Technology has the potential to make dealership employees more efficient and more productive. But, research shows that outdated and inefficient technologies are having the opposite effect in many dealerships.
Does your dealership’s technology save time or waste it? In today’s high-tech workplaces, dealerships often worry that their employees are killing time on frivolous technologies like social media and mobile apps. A recent study confirmed that your workers are wasting time, but revealed that the time-stealing tech in not found on your employees’ smartphones, but on your own list of vendors. At an annual cost of $1.8 trillion to our economy, “outdated technology is holding employees in the modern workforce back from driving process efficiency and identifying ways to make their work life better.” Some forward-thinking dealerships have already recognized this trend and are countering it by seeking out technology features proven to make workers more efficient.
Streamlined Workflows Save Employee Time
Overly complicated workflows are the enemy of speed and efficiency and can waste a lot of employee time. The Todd Wenzel Automotive Group, a four-store dealership group in Michigan, recognized this problem as it searched for ways to be more efficient during the recent economic downturn. This began a search for a dealer management system that saved employees time by adapting to their way of doing business. Pete Ferris, Vice President of the auto group, explained that efficient technology “integrates well with our people in terms of their comfort level with being able to execute the tasks they need to.” Intuitive systems let dealerships focus on performance rather than struggling to learn and execute complex software processes and commands.
Real-Time Data Eliminates Delays
Real-time data is another hallmark feature of efficient technologies. While eliminating the need for batch processing, real-time data is saving dealerships valuable time and money by speeding up old manual accounting and reporting processes. “Now we can track business over the course of a day, instead of having to wait until the next morning to get numbers,” said Ron Ver Planck, CFO for Todd Wenzel. “We can focus more on performance and projections, rather than struggling to simply close the books at the end of the month.”
Personal Support Keeps Dealerships Moving
Product features played an important role in Todd Wenzel’s search for new technologies, but the company also wanted to find partners that offered personalized service, training, and support. “Internally, we’re really trying to identify training resources we can provide to folks that will help them do their jobs in more effective manners,” said Ver Planck. Accessible partners increase efficiency by helping companies to quickly react when something goes wrong, decreasing the disruption associated with downtime. But, great partners go beyond these kinds of reactive measures to help their customers get better through training and performance management. When employees are given the knowledge and the tools they need to get better, dealerships become more efficient and more profitable.
Technology has the potential to make dealership employees more efficient and more productive. But, research shows that outdated and inefficient technologies are having the opposite effect in many dealerships. When employees have to figure out software or manage technologies, they lose time that could be spent on more productive activities. Dealerships are finding that a common set of features—including streamlined workflows, real-time data, and personal support—are helping them to counter this trend and become more efficient and more profitable.
To learn more about how Todd Wenzel used technology to achieve greater efficiency, click here.
