem? Do the actions support the original goal? Make sure you’re coaching and driving the performance along the way. Offer positive reinforcement, encouragement, and progress reports.

Step 5: Analyze the Change

You did it! That’s great, but you’re not finished yet. Now it’s time to review, process, and accept feedback from everyone. That feedback should come from everyone—other managers, advisors, customers, etc. Don’t forget to pull that same DMS report (our example used the Labor Profit Analysis) and see how it has changed. Then continue or alter your plans. What else needs to be done or changed? Was it effective?

Strengthening your people should result in a stronger dealership. And a stronger dealership, with a well-supported team, will result in greater profit potential. Your DMS houses incredible information. It allows you to uncover and dissect what’s happening in your dealership. What’s your effective labor rate? How about your hours per RO? Do you know your gross percentage? The DMS helps you understand averages, set benchmarks, determine what’s good or poor. But most importantly, your DMS helps you understand what’s causing all of this. Because we don’t search for results, we search for actions to drive results. Our actions will determine the results we get.

Experience the Unexpected From Your DMS
It’s time the technology at the center of your dealership serves as a catalyst for success.
Schedule a demo today to see how Dealertrack DMS can make an impact on your business.

About the Author | Michael Panozzo

Michael Panozzo is a Dealertrack DMS Performance Manager who works with dealerships to maximize DMS utilization and drive process and profit improvement. Michael came to Cox Automotive in 2016 after a 15-year career working in and managing auto dealerships where he honed his skills in operational excellence.

The High Cost of Poor Integration

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Your customers see your dealership as one, holistic entity. They can service their cars, shop online or in person, and finance purchases through your operation. But, in reality, your dealership is composed of multiple (sometimes siloed) departments, with various tools and technologies, working together to make the magic happen. In some cases, employees get really good at checking off tasks and performing processes that keep the lights on, without seeing the bigger picture. Between your different departments and technologies, it takes teamwork to do the job right. And one weak link has the potential to throw off your entire operation.

High Costs and Higher Risk

According to one study, the average dealership uses almost seven systems to complete a single transaction. That means that data must travel across multiple departments, offers have to be desked, and trust between your client and your business is tested up to seven different times. It also means that you rely on your technology to cooperate seven different times. It’s a tall task and one that you may take for granted. Your DMS is the source of truth for the data within your dealership. And the vendors and OEMs that you partner with rely upon it. They also tend to charge sneaky, hidden fees to access that data, and hide those fees within the costs you pay to work with your chosen vendor. (Want to see how much you’re spending on integration fees? Try our integration fee calculator here.)


The Importance of Integration

As more of your business takes place online, integrating your operations becomes more important than ever. These integrations allow you to track shoppers online and implement a cohesive retail experience across platforms. They streamline interfaces and facilitate the flow of data freely between systems, which reduces human error and costs while increasing profits. As these integrations become increasingly important, you should be able to choose the providers that are best for your dealership, and you should be able to do it affordably.

Having secure, real-time, bidirectional technology integrations enable a seamless online to in-store buying experience for your customers and allow you to work with the providers and technologies you want—those technologies that facilitate a better overall customer experience. This gives you maximum flexibility to give your customers the kind of smooth, seamless car buying experience they want, without any technology hiccups in between.

As your dealership continues to venture into the new age of online to in-store retail, your operations will become even more complex and the need for smart technology integrations will become even more essential. It’s going to take teamwork to succeed, and it’s only fair that you should be able to choose the technologies that are right for your team.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW THE RIGHT DMS TECHNOLOGY AND PARTNER CAN HELP YOUR DEALERSHIP EVOLVE TO MEET THE DIGITAL DEMANDS OF TODAY’S CUSTOMERS, GET YOUR COPY OF THE DEALER’S GUIDE FOR MAXIMIZING PROFITABILITY.