- 1 Sep 2021 Author: Michael Johnson
Increasing technology spend can be difficult to justify, but McKinsey research shows that digital transformation is a matter of survival. This is because the technology you use has the most impact on dealership resilience and performance.
Many dealerships have already invested in Dealer Management Systems (DMS), which raises the question — is having a DMS enough? Or is it table stakes for competing?
In this blog post, we unpack DMS pros and cons before addressing whether dealers should look beyond DMS to meet their tech solution needs.
DMS strengths and weaknesses
As a feature-rich system, a DMS aims to solve dealer pain points by automating tasks, providing car dealer data, analytics and managing inventory. Importantly, top DMS software is tailor-made for the auto industry. Vendors promise to combine everything you need to run your dealership in one place — ideally saving you the agony of running your business from many different software tools and windows.
But does DMS match up to this promise? Not quite.
Unfortunately, most DMS platforms are complex. They’re so complex that some dealers compare using an unfamiliar DMS to “reading a foreign language.”
And while your general manager or finance controller may be a DMS expert, the same isn’t true for your general staff. For many on your teams, dealing with a DMS is frustrating and time-consuming — this makes it difficult to get real-time data about dealership performance. To maximise performance, a DMS needs to be flexible enough to adapt to dealership needs. The opposite can happen, where managers conform their processes to match the capabilities of their DMS.
Due to their complexity, DMS platforms fail to deliver an all-in-one solution that can be used by the whole team. For dealers who want to maximise performance, the answer is to find business solutions that can cover DMS shortfalls.
Combining auto software to build the best dealership tech stack
Dealerships looking to build the best tech stack can benefit from a wealth of non-DMS software that is designed for dealership environments.
SalesLogs, for example, offsets DMS weaknesses by streamlining deal pipelines and helping to create a unified, real-time view of your dealerships. It does this by collecting scattered dealership data, promoting interdepartmental communication through commenting features and using tracking tools to forecast a car’s profitability as it moves through each stage.
The first step to building your tech stack is to assess the capabilities of your current software. Based on what’s missing, you should develop an idea of what you need to boost dealership performance.
Ask yourself the following:
- Where do you experience bottlenecks in your deal pipeline?
- Are there any holes in your communication?
- How efficient are the workflows between departments?
- How do you track performance? And can you get real-time reporting?
- How user-friendly are your tech solutions?
This last point is significant. There’s no use investing in new auto software if your dealership teams won’t be able to use it.
At SalesLogs, we’ve worked with thousands of dealership teams to create intuitive software that’s easy to use and quick to master. If you want to drive performance by building a better tech stack, then check out our solution by booking a demo below.
