Why spreadsheets are bad for automotive business intelligence

Spreadsheets can be an unwitting drain on your dealership, costing you valuable time, money and automotive business intelligence. 

It’s tempting to resort to free spreadsheets when you need auto dealer software, but there are compelling reasons to steer clear. 

Here’s why spreadsheets are bad for your business intelligence and reporting: 

Your Spreadsheets Are Costing You, More Than You Think

Time is money. Every minute your team spends manually entering data into spreadsheets is time that could be used to close deals and drive revenue. But have you ever considered the true cost of this process?

Think about it: Every deal requires data entry, and over time, those minutes add up. Multiply that across your team and the entire year, and the cost, in both time and lost opportunities, is significant. The question isn't if your spreadsheets are holding you back, but how much they're costing you.

Try our calculator to see how much SalesLogs could be saving you. 

Your Intelligence Is Always Out Of Date

Keeping your dealership running efficiently relies on having up-to-the-minute data and a reliable way for every team member to access it. Unfortunately, using spreadsheets means your decisions will always be based on out-of-date intelligence, making it unnecessarily difficult to keep up with competitors using specialist auto dealer software. 

For example, downloading an outdated version of your spreadsheet to inform your reporting and forecasts can have disastrous consequences. You may end up with a mismatched strategy and inappropriate goals that are out of step with your actual business needs. 

They Are Prone To Errors

With great freedom comes… more room for error. Spreadsheets are powerful, without question, but as unmediated interfaces, they’re also prone to human error. While it’s reasonable that someone on your team can have a bad day or your attention can slip while you’re entering a dataset, spreadsheets aren’t built to prevent or pick up mistakes. 

Something as simple as a decimal point in the wrong place or a spelling mistake in a contact field can wreck your business intelligence and reporting and significantly impact your profits.

They’re Not Built To Scale With Your Business

The unstructured data in spreadsheets makes it difficult to identify key insights you can use to drive decisions. For example, even if all your data is recorded on a spreadsheet, you’ll likely be left juggling between multiple tabs to gather the insights you need — not practical and not scalable.

They were also originally built for accounting purposes. While they’ve been used for many business processes since then, they don’t offer the flexibility a purpose-built platform can. For example, they can’t help with task management, managing unique workflows, centralised real-time data, or functional team collaboration (to name a few).  

As you grow and scale, sophisticated auto dealer software like SalesLogs can meet your business needs with the future in mind. 

Save time and money with SalesLogs

The sooner you transition from spreadsheets to a centralised business intelligence platform that’s purpose built for your industry, the more you stand to save and the faster you can scale.  

For example, with its easy data capture and consolidation features, SalesLogs cuts data capture time in half — saving you 140 hours and $4,794 a year in deal inputs alone. But deals are the tip of the iceberg. From everyday admin to dealership reporting, SalesLogs slashes administration time for every department in your dealership. 

Book a no-obligation SalesLogs demo. Simply click here, and one of our team members will contact you.