Emerging and connecting
As we, as a society, emerge from the pandemic, and we, as an industry, see glimmers of the end of historic supply shortages, I’m doing a bit of a slow emergence myself, from behind the scenes to being a more …
Category: Opinion
Do you trust your gut?
When it comes to making key decisions, it’s always an interesting question: does someone with years (or decades) of industry experience rely on their “gut” instinct or numbers in a spreadsheet to make a decision? Dealers have to make key …
Join me in Detroit (and other places)
For the first time in a few years, I’m looking at a very active in-person fall event schedule. Face to face with peers, thought leaders and influencers. I’m very excited about it. A number of key Canadian events are taking …
How’s your tech stack?
Every so often, you hear a term or phrase used often enough that it penetrates your consciousness. Like, “tech stack.” At Universus, we were doing an analysis of our own tech stack, to see if our tools were suitable for …
Really, it’s all about the people
Over many years and many roles, I’ve had the chance to collaborate and commiserate with a remarkable list of professionals, partners and friends. I’d like to take a moment to recognize three of those people. Two of them played pivotal …
Meet the new editor!
Some of you might have seen a news story in our e-news announcing that Stephanie MacDonald was named the new editor of Canadian auto dealer. I was really touched when the head of one of Canada’s largest dealer groups reached …
Kilometres driven vs. fuel prices
How much Canadians use their vehicles is a strong predictor of revenue opportunities in both vehicle sales and fixed operations. Particularly fixed operations. Dealers know that all too well. At a time when inventories are basically non-existent, the need to …
The next era of software
I believe we’re coming to the end of what I’ll call the Digital Chaos Phase of the automotive industry. Please note that I don’t use the word chaos as a pejorative. It has been chaotic for a couple of …
Life is between the dash
Like many of our readers, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Sean O’Regan, 53, one of the kindest and most beloved car dealers I’ve had the pleasure to meet. I met Sean at a variety of events, …
Ready or not?
I interviewed some of Canada’s best-known dealers for a segment for the virtual CADA Summit held last month. It was a fun, lighthearted piece to help break up the day, and inject some dealer content into the event. One of …
More questions than answers
The war in Ukraine has taken some of the foundational changes that our industry is trying to understand and measure, and thrown them into a dramatic new light. For now, I find myself with more questions than answers. It might …
New look, new outlook
If you’ll indulge me, I’m going to use my space in this issue to highlight a few things we’ve been up to that I believe you’ll see benefit in. First off, we relaunched the websites for Canadian auto dealer and …
