Preparing for Customer Retention

Before buying a new computer application for your dealership, it is important to make sure it will have a great chance of success. Not only must your key people buy into the acquisition, but the application must quickly perform so all involved dealership personnel can breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the fruits of making the correct choice.

There are a number of essentials that must be in play for successful application execution. The in-dealership processes have to align themselves with the way the application works (or vice versa) and the data being used must be current, accurate and validated. The more sound data the application has to work with, the greater the opportunity to leverage this data and produce superb result and benefits.

Low Hanging Fruit

In reviewing NCM’s extensive dealer database and examining comparative numbers, I have found that for many dealers there are two areas of great upside potential. Both have extremely high margins and they will most likely, when appropriately addressed, derive a disproportionate amount of income for the additional effort involved.

Item #1: Finance and insurance income

Here is a page straight from the public companies that highlights F&I income per retail unit.

Understanding the Misunderstood Work in Process (WIP)

My thoughts on work in process are quite simple. The way we account for this asset is unwieldy, clumsy and awkward, but we handle it this way because it is the way we have always done it. When it comes to managing WIP, there is a much easier and simplified accounting process that I want to share with you, but first there is a need to completely understand how this asset is created and, in turn, how the current system works.

Video Blog/Jeff Sacks: Jeff Takes a Look at Dealership Staffing Guides