Dealers running ‘too much software’ are wasting time and money
Dealers are running more software systems than they need, costing both time and money, says dealer management systems specialist Pinewood.
The company says many dealers adopted a variety of standalone systems to run alongside manufacturer IT and their DMS early in the decade to manage areas such as sales diaries and customer relationship management.
However, many of these have become redundant and do nothing more today than add cost and complication.
Neville Briggs, managing director, said: “Dealers bought these standalone systems a few years ago to tackle specific problems that their manufacturer systems or DMS couldn’t solve successfully, with CRM being perhaps the main example.
“This has always created difficulties, the main issue being that these standalone systems can’t communicate with other dealer IT, so it is not unusual to find two or three databases being run side by side that cover the same information. This creates a lot of unnecessary work such as rekeying.”
Briggs added that technology seen in the latest generations of DMS and manufacturer IT– which now worked very effectively together – had made these standalone systems unnecessary.
He said: “The better DMS and manufacturer IT systems have now plugged the holes in the capabilities that allowed the market for these standalone systems to emerge.
“This development has left dealers operating these standalone systems simply running too much software, certainly more than they need. This costs money in software and hardware bills but probably much more in duplication of work.”
Briggs said that Pinewood was embarking on a marketing campaign designed to make dealers aware that cost savings could be made through dropping some of their software.
He explained: “There are various areas – including asset registers, technician clocking, credit card processing, loan car diaries, sales diaries and management reporting – where dealers could be running additional software they don’t need.
“Certainly, our Pinnacle system is capable of comprehensively managing all these areas which would mean bringing down overall dealer software spend and improving efficiency.”
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