Click here for more information

For more information, please see the following guides:

• LetterSelect – Print Correspondance Letters
• LetterSelect – Create Correspondance Letters

Please keep in mind that you can also generate individual letters through the Email Template functionality. Take option Send Email, choose the desired Template, and use the Merge function. You can then Print the email rather than sending it. As long as you use the Print tool from within the message, the Email header information will not print on the document.

It is best to use LetterSelect to print letter batches. The Send Email feature will only create individual letters.

This and other useful information can also be viewed on the DealerTrack DMS Support Wiki.

DealerTrack will host a free webinar on the profit-maximizing benefits of the DealerTrack DMS for independent dealers.

Independent dealers need dependable solutions to help find ways to cut costs, operate efficiently, manage effectively, and increase sales and cash flow. This webinar will feature an in-depth look at the profitable advantages DealerTrack DMS can provide.

When: Wednesday, May 19^th, 2010

1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Reserve your space by clicking the following link:

www.dealertrackdms.com/webinar

Registration is easy and free of charge.

• DMS – The DealerTrack Dealer Management System (DMS) was named the Diamond Award winner for the second consecutive year.  The web-based DealerTrack DMS is a flexible and highly cost-effective solution that provides robust functionality and real-time data integration to help dealers streamline their businesses and enhance profitability.

• Desking Tools – DealerTrack’s Salesmaker (TM) won the Diamond Award in the desking software category; it had received the runner-up Platinum Award in each of the last two years.  Salesmaker is a comprehensive showroom solution that helps dealers to manage their customers and quickly structure virtually any type of deal, including retail, lease, balloon and special finance programs

“We are very pleased that our DMS and Desking solutions have been recognized as top performers in their respective categories by the dealers participating in this year’s Auto Dealer Monthly Awards,” said Raj Sundaram, senior vice president, solutions and services group at DealerTrack. “We remain committed to providing our dealer customers with innovative, cost-effective solutions that streamline their workflows and increase their sales and profitability.”

The integrated DealerTrack Performance Suite is the most complete offering of intuitive and high-value software for the automotive retail industry, enhancing efficiency and profitability with DMS, Inventory Management, Sales, F&I and Compliance solutions.

I give DealerTrack DMS 3 Thumbs Up!

Their employees attitude, willingness to assist, responsiveness on the phone and overall demeanor show that they are a progressive and good group to depend upon.

Below is the full story from www.DealerRefresh.com.

Thinking of changing DMS providers? If so I want to share with the community our experiences in the first 30 days after going live with Dealer Track DMS (formerly Arkona).

First I will start off by saying it is nice for a change to have a DMS vendor who treats you like a customer and appreciates the opportunity to earn your business.

We have gone from driving an antiquated Cadillac with all the features money could buy in 1991 to an 08 Ford XLT with Carpet delete. I mean to say DealerTrack’s system does not offer butt warmers so to speak.

Sales & Finance Managers: They refer to their desking and sales software as Business Office. It sounds like this may be common for dealers somewhat east of the Mississippi River. The desking screens work and are fairly intuitive. Sometimes it seems you have to back out of a deal and go back in to get things to re-calc. Your limited to 1 pick-up payment (differed down). Contract letter spacing can only be moved in whole points and is sometimes hard to line up perfectly. DMV fees are hand calculated now and require valid information from your Accounting Dept.

In a nutshell we work deals out of DealerTrack’s Dealer Management System (Arkona DMS) and the rest is done with custom programming / CRM, i.e. Invoice Books, Inventory Analysis, vAuto for booking and used management.

If you are like me go with the green screen software over the GUI they are promoting.

Service Manager: The fixed operations teams had some adjustments to make. You can not close out pay types individually, You can close Customer pay but when you close Warranty it closes Internal as well. You are given a new pay type and that is Service Contracts, kinda nice. There is no way to force a Hat Tag# as a required field instead it can be accidentally bypassed. Tech Time and Tech Clocking / Dispatching if you use dispatching is pretty underdeveloped.

Parts Managers: This department will have a difficult time. Finding the invoices can be a total headache. Furthermore when you order parts and they arrive and you bill them out you get a new invoice#. Transactions can get lost and there are about three screens you need to look in to find them. Creating returns is fabulous and works better than any system I have been on before (Not that I like returns). Once again Green Screen software in this department is a must. Other areas to be aware of is the inability to place 0 quantity of a part on an RO (Usually helpful with parts availability and requisition requests.) Lost Sales once registered on an Invoice can not be converted to sales, they have to be deleted and re added.

Business Office / Accounting Department: Hmm. I will report on the business office in the future cause after 30 days they are still spinning. Fortunately we have a very talented and bright staff and they have made tremendous headway, however Payroll seems to be difficult to fine-tune. Factory Financial Statements and reporting all works well and have not had any issues related to getting the factory their data.

Data Exchange: Works well and even an idiot like me can set up automated FTP uploads. Love It.

OpenTrack: We are a signed OpenTrack vendor for our own internal software. The price was right and the team behind the OpenTrack initiative are awesome. For those that are interested OpenTrack is a SOAP based integration service for data exchange. ODBC is being phased out and to my knowledge is no longer available.

I give DealerTrack DMS 3 Thumbs Up!

Their product has room to grow. Especially for multi-line stores. I would not recommend a multi-accounting / multi-GL setup if you can avoid it. However their employees attitude, willingness to assist, responsiveness on the phone and overall demeanor show that they are a progressive and good group to depend upon.

Jarrett

Thanks Jarret and DealerRefresh for posting this.  We appreciate your insight and feedback as we continually improve the DealerTrack Dealer Management System.

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – March 23, 2010) –  DealerTrack is revving up the analytic capabilities of its Dealer Management System (DMS) with a customer-facing business intelligence (BI) solution from Information Builders, an independent leader in BI solutions. As news about the struggling U.S. auto industry continues to dominate headlines, DealerTrack is demonstrating how BI dashboards, created with the Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform, can help dealers make smarter, more profitable decisions related to customers, sales, inventory, and finance.

In addition to operating the industry’s largest online credit application network, DealerTrack is an application service provider (ASP). It created DMS to manage every aspect of the automotive retail business, from selling cars to handling vehicle inventory to producing financial statements. Offered as an on-demand service, nearly 2,500 auto dealers have adopted DMS for its comprehensive functionality and lightweight, on-demand deployment model. These customers can log in to the system from any Web browser — a similar architecture to the WebFOCUS environment, which is known for its zero-client footprint on user desktops.

According to CJ Pedler, a senior project manager in DealerTrack’s South Jordan, Utah office, DealerTrack evaluated about a dozen BI products and selected WebFOCUS because of its lightweight, browser-based deployment model and also because WebFOCUS provides a superior end-user experience. “Information Builders is pushing us to the top of our industry with its customer-facing BI technology,” he said. “WebFOCUS simplifies deployment for us and improves usability for our customers. Authorized users can use our DMS dashboards to easily select data, format reports, and obtain precisely the types of information they want to see from our Dealer Management System.”

WebFOCUS also works well with DealerTrack’s IBM iSeries platform and DB2 database, which, according to Pedler, made it easy to integrate with DealerTrack’s existing software infrastructure. The new BI environment includes parameterized reports that enable dealers to easily extract data and create custom reports. For example, the Parts Inventory report helps service personnel restock inventory, the Sales History report helps sales managers make smarter purchasing decisions, and the Customer Activity report helps dealers launch targeted promotions. WebFOCUS enforces the existing login procedures and access restrictions resident in the Dealer Management System. A reporting wizard asks questions and then generates reports based on each user’s responses.

“Information Builders has been phenomenal to work with. They have gone out of their way to improve the reporting system, strengthen the security architecture, and make the BI environment very appealing and user-friendly for our customers,” said Blake Nielson, director of solutions at DealerTrack’s South Jordan, Utah office.

DealerTrack demonstrated this new BI environment at the recent National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show in Orlando. DealerTrack expects to deploy 1,500 instances of the new reporting environment to automotive dealerships this year and ultimately to offer it to 2,500 dealerships supporting about 10,000 users.

“True customer-facing BI environments of this type are rare in the ASP market,” said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. “Today’s auto dealers must learn to work smarter to increase profits. DealerTrack is using BI technology to help them identify their best customers, pinpoint up-sell opportunities, and run their back offices as efficiently as possible.”

About DealerTrack
Based in Lake Success, New York, DealerTrack’s intuitive and high-value software solutions enhance efficiency and profitability for all major segments of the automotive retail industry, including dealers, lenders, OEMs, agents, and aftermarket providers. For more information, visit www.dealertrack.com.

About Information Builders
Information Builders’ award-winning combination of business intelligence (BI) and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world’s most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders’ iWay Software suite provides state of the art, multi-purpose, pre-built integration components that address all SOA, application, data and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Information Builders also offers solutions in the performance management, business activity monitoring, and enterprise search markets. The company’s comprehensive enterprise product offerings give Information Builders’ customers the ability to grow and innovate according to their needs.

Information Builders’ customers include most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners. More information is available at http://www.informationbuilders.com.

Featured Link:
www.informationbuilders.com

www.dealertrack.com/dms

1) Price Competitively

Understand your market; know what your competitors are charging for similar services.  Simple research techniques that are easy to put in place – look at competitors’ ads on a weekly basis; do some mystery shopping once a month to get an idea of what types of services and promotions they offer.

2) Maintenance Bundles

Use oil changes and basic maintenance services as “loss leaders” to bring customers in and increase your service department efficiency.  Utilize maintenance bundles – don’t just rely on manufacturer recommendations, but provide your customers with dealer-recommended options as well.

3) Shop Supplies and Taxes

Depending on what state you operate in, you may be able to pass along certain fees to the customer.  When appropriate, be sure to include shop supplies charges, hazardous waste fees, miscellaneous fees and all applicable taxes.  These items often are overlooked and can eat away at your profit.

4) Variable Labor Rates

Simpler repairs and maintenance services must be priced in line with your competition.  More advanced repairs such as engine, transmission and electrical work can be priced differently.  Most “Quick Lube” establishments will not be able to complete these types of repairs as they require a different level of expertise or specialized equipment that often is only available at franchised dealerships. Also, evaluate the makes and models of cars you are servicing.  For instance, repairs on a Chevy Malibu are less intricate than those on a Corvette.  Set you service pricing accordingly for models that require more highly skilled technicians.

5) Grid Pricing

Use grid / matrix pricing and be sure to test escalation rates.  Verify that all cent amounts will be “.88” or “.99” – with exception of the 1.0 hour rate.  These additional cents really add up.  Try to avoid using too many grids as they become cumbersome to manage.

DealerTrack DMS launches the DMS Switch & Save 50% Program.  Auto Dealers can now trade up from their current Dealer Management System* and get all the robust functionality they need and higher customer satisfaction** than other top competitive solutions – for half the cost.  If DealerTrack can’t save auto dealerships 50%, we’ll pay for one month on their DMS.

View our savings calculator

*If you use ADP (Elite, Drive, ARG/EDS, Web Suite 2006, Web Suite 2007) or Reynolds & Reynolds (Power/UCS, ERA, excluding ERA ES).  Conditions & Restrictions apply to the DealerTrack Switch & Save program.  Click here for details.

**Source:  National Automobile Dealers Association 2009 Bi-Annual Survey of Dealership Satisfaction with Dealer System Providers’ Products and Services.  2009 NADA survey.

SPG can also help drive sales of aftermarket products. When working a deal and trying to up-sell an extended service contract, you can pull a quote for a water pump to show estimates of what the cost of those repairs would be with labor, parts, shop supplies and tax. SPGs can help used car departments more effectively value trade ins. When test driving the a potential trade, the Used Car Manager can look up the quote to estimate how much to take off the trade to cover repair costs. They also increase service profitability by increasing the number of labor hours sold per RO. In addition, they help to produce higher effective labor rates and can help to increase the number of customer pay RO’s written per month per service writer. SPGs increase customer satisfaction by providing a fast, consistent, and accurate estimates every time.

Service Price Guide Quotes can be created from the Repair Order list screen or from the Repair Order Function within a Repair Order.

After the SPG Quote has been created, it displays on this screen.

The following fields display on this screen:

• Labor Operation – If you have linked your dealership-defined Labor Op Code with the SPG Labor Op Code, your Labor Op Code will display here. Otherwise, the SPG Labor Op Code will display here.
• Labor – Estimated Hours the labor op will take to perform. The Rate for the labor pulls from the linked labor op code, giving you the total Exten price.
• Parts – Part Numbers and Descriptions for the parts needed for the labor op. The Hours column displays how many parts are selected over the number of parts that are in stock. the Exten column displays the total price for the part.
• Additional Fees/Charges/Comments – As entered or selected using the options and functions
• Quote Expiration Date – The default quote expiration date is 30 days. Modify as necessary.
• Labor – Total Labor Charges
• Parts – Total Parts Charges
• Supplies – Total Supplies Charges
• Tax – Total Tax Charges
• Total – Total charges of everything included on the quote

The following Options are available from this screen:

• Add Part – Allows you to manually add a new part to the quote
• Change Quantity/Hours Equal to x – Allows you to override the estimated hours for Labor lines, or the quantity of parts needed for Parts lines. Simply enter the quantity the line should be changed to.
• Change Quantity/Hours Times x – Allows you to override the estimated hours for Labor lines, or the quantity of parts needed for Parts lines. Enter the number to multiply by to increase the hours or quantity.
• Change – Allows you to adjust the Payment Method for the quote and the linked labor operation code
• Delete Labor Operation/Line – Removes the Labor Operation from the quote for labor lines, removes the Part from the quote for parts lines, or removes the entire quote for quote lines. This option will delete whichever line of the quote you select.
• Edit Comment – Allows you to key in comments about the quote. You can enter comments on any line.
• Edit Parts List – Displays the Parts List, allowing you to re-select parts from the list. You can also adjust the Auto-Select parts and the parts that display for selection.
• Fees – Displays the Fees list, as defined by your preferences. Select the fees that apply to the selected service.

The following Functions are available from this screen:

• Add Labor Operation – This function allows you to add an additional service to the Service Price Guide Quote.
• Change Customer/VIN – Allows you to change the customer or vehicle associated with this Service Price Guide quote
• Convert to Repair Order – This function allows you to convert the quote to a Repair Order. The repair order will have a status of “Q.” The selected parts will be placed on “Quote Hold”, and must be released by the Parts Department before the Repair Order can be closed. Please note that parts on “Quote Hold” are not taken out of inventory; other customers can purchase the parts until the “Quote Hold” has been released.
• Delete Quote – This function allows you to delete the quote without saving it to a specific record.
• Edit Comment – This function will allow you to enter a comment regarding the quote.
• New Quote – This function allows you to generate a new quote for the selected vehicle. This function will only work if the quote has been converted to a repair order.
• Print – This function allows you to print the quote to give to the customer.

There is a subscription charge to access the Service Price Guides data. Please contact the DealerTrack DMS Inside Sales Team at 800-429-3375 if you are interested in using this feature in your dealership.

Have you ever wondered how much profit is left on the table from declined repairs?  I recently ran across an article in Ward’s Dealer Business by James Clausen that shares some great insight on this subject.  If you’re not tracking the declined repairs in your Dealer Management System, you’ll never know how much money is being left on the table.  Here are a few key excerpts from the article.

“The easiest method to track declined repairs is to create a unique labor operation code on the Dealer Management System.

The service advisors should use the decline repair op code for every repair that’s declined. The advisor can write appropriate comments about the declined repair that are important for follow up, as well as for vehicle repair history and customer information.

Once a unique code is assigned, simply run a labor-operation report for the designated declined repair-op code. The information from the report can be transferred to an excel spreadsheet for easier sorting and handling for customer follow up.”

Now that you know how much money is being left on the table, it’s time to formulate a plan on how to capture that additional revenue.  With over 25 years of fixed operations management experience, James Clausen has some excellent advice on creating a follow up action plan.

“There are a few different reasons that customers decline repairs. As part of the action plan, there should be a solution to address the reasons. For example:

• The customer can get the repairs done cheaper at an independent shop

Price matching the independent might be a consideration. Let the customer know the advantages of dealership repairs.

• The customer can’t afford the repairs

Find out what the customer can afford and if there’s enough profit to help the customer. A deferred payment or a no-interest credit card may be options.

• They don’t feel that the repairs are a necessity

Some repairs aren’t, but if needed repairs are a drivability or safety concern, explain to the customer why the vehicle should be repaired.

• The repair costs are more than the vehicle’s worth

This is a perfect opportunity for a vehicle sale.

• The customer can’t be without the vehicle while it’s being repaired

Offer a loaner.

Phoning is the best method for following up. A letter and email are impersonal and can’t answer questions that the customer may have. A manager or other designated person can call.

But the service advisor who initially wrote up the customer is probably the best choice because:

• The advisor has already established a relationship with the customer.
• The advisor is familiar with the customer’s concerns and necessary repairs.
• If the advisor is compensated based on performance, and has a financial incentive to get the customer back in for the repairs.

Empower whoever contacts the customer. If service advisors make the contacts, they need to be able to offer a discount or beat a competitor’s price.

There may be situations where a manager is a better choice to follow up. The service advisor should make that choice and discuss it with the service manager.”

To read the complete article visit http://wardsdealer.com/ar/auto_follow_declined_repairs/.  As always, please feel free to leave your feedback.  Tell us about what works or what doesn’t work for you in your fixed operations.