Dealer Tech Tuesdays
S01E05 - What the *%$! is a Technologist?! & Who Holds The Keys To Your Most Vital Cloud Platforms?
Dealer Tech Tuesday is a podcast and Clubhouse room on the Automotive Innovations Club. It airs at 2pm EST every Tuesday. It is a discussion and QA for anyone in the automotive space. VTech Dealer IT hosts the show, bringing in experts in their respective field.
This week we go over what a Technologist is, how important it is to know your dealer's technology, its integration, and who holds the keys to your most vital cloud platforms.
Visit us at: https://www.vtechdealerit.com/247-it-support/
Dealer Tech Tuesday is a podcast and Clubhouse room on the Automotive Innovations Club. It airs at 2pm EST every Tuesday. It is a discussion and QA for anyone in the automotive space. VTech Dealer IT hosts the show, bringing in experts in their respective field.
This week we go over what a Technologist is, how important it is to know your dealer's technology, its integration, and who holds the keys to your most vital cloud platforms.
Visit us at: https://www.vtechdealerit.com/247-it-support/
Well, welcome everybody. This is Dealer Tech Tuesdays. Today we're going to be talking about what the bleep is a technologist? And this is a really interesting subject for me. I like covering this because I get to see it from a relatively odd perspective, and that perspective is from the IT guy's perspective, which is usually seeing what closet wear looks like. You know a lot of great ideas, interesting ideas that the organization has turns up to be closet wear, so it ends up collecting dust in the IT room and you can't imagine the sea of iPads, ipad working stations of iPads, ipad working stations, digital signage devices that were great ideas back a year or two, three years ago. That were great ideas that didn't end up being anything.
Speaker 1:So you'd probably ask yourself what a dealership technologist is. It's not necessarily the person that is, uh, that knows the technology of the vehicle right. So if knows how to set up your on star or the wi-fi on your vehicle, or knows how the features, how all the features on your vehicle work, how the uh the nav works, it's not necessarily that person. The dealer technologist is the person that understands how the ecosystem of your dealership and all your applications and all your software works together, so has almost a mental map of where your CRM starts and when your scheduler ends. That understands how your marketing company integrates into your CRM and to your DMS, how they pull the data from one to the other.
Speaker 1:And so a lot of the spend that happens at dealerships on the technology side is sometimes used as two services for the same, two products for the same service, and there's a lot of overlap between those things.
Speaker 1:And the idea would be to the technologist understands the ecosystem to such a high level that they could map those things out and make sure that you're not just throwing products at a problem, that the weapons don't necessarily make the warrior, that you are maximizing the effectiveness of your tools and making sure that the person that's in charge of maximizing the effectiveness of your tools understands what the ROI and the ROE, which is the return on ecosystem, is for each one of those products and is the champion of the new system. Make sure the implementation happens correctly and that the dealership is making sure that they're using the tools that they need at a high level. So that's what we're going to be talking about today for a little bit, and if you know anybody that's interested, ping them into the room. And, brian, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that interested, ping them into the room.
Speaker 2:And, brian, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Well, I was just going to add that one of the most crucial things I think that dealers forget about is if you make a change, whether it's technology, software, whatever what other areas of the dealership is it going to impact?
Speaker 2:They're so quick to want to change something and say, oh yeah, this is going to be a great new product, to want to change something and say, oh yeah, this is going to be a great new product, and those and then they forget. Oh wait, a second, that could impact how inventory is pulled, or it could impact how this report is generated. Or you have to really make sure you cross your t's and dot your i's making sure when you make a change, just double check is there other reporting, other other automation, whatever that's going to be impacted by the change that you're going to do? And a good technologist will know the wiring of things and be able to warn a sales manager, a GSM, a general manager, hey, that's fine if you want to change, but make sure you understand it's going to change this or it's going to impact this, and I think oftentimes that gets overlooked until after the fact and all of a sudden the inventory is not going through and they're like oh crap, we changed this and now HomeNet's getting nothing, or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brian, that's a really good point that a lot of people don't necessarily think of and it's almost like the butterfly effect. It's like the wings of a butterfly on this side can create a tsunami on the other side of the world and any implementation with a new product at a dealership kind of creates the same effect. It's those on the way to the solution. What are you leaving in your wake and what does that solution kind of and the point from, on the travel line from point A to point because the more powerful thing to look at it is like how is this new initiative going to have an effect on the ecosystem? And what you know, it's like the Freakonomics view of things is what can this new scheduler and service have an effect in accounting or with your detail shop, what are those changes going to look like? And so, to look at it more like a holistic, to look at the dealership from more of a holistic approach, from a systemic approach, rather than looking at it from a kind of individualistic view.
Speaker 2:Correct, because we all have good ideas and recommendations and suggestions of either a new product or a change that would make things easier. But we don't often think through all of the implications that that one change will cause. And it may not be changing technology or changing software or changing hardware. It may just be a change within an existing tool or system you have. So any change you make you really need to think through. I mean, it's as simple as hey, we no longer want the MSRP pricing field and CDK to be sent. We want the list price to be sent or whatever.
Speaker 2:I'm just giving a random example. But you don't know what other triggers are based on that MSRP field that you now changed, and you could be violating OEM rules and causing all sorts of headaches. So it's just one of those things that really needs to be thought through. You know, I love the way you put it with the impact on the ecosystem, because it's not just the ROI of that one change, it's the impact on the whole ecosystem. That that's, you know, people need to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's a, that's a great point, right. And and do you have um? Have you seen something that has had um, I guess undesigned or unintended, like unintentional consequences? Um at a dealership, like a implementation that you've seen, that has done, that has had that in the past?
Speaker 2:yeah, a lot actually, and it usually evolves around websites and v auto and home net and just pulling of data and uh, what, what pricing ends up on auto trader, carscom, all that type of stuff. And uh it it seems at the time like, okay, we've got a problem, we got to fix it, and so they fix it. But then they don't think of the other ramifications they could be causing when they go in to fix that. Or it could be as simple as hey, we don't want the phone system to route to the receptionist, we want it to go directly to the service advisor's row and round robin that, or right to the parts counter or whatever. But then they're forgetting. Wait a second, now there's no voicemail set up for people to collect the voicemail.
Speaker 2:We had a guy that that wanted the service number on the gmb because the sales number was there, but sales didn't get there till nine o'clock. Well then, if anyone called later, it went right to service and nobody in sales got it, and so service was missing calls early on, sales were missing calls later in the day People would change the GMB without telling anyone, and then all of a sudden someone looks this up on Google Maps and they can't get a hold of sales after 5 o'clock. So there's things like that. You just have to really, before you make the change, really have a good understanding of how are all the wires connected, who might this impact, and just try to be thoughtful the entire dealership as a whole before you, before you really change anything yeah, and that's the thing that that drives me crazy is like you hear the sales guy and they're like hey, mr dealer, purchase this new shiny crm slash app, slash, dms, um, whatever product.
Speaker 1:It will increase your visibility dealer wide and you'll be able to blah, blah, blah, profits, roi, customer acquisition. You'll increase your sales by x in the next 12 months. Insert, you know generic dealership here down the street, purchase your, our product and they're killing it and it's like okay, that's great, that's a great sales pitch and I'm sure you're going to do really well with it. But they don't necessarily understand the commitment that it takes for the system as a whole to make sure that that product is doing those things, and they don't talk about the heavy lift that it takes to make sure that that thing is successful. And I think that in some cases, you know, people that sell products to dealerships just have almost a view that's two or three feet in front of them and doesn't necessarily take the holistic approach that I'm talking about into consideration. It drives me crazy that I'm talking about into consideration.
Speaker 2:It drives me crazy. You know, another, another thing that I think it's I don't know that it's as much of a problem now, but when the internet first came out, you know there was a blending between oh that the tech guy, he can build a website or he can know, do the demo on the crm. And I think there needs to be a very clear distinction now for personnel inside of a dealership, distinguishing between who actually knows the raw hardware, hardware it side of things, opposed to the guy that actually does the marketing side of things. And just because he sits on a computer doesn't make him qualified to be an IT guy. And early on I you know, in the early 2000s, there was a lot of problems with that because you had a guy that was a good IT guy and knew how to wire and network and put in systems. You had him updating the website or updating the CRM or update, and he just thinks different than a marketer. And so distinguishing between those two roles I think can be helpful especially when you think through ramifications of changes.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. I mean, I come from an IT background. I was on both sides of the fence and before I got into the IT company I didn't know much about the IT side. And the set of muscles and momentum that it takes to be an IT guy is completely different than the muscle set that it needs to sell vehicles. Right, it's like I'm making sure that you can have a consistent experience throughout a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Right, that you're set up for five to seven years and the sales guy is going to say what can I do today to sell more cars? Or what can I do in the next 30 days? Or what's 60, 90,? That's kind of their cycle, and so those things are almost incompatible with that, with the technologist position. You say, um, I have somebody that can translate the data that you see at the dealership with kind of the, the, the ecosystem for lack of a better term at the dealership and make sure that those things are playing correctly so I can give the hunters out there, um, the sales people, the, your gSM, your general manager the best or cleanest data and most effective tools to be able to increase sales. And this is changing underneath our noses. The need for a technologist has been around for probably 10 years, and I see a lot of dealerships that don't necessarily have that position. Have you, brian, run into anybody of that caliber in your experience?
Speaker 2:What exactly are you asking again?
Speaker 1:If you run into anybody that marries technology and sales in the dealership space, have you seen that position? As a technologist? I I know you know, like kyle months here is one of those guys that that understands the ecosystem really well and I okay I see them very rarely in the yeah yeah, it is rare, it's.
Speaker 2:Usually they're very strong marketing wise and know a little bit of technology, just enough to get in trouble, or they're really heavy it and good at that, but know very little on the marketing side, and so to find one person that can really intertwine all that is very, very difficult. And I would say the bigger you get as a group, the more you'd want to separate those into two different roles. So I was much, I'm much more on the marketing side, know a little bit about networking, but not enough to feel comfortable taking a role at any dealership. So I agree, it's very rare to find that in just a single person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was. You know, when I went to school, I went to school for technical management, right, and a technical manager, by kind of default, is the translator between the technicians and the engineers, because they have one foot in each world, and I've always thought about the technologist as that, as somebody that has a foot in marketing and then has a foot in systems, right, or the IT side, and not even IT side from the networking and PC perspective. I mean even IT side from the. From the networking and PC perspective. I mean IT side from the. You know programming, website, crm, you know DMS, connecting, communicating with each other on side, and that understands kind of the mapping of all those things and so that's the. The position of that technologist is like who is that person at the dealership that understands how this is and make sure that you're, the money that you're spending is as effective as possible?
Speaker 2:Well, I do think anyone in marketing should have a technology background. As far as software, I was thinking the technologists more in the way of actual hardware and the actual networking of things and knowing how to complete systems and so forth, like that, you know, and make sure that there's one printer at the sales tower and all the managers at the desk can access that one printer and they're all networked together. I was thinking more of the person of that nature, which to me is different skillset. But if you're in marketing, geez man, you better know how the CRm is wired and how all the websites are wired and how the auto speaks to all your third parties, because one little change and it can cause a lot of headaches yeah, absolutely, and that's the the.
Speaker 1:You know, you, you get marketing people from different ilks, right? You said the marketing person that's really good at putting events together and doesn't necessarily understand the technology. And it's like how do you merge those two things and make sure that they're closer and living in concert rather than having them live on separate islands? And it's like how do those two organizations or those two kind of departments interact with each other and how do they not step on each other's toes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, do you know? Does anyone have any type of a white paper or PDFs or something that is kind of maybe a simplified checklist that says before you change CRMs, look at this, before you change website vendors, look at this before you. You know, update, you know, whatever SEM providers look at, you know that type of a thing just as far as a basic um, not networking per se, but a um just like a basic wiring of digital properties.
Speaker 4:Like an IT policy.
Speaker 2:Well, not just an IT policy, more of a I don't know what the right word is but just understanding how everything's connected and when a new vendor comes in and pitches you and you're like, oh, this is the bomb, man, I want to switch to this. Okay, great, here's how that one thing is all connected to things, and this is what we're going to have to change when you want to change CRMs, or this is what we're going to have to change when you want to change inventory distribution companies, or this is what we're going to have to adjust when you want a new voicemail system or whatever that type of thing.
Speaker 4:Okay. So what you're talking about is third party vendor management, correct? Like when you bring in another company, what are the implications of having them hook into your pre-existing infrastructure? What kind of data is being push pulled? Are they doing their due diligence, as far as you know, annual pen testing or all of that good stuff? Is that kind of where you're going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just having a basis.
Speaker 4:So that's going to be like a third-party vendor risk management program, right, and so that kind of it takes all of those things into account and, based on whatever the organization's appetite is for risk it would, through having that form and answering those questions, the entity or the company that's looking at the vendor can decide whether or not that that's a good fit and if that's enough, too much or too little risk for them to engage. Is that what you're hearing, john?
Speaker 1:Tiffany, I would go even kind of a step further. Is that to kind of a little bit to Brian's point? Is like almost creating a Visio for the systems or tools that you have in place at the dealership. Right, so a Visio in the IT world is this is where my firewall is and this is how it connects. So imagine it almost like being a map. Right? So this is where my firewall is and it connects with a line to my switches and then those connect with a lot of lines to all my PCs. It's like almost seeing the dealership mapping out the the tools that the dealership has for marketing and for, I guess, the ERP of the dealership.
Speaker 1:From that, from that point of view, and make sure that you're you're maximizing the effectiveness of the tools. It's like I took this class in school called business systems integrations and, Brian, what you were saying before is like there's a checklist of how to go about you know when you have a new systems implementation. Right, so let's say you're moving from Vint Solutions to dealer centric, you have to make sure that somebody is responsible for it, for soup to nuts, right, for the implementation. You have to do all your research, you have to get buy in from the team. You have to implement it correctly. You have to brief everybody on every single stage of it. You have to get buy-in from your key players, know what your critical path is. You implement it, then support, train, make sure that everybody has their questions answered, and that's how you have a successful implementation.
Speaker 1:Is that in a lot of these cases, the person with the good-looking guy or good-looking gal sits in the dealer principal's office and sells them the new shiny product and the dealer principal says implement this. And it falls on the GSM's shoulders to say I've never done this before. Maybe I've been here at the dealership for six months and it's a catastrophic failure. Everybody resists the change and isn't implemented correctly. And that's my. When I talk about a technologist in the organization, that's really the person that I talk about. It's who is the person that has enough marketing, enough technical side, understand sales, understand service, understand each department of the organization and can be that Sherpa, that change Sherpa. Because the only thing that's very consistent in the dealership space is that there's always going to be change. There's gonna work tomorrow, the markets gonna be different than it was today and it's gonna be consistently changing from one day to another. There's gonna be new tools and there's gonna be EV chains. There's gonna be data changes. Everything's gonna change. It's like just get really good at change management.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have someone like that on staff, I would highly recommend to every dealer that they have a champion for each product or service that they have, so that that is the go-to person for the CRM tool. This is the go-to person for the auto, the go-to person for who's managing the website and how that integrates with everything else and how that integrates with everything else. The go-to person for all your third-party vendors that you sign up with, whether that's Autotrader or DealerRater or whatever. Just having a champion on the team that you go to says hey, we're looking at changing online review companies from DealerRater to Podium.
Speaker 2:How much is that going to impact? Oh wait, DealerRater goes right to facebook right now. Can podium do the same thing? Okay, who's going to make sure that those wires are connected? And just having one. If you don't have a technologist on staff that understands all that, you better have at least a champion for each product and service you have and check with them before you make those changes. And, like you said, I think unfortunately a lot of that falls on a GSM or some type of a desk manager and they just want stuff to work. They don't want to know how it works, they just want to know that it does work.
Speaker 4:And that creates a really massive vulnerability or weak point in a business operations. For one, you have people who are engaging in activities or content to which they have no expertise or background knowledge. And two, what happens when that person who's been assigned to that that one person goes on vacation or you know is away, and a continuity plan as far as if that person's not available to contingency to roll into another person to help manage them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point. It's like you know you give, suddenly you have an extension ringing that doesn't ring to anybody, right?
Speaker 1:It's like that's how you, you know, know and you find out 60 days later. That's the problem with these poor implementations is that. Is that okay, we set up this new service scheduler and it's going to go to this place, and then, after the implementation happens, you change the cord and if you're not operationally very sound, why? Why? Why did our appointments go down like what happened? Why did cheese move? And suddenly you're troubleshooting into systems that you're not necessarily familiar with and you're saying, oh, it's because this extension is going to, you know, the porter's desk and the porter spends 90% of their time, you know, moving cars rather than being at a desk right, and you fat fingered the extension and suddenly you don't know what happens. So having somebody that's responsible for that you know soup to nuts is really important. I can't kind of stress the impact that doing this properly has on the organization. It can go from losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to, you know, being extremely profitable and being a net gain to the organization. How's it going, charles?
Speaker 5:It's going well. I'm just wondering when, as I sit here and set up my new M1 workstation, when we're going to get away from freaking Windows. No, it's interesting, it's a good conversation. So over the last several years, I love small, rural stores. I'm not a fan of the big big stores. That's just nothing against them. It's just not my cup of tea.
Speaker 5:But one thing I've noticed this problem immensely on the small store side because you know you've got these small franchise dealers, that OEM's telling them you know they gotta use this and they gotta use that, and you know they're kind of being forced down these pipelines but they don't really understand any of it um to the full extent. And over the last uh several years I've done several uh tech deployments, um or revitalizations at some of these older stores that are kind of left in the dark ages because they just simply don't understand it. They just see it as an expense. Or they're signing up for all this stuff because they're told that they should, or, you know, they get a good settlement in front of them and they end up buying stuff that they don't need for their dealership put in front of them and they end up buying stuff that they don't need for their dealership. So one thing I will say, um, is that I definitely get where tiffany's coming from when it comes to a security standpoint. You know, uh, not only security, but just you know what. What happens when my contract's up and I'm no longer at that store. How do they keep that, um, and how do they understand what's actually going on?
Speaker 5:So to kind of touch on Brian's point is, um, anytime you know, first thing when I would go into one of these stores is I would just, I would spend about 30 days trying to figure out what the heck was going on already and find all the mess ups and, you know, the loop backs that didn't need to be there, all the unnecessary stuff you know, and usually find out that they're using two or three things that they could get done with just one thing, whether it be software or hardware. But then, how it starts, create a, basically a mind map of how that store from a software and hardware standpoint worked. I would make a hardware map and a software map and kind of tie it all in together and then I would start, you know, trimming it down, making it more efficient and trying to get the best utilization you know, because there's no point. We see it all the time and there's thousands of stores out there that are paying for stuff that they just absolutely don't use, either because they don't know how to use it, or they they forgot it was there, or it's just not connected properly. You know, there's a million reasons why it happens.
Speaker 5:So I would go through this process and once you know I would start to get, I'd come up with a plan to basically clean up their tech, clean up their software and hardware, get it more streamlined and efficient for what they needed, but still be scalable so as they grew they could scale it on their own. They knew where it could scale and how it could scale. I would sit down with the owners and all you know the management team and if there was a you know rock star salesperson or whatever, I would include them in it. And if there was a you know rock star salesperson or whatever, I would include them in it and we'd go through and say you know, this is how it all worked together and this is how we can streamline it. But anytime I would leave one of those stores. You know I left with a. They had mappings of all their hardware, of their software If they ever had a question they understood.
Speaker 5:I made it, as you know, dumbified as possible so that even if a new person came in that wasn't at that store before they could look at it and kind of see what was going on. And, you know, always left them with all their logins, made sure everything was reset. You know um to where, basically, I walk out of the store and all they had to do was reset one password and I'm gone. I was like I was there, but it is a huge issue.
Speaker 5:It's just a lack of understanding. You know I've been in every seat in the building and then in service, have been in sales, have been in management, been an F&I, you know. So I understand the frustrations. And it's not just you know. Will this do that? It also goes to the culture of the store. Yes, you may have two pieces of software that can get you the same data, but one caters to the actual demographic of that store and the culture of that store, where the other one doesn't, and it does take someone that can see that 10,000-foot view from both the technology side and a store side. They have to work cohesively, otherwise you just you end up signing up, using stuff or paying for equipment that you just never end up using because nobody doesn't fit the culture of the store. People just don't understand it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, charles, it sounds like you're a technologist almost for hire right as a consulting game. Is that almost an accurate way of putting it?
Speaker 5:Yep, I've done it for the last five or six years. I've gone into small you know these are small franchise stores. They've been Ford stores, um cause, that's where I have more knowledge is on the Ford OEM side versus other OEMs. And, um, you know, it usually takes me anywhere from three to six months depending on how screwed up it is when I get there and where they want to be at. But it's more than just implementing technology and hardware. It's also training all the staff. I mean it's a lot. It's basically ripping the store down to the concrete pad from a technology standpoint and building it all back while still leaving the store running pretty well as efficient as possible in the process.
Speaker 1:So what are the biggest pitfalls that you see when dealers, or you know almost blind spots that dealers have when they're in this situation? Are there things that they all have in common?
Speaker 5:um, two big things that I see almost every single time is um, there's one person that knows it and that's it, and that's that's great, as long as you don't ever leave. Um, so training is a huge downfall. When it comes to technology, um, whether it just be CRM or DMS or whatever it is, you know how the inventory feeds. You know there needs to be more than one person that fully understands how to use that, because, especially in small stores, you know they may only have eight staff members in their whole store. That's not uncommon. You know you've got one person that does all your back office. You've got one sales manager, one finance manager, a GM slash owner and a few salespeople, and you know, aside from fixed ops, you may have six to eight people in the whole building. So if that one person leaves, it leaves a huge hole if you don't do training.
Speaker 5:And then the other side of it is they just, uh, I've it just seems like they're more perceptible to sales pitches because they don't understand um, so they're like, you know they. They don't understand the technology, they don't understand what's out there for technology as far as comparables um, so they just sign up for it. You know they're like oh well, I really like the guy, so he must be telling me the truth. And they just got sold, um, it's kind of like a snake hole salesman, um, and there's.
Speaker 5:I mean, thankfully there's not a crack ton of companies that do it, but there are companies out there that seek out these small dealers because they know that they don't know, um, or their dealer network isn't as large as others. Where they can, you know, vet out the company and see if others have used it, they may just go ahead and sign up that day and say, yeah, it sounds great, and then they end up with a bunch of stuff that they don't use. I mean, I've walked into dealerships from the DMS standpoint, from a CDK and Reynolds standpoint, where they're paying for printers and hardware that they haven't had in their store in years, but nobody knew to look at the invoice. They just trusted their sales rep, um, so it's just. I mean I see I've walked in and seen thousands and thousands of dollars going out every month uh, not annually, every month to absolutely nothing not annually, every month, to absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that drives me crazy. That's such a good point.
Speaker 2:I'm Brian, we're gonna add some. I was just thinking we should come up with some type of a like an IT technologist checklist and just kind of start working on a uh, a working document that I'm sure some of the big shops already have this internally, um, but just even for all the small ones, you know, just a free document that at least gets them thinking. You know, hey, you better have more than one login, or you better have a process for when your sales manager quits, how to shut him out of things so that he doesn't download customer databases and or leads, or, you know, get things turned off before they walk out the door. Just simple things that you know. If you're not in in that process, in and every day, you're not even going to be thinking about it. You don't even know what you don't know, and so it just seems like a good you know step would be to come up with some type of a cheat sheet of some sort, just to at least get the conversation started for these smaller dealers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that's a. That's a great idea. I I'm I remember one dealership that they had to let go of the general manager, the controller, gsm, there was. There were, there was a bunch of uh um. You know they were very creative, let's just put it that way and on their way out changed. You know, in the, an auto trader changed all the prices to four grand over market on used cars, right Um. So all the leads died on that side and then ordered from the manufacturer the uh a loaded um.
Speaker 1:If I give the manufacturer away, it will kind of give away the story but they would order a manual loaded base model of every single car that they had so that they were almost impossible to sell. They ordered like 45 of them. So it ended up they like launched these grenades on their way out maliciously at the deal and it was a huge issue. It's like they were. They didn't know what they had, they didn't understand the ecosystem, they didn't have anything mapped out and they had these major key man issues that you know, at any point you're completely vulnerable to if you have a difficult termination or they're doing they're, you know, getting very financially creative or doing some stuff that's not above board. You can't. You know, letting them go is extremely difficult, so I would be really interested to see how you can safeguard those things.
Speaker 4:Hey, john, I know that you're really really super familiar with internal dealership processes as far as it relates to IT. I'm gonna send you like some policy documents for you to take a look at, john, and maybe like there's a way that you can maybe kind of craft and revise some of that language on those templates that might kind of fit in with the dealership retail business operations as something that you can kind of hand out and help people get a grasp on, because I think this stuff is going to be more and more common conversation moving as time, you know, goes on. You're even going to probably even see even deeper conversations around, especially when we're talking about operations policy.
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely, that's a great point and I think that we can marry kind of the Brian Charles, tiffany John kind of initiative and say these are the things that you should be doing as a policy or operational policies to make sure that you don't have a key man problem or key woman problem, that you don't have these massive operational vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1:Not even speaking about the IT side. It's like operational vulnerabilities that if this person gets hit by a meteorite, what situation are you in? If your IT guy is walking out the door and gets hit by a bus, is your $40 million a year operation at a standstill? If your GSM or GM gets sick with COVID, are you at a standstill because he has GSM or GM gets you know sick with COVID, are you at a standstill because he has access to FMC dealer and nobody else does? Like, what are your key, like your critical path kind of initiatives and where do those stop and who do they lie with? And I think that with you know, all of us collaborating together, we could get definitely a good map of that, all of us collaborating together, we could get definitely a good map of that.
Speaker 2:You know, your title for the room is just an intriguing question, because if you ask 10 dealers you probably would get 10 different answers of what a technologist is. And when I saw it and I jumped in and I'm thinking, okay, that's the IT guy, the guy that does all the hardware and the systems and the networking and making sure when you hit print it comes out that printer sitting right there and all that type of stuff. But it's so much more than that. I love where you've gone with this. Technologist really is the guy that understands how all these things are connected and how they impact one another and understands if you're going to make a change, you better, you better be careful, because you're going to change x, y and z just by changing. You know a, b and c, so it's. It was a. It's been very good for me, just because it just made me rethink the whole term technologists and what, what that person does and who they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brian, and kind of where this came from, is that a lot of the times people ask these questions of the IT guy and, like you were saying before, it's like the IT guy doesn't have the operational knowledge to say if you do this, it's going to have an impact on this other system. I can say it from a cybersecurity perspective or from a PC perspective, right, or hardware networking, et cetera. But from a tool perspective there's no way that I could even give an opinion of that. I would be giving my side of it to a technologist and say, hey, if you're moving to dealer socket, you want to make sure that your PCs have eight gigs of RAM because it runs off of Chrome and Chrome is a RAM hog, let's just put it that way.
Speaker 1:But I can't tell you how dealer sockets interacting with the service department or with accounting or the cashier, or how you're doing your credit card processing or whatever else that looks like. But I get asked those questions all the time. I can get my opinion from the IT perspective but not from the holistic perspective of the whole system. Yeah, charles, I'm interested in kind of expanding on your perspective because it sounds like you are a technologist. I mean, that's from kind of this new definition of what a technologist is. It seems like that's what you're doing as a service, right? Is that correct?
Speaker 5:yeah, I mean, I've never put a, I've never put a title to it other than you know I'm just. I'm the guy that grew up building computers and geeking out on technology. That just happens to be sorry. I'm setting up on M1 um. Just happen to be the guy that's been in the automotive industry for 20 years. You know um, so it's been um, it it's definitely. I mean it's, it's more needed and every day I think it gets more and more needed.
Speaker 5:Because you know, if you think back 10, 15 years ago, most of this stuff was physical. You go back 20 years ago when a lot of these dealers were starting, all this stuff was physical. Now you can't even see it. It was just see it, it was just it's all software, it's all web-based um. So you can't, you can't um, you can't see it. And for a lot of people that's the hardest part is it's hard for them to understand because they can't see it, they can't go in the room, know in the server room and actually see it, and so for them to try to learn it is totally different now and it's only going to get more so that way as time goes on. You know we have less and less hardware. More and more is cloud-based, and from a software perspective and from a software perspective. So I think it's a need that is definitely needed as we start to transition into more and more technology.
Speaker 1:I was having that conversation with David Spisak and it was like understanding your technology stack is is so critical. It's as critical as understanding your used car inventory, your new car, you know allocation. It's as as interesting, as, as critical as any other system that you're using because it is the ecosystem where all these things live from. And it's almost like, okay, we understand technology's very overwhelming and can be this kind of embarrassing thing that I don't know how things work. But we have to change the mentality of dealers and say run towards the technology problem, don't run away from it.
Speaker 1:Know enough, to quote an MBA professor. It's like know enough to be dangerous and to ask the right questions of how that data, like who owns the data If you got, if we want to move away from you guys, who, who does that data fall under? Is it yours or is it mine? Understand if they're going to resell that data. Just be be educated enough to be dangerous and be asking the right questions so you eliminate that hostage effect from any of your vendors or from any of the individuals in your organization.
Speaker 2:And I would take it a step further to not only know the right questions but then follow that up with. Okay, if I own the data, how do I get access to it? How do I download it? How do I back it up? You know what I mean. You can say I can do this all day long. Show me how I can do that and have steps and things ready to go so that, um, you know, you can very quickly, you know, do stuff. And it just it's reminded me again how, like I think, every gm or dealer needs to have a three ring binder on their desk or in their folder that, you know, has all this information laid out, knows who the contact is at each vendor and knows how to be able to pull different levers quickly in case of emergency. So, um, it's just, you know the it's just a very good topic to be constantly reminding dealers about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Brian, that's a great point. It's just like something as simple as everybody's doing GMB right now. Right, GMB is like the hot thing. Do you know who set up your GMB account? You know what email it is and who has the password?
Speaker 2:Do you know who owns it?
Speaker 1:YeahB account you know what email it is and who has the password. Do you know who owns it? Yeah, exactly, who's the site owner? Is that your marketing guy that's going to move to another dealership in three months because he's getting entertained from offers from your competitive dealership? Who owns that data or who owns the access to that? As simple as.
Speaker 1:GMB right. As simple as being the site owner on gmb who created the gmail account that you have to create your gmb work yeah, it's always fun trying to track down google analytics accounts, um facebook accounts, you know.
Speaker 5:and then when you have to get the manufacturer involved because it was so screwed up, that's even more fun, let me tell you.
Speaker 2:And good luck getting control of a domain name that CDK bought 10 years ago because you didn't know you could buy your own and just redirect it to their servers. And now CDK's changed emails multiple times and GoDaddy doesn't want to release it because the person on that email no longer exists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're ever thinking about selling your dealership, you have to hand over all that information. It has to be nice and organized, If not it becomes a complete and utter disaster. It's a lot more critical than a lot of people would initially think. I'm so happy that we're having this conversation.
Speaker 2:So now the next question is what are we going to do about this?
Speaker 1:to really help dealers, I would say a checklist is a great idea to do hey, make sure that you have access to all this critical information and just give it out as kind of gee whiz information for dealers. To say, hey, gather all this information from your vendors and make sure that you have access to these critical, these critical accounts. And, brian and Charles and Tiffany, I'd be happy to put my team at your guys' disposal and say, hey, let's come up with a checklist and kind of co-brand it and put it together, because I think this is so important that we're sending this out to dealers, and to make sure that they have at least a hold on their virtual property, because that's, at the end of the day, what this is right oh absolutely
Speaker 4:jinx you owe me a coke no, I'm trying.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to remember what my kids say. When that response comes back like no, I don't the the quarters broke or I don't know something oh, oh, that's funny.
Speaker 4:That's funny, yeah, I mean, john, I'm totally cool with, because I've got some templates and stuff that you know I kind of float around and I'll send them over to you and you can probably restructure a lot of that to be aligned with a retail dealership ops. Yeah, that will be really useful. Let me see here, I think it's. I know this because I just recently sent it over to Danny over at Zipdeal. He got hit with a due diligence request.
Speaker 4:A court questionnaire and he was just like oh my gosh, what is? And I'm like, yeah, like oh, here's some templates, like just start here and we'll help out later and stuff if needed. And but yeah, like a lot of I can really I and this is an assumption I would assume, based on all of the lovely interactions I've had with automotive retailers throughout the years, that a lot of this stuff isn't formalized, collected and in a secured and known location inside those stores.
Speaker 1:I'd be willing to bet that 98% of the dealerships don't have it. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's. I think an effort in this direction is gonna be well received, and anybody that needs just a map of how these things work will be you know. I'll step in the right direction.
Speaker 4:Yeah, let me see if I can.
Speaker 3:Oh, steve's coming up now. Hey, steve, hi everyone, yeah, hi, yes, if I don't know you already, it's Steve from the UK. Yeah, life, lifetime in the motor industry. But in the last you know half of that I guess I've bookended that with with uh, running, creating and running my own businesses. Um, yeah, I'm listening with interest because I've been left. I left Renault UK the manufacturer in 2005. So 16 years since I've been left. I left Renault UK the manufacturer in 2005. So 16 years since I've been directly involved at that level.
Speaker 3:And I'm sorry to say this, I mean it makes me sound very old, but in the early to mid 90s the UK car manufacturers let's call it flavor of the era as opposed to flavor of the month was to install something called british standard 5750, which was actually the same as iso, which is an international standard. 9001, which is a internationally recognized quality standard. 9001, which is a internationally recognized quality standard. Now just quickly answer it is that? Does that still exist anywhere? I mean, just, do any US car dealers run with ISO 9001 or something similar?
Speaker 4:like 700 or ISO. They that is still alive and well, but I but I think, john, you could probably better speak too, if that's a standard that car dealers look to align with what I was going to suggest, tiffany, was that I was listening in.
Speaker 3:I was doing other things. I was listening at the same time when you started speaking about getting this process down in writing and offering it to dealers in a checklist. Um, that kind of style of checklist exists within the 9001 quality standard. So I was just I just quickly had a look online because we put um is ISO 9001 into a small dealer group that I worked at and then when I went to work for Renault UK, I worked with the field-based accountants to put them into 23 different dealers. So we actually had the whole of the Renault retail group all facing in the same direction with ISO 9001.
Speaker 3:So, as a consequence of that, if we were to project that business forward, everything that you've mentioned about recording for how can I put it security and ease when people leave and new people join and onboarding people and anything new people join and onboarding people and anything everything's referred to the manual, which has literally everything the dealer gets up to as a process within the manual. So what Charles was saying was exactly right it used to take about three to six months for a dealership to get everybody facing in the right way and then implement the changes required to pass the quality standard. If you get me, I mean, this is all from memory because it's years ago, but, um, it was really effective actually, and I, I, you know you, you knew where to go if you needed a form. Um, you knew what to do. When a salesman joined, you just showed them the manual, said this is how we do it. Um, and it was really. It's how I really liked it and I know I'm a control freak, so obviously that's why I liked it, but it was great.
Speaker 3:I thought it was really good and I think if that had been continued internationally, everything that's come along since like buying a domain name, who ordered it, what was on the order form, all those order forms all audited, and once a year the auditors would come in and they'd go backwards through your system to make sure the right order forms are raised, what happens to that invoice, etc. Etc. So I just thought I'd mention that because I guess if you were to dive into the ISO 9001 paperwork, you'd probably find something similar that you could just modify. But I suspect it would take a manufacturer to say to its dealers we want you to implement something like this for it to actually happen, because that's what happened. It was bonus related. You could only get full bonus if you were ISO 9001 quality standard. So that that's all I wanted to mention. Really, it was something I thought was good when I was involved in it. That's it. I'm done speaking Thanks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, excellent. Oh sorry, John, Go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, no, go ahead, Tiffany.
Speaker 4:I was going to say yeah. In addition to ISO, another one of my favorite globalized standard frameworks to look towards is NIST CFS. I think that that's another really strong framework. If you go to NISTCFSgov, they have all kinds of free information that they give out all the time.
Speaker 1:I think also from the IT perspective. Anybody that falls under the Volkswagen Auto Group kind of group of dealership or retail locations have a pretty comprehensive IT standard throughout the board and they have kind of a standardization that that's been, that's been implemented for a long time.
Speaker 3:But I think to that point.
Speaker 1:It doesn't necessarily cover the. You know your digital property or digital footprint from a almost a content perspective. More like, you know, do you have a patch management policy for your PCs? Do you have a next generation firewall? A lot of the stuff that's in the weeds for kind of my world it's like, yes, we're doing all those things. You have a security operations center that's monitoring your network. Do you have those things?
Speaker 1:So it would be really interesting to say, hey, off the top of your head, the checklist that you should be looking at is like make sure that you have access to your data, that, if, what emails are set up for the, for your GMB, who has access to your Facebook? You know kind of housekeeping items for for the organization, and a lot of the times when I'm, when I'm dealing with a customer is that I'm I'm almost falling, starting to fall into their operation and, depending on how strong their operation is, is how difficult or easy my job is to support them. So it's this ebb and flow, give and take between the dealership and the vendor. That's that's really important to manage and become very good at managing those things. So that's the kind of skill set that I was that was thinking about with a technologist is like how can we get people good at managing those relationships and give them some solid principles to be able to develop that skill set? But anyways, I digress, we're at the top of the hour.
Speaker 1:Thank you everybody for being here. This is recorded, obviously, so it's going to be on the podcast if you guys want to go back to and reference this, this conversation. Thank you Brian, thank you Charles, thank you Tiffany, thank you Steve for being here. We do this every Tuesday at 2pm, from 2pm until 3pm. It's about an hour long, unless we have a guest that's in studio usually goes a little bit longer than that, but I thank everybody for being here. It's been a great conversation on the technologist. I love this topic. It's one of the things that I'm most passionate about in the dealership space because I think there's so much room for improvement and it sounds like there's like-minded people like Charles and Brian and Tiffany out there and Steve Really contributing to the solution of what this is and kind of creating context and a north for dealership. So I really appreciate you guys coming on and we'll see everybody next week. Bye, everybody, yeah.