Next-generation DMS providers are upgrading and modernizing their systems, while also ensuring they contain the basic easy-to-use, seamless and efficient ingredients needed to improve the user experience
Improving the user experience for both automotive retailers and their customers remains a top priority for Dealer Management System (DMS) providers, who are now focused on modernizing their platforms and technologies to meet these demands.
In an era of machine learning, intelligent software automation, and ever evolving blockchain application possibilities, Colin Kroetsch, CEO and co-founder of Dealerpull DMS, sees the DMS moving towards better integration capabilities, and touching on aspects of automotive retailing.
“I believe both cross platform integration (or ‘open API’) and supplying auto dealers with solutions so their customers can complete their entire vehicle purchase online (also referred to as digital retailing) are becoming ever more important core abilities for DMS providers to focus on at this time,” said Kroetsch.
Dealerpull, which is headquartered in Kitchener, Ont., is a cloud-based automotive software provider offering a suite of online solutions for small and mid-sized dealerships.
He says the product checks all the main ingredients of what today’s dealers are looking for in terms of modernity: it’s cloud-based, so no need for hardware or complicated downloads and updates; it’s mobile-friendly, which means you can use it with your phone, tablet or PC; and it’s easy to use, since its design is based on dealer feedback.
Lastly, it’s integrated. Dealerpull has directly partnered with a number of large companies in the automotive sector, including Dealertrack, autoTRADER.ca, and Kijiji.
“DMS providers who continue to implement 3rd party integrations offer a win-win for both the auto dealer and the consumer,” said Kroetsch. “Minimizing data entry points ensures increased dealership efficiency and accuracy, and in turn, consumers can be better serviced by their dealers.”
He adds that many leading DMS providers have already recognized this and have either started adding these capabilities directly into their platforms, or they are integrating with other providers who already have them in place. “These types of advancements will enable dealers to better support the public’s growing demand for simple ‘self-serve’ online transaction capability.”
Other providers such as CDK Global are also moving in a similar direction as far as online access and integration is concerned. The company took the infrastructure of their existing DMS (CDK Drive) — the infrastructure that dealership employees need to actually access the services — and modernized it to create the cloud-based Drive Flex, which is built on the previous platform.
“Flex is built on Amazon Web Services, so data transfer is secure,” said Greg Wallin, VP of Sales Canada, CDK Global. “What it does is it untethers the client from a network, so it’s usable or accessible just like any other website. It really is cloud, if you want to call it that, but it takes away reliance on a network, on a VPN or connectivity, and certain setups on a PC or browsers.”
In other words, if you have access to the Internet, you have access to Drive Flex.
Wallin said this is a big deal for the customer journey in terms of usability and accessibility, because the industry is pushing for change, and so are their users. DMS providers have no choice but to move in this direction, which ultimately will help ensure the DMS will become more intuitive while offering a better user experience.
The company also has an open and agnostic system known as the Fortellis Automotive Commerce Exchange platform that combined with their DMS creates the backbone that enables automotive commerce in an “industry-standard way.”
This is basically an open marketplace connecting car dealers with software developers. It allows all app providers in the dealer market space to build on the Fortellis platform, and then to be able to sell those to dealerships. “Developers are not charged for this and it allows them to automatically build apps that will work with any DMS,” said Wallin.
“If you think of your iPhone, basically what Apple did before was they introduced Apple iOS, which was the backbone and operating system that allowed the apps that people would write to co-exist in an industry-standard format for the Apple platform,” said Wallin. “So if you’re writing an app that, as an example would use location services, those two pieces of software work seamlessly together with the Apple iOS background. Essentially, that is what Fortellis is.”
The product is there to enable end-to-end automotive commerce, and allow an “industry-standard platform” that various software companies and various software applications can write to and integrate seamlessly with.
Automotive commerce is one of those often-heard words that pop up at dealer-geared conferences, events, and discussions. Not surprisingly, Reynolds and Reynolds rebuilt the fundamental architecture of their DMS into a more seamless retail management system platform and offered it to dealers in the U.S. and Canada.
Tom Schwartz, Director of Corporate Communications with Reynolds, believes the DMS is not what auto retailers will need in the future; they will need a retail management system. “How do we help dealers generate more gross profit? How do we help them become better retailers and generate more profit and more income to make up for what used to be better profit margins and so forth?”
The company’s Retail Management System is designed to help dealers do just that: market to their customers, sell more, grow more, and generate more gross profit. For Schwartz, tech companies should not be asking what the DMS of the future will be, but rather what the dealership of the future will look like.
Software and technology companies need to consider how they can provide dealers with not just the tools and the platform, but also the vision that enables them to become a retailer and stand out from the crowd in the eyes of consumers. This, while also ensuring the products they offer continue to deliver the efficiency and effectiveness that will allow dealers to spend more time in front of the customer. For Schwartz, this is what the Reynolds and Reynolds Retail Management system focuses on.
But most importantly, whether it’s retail or dealer management, today’s systems need to focus on improving the user experience for both dealers and their customers, on all levels.
