Announcing New Customer Relationship Management FAQs

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The DealerTrack DMS Support Center and Implementation Teams have worked together to generate a list of the most common CRM questions, which are now available on the DealerTrack DMS Wiki.

Use this valuable resource to help answer common questions with the DealerTrack CRM application. Questions/Answers include LetterSelect, entering Prospect information, recording Prospect activity, and more!

Click Here To View

DealerTrack to Host Webinar for Independent Dealers on May 19th

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Maximize Profit Through Complete Control of Your Dealership

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 19th, 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.

indy

The Automotive Industry was good in March, What about April?

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RichardHolland2

We’ve heard some great news about March with some of our dealers reporting the best months they’ve had in a long time.  Will April bring another round of strong sales to the Auto Industry?  Auto Dealer Monthly has a great discussion on this subject.  Click here to read their discussion.

Tell us what you think April and the 2nd Quarter will have in store for the automotive industry.  Tell us about your 1st Quarter.  Were your gross profits or unit sales up or down?  Also, let us know a little about your dealership.  Do you sell new cars or used cars?  Do you offer Buy Here Pay Here (BHPH)?

To comment on this post please click the comment button.  Thanks for participating.

DEALERTRACK WINS TOP 2010 DEALERS’ CHOICE AWARDS IN DMS AND DESKING SOFTWARE CATEGORIES

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LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., April 1, 2010 — DealerTrack Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRAK), a leading provider of on-demand software and data solutions for the U.S. automotive retail industry, today announced that it has received top honors in Auto Dealer Monthly’s 2010 Dealers’ Choice Awards winning their 1st place “Diamond”  in two categories:

car dealership

  • 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.

30 Days on DealerTrack DMS – One Customer’s Experience

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One of DealerTrack new Dealer Management System Customer recently gave DealerTrack 3 thumbs up and stated

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.

jarrettThinking 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.