If you are shopping for vehicle reconditioning software, it should be easy for you to understand the product’s core benefits, features and advantages. No one should have to acquire more power or functionality than they need.
A scalable brand will grow as you do, with minimal fuss and cost.
Your store might need fully featured reconditioning. Another may need just a component of that, say to manage better parts flow and cosmetic/detailing costs for reconditioning their used cars.
When shopping for reconditioning software, insist the core technology provides transparency. Transparency is the ability to see, track, manage and measure activities, cars, people, speed to sale, documentation, workflows, costs, transactions and consumer interactions through the product. Is it honest or tolerating fudge factors?
When the core of reconditioning software is built on transparency, the processes your people manage will become second nature — they’ll control their steps in the processes with new skills, efficiencies and enjoyment, understanding more productively their contribution to the bigger story.
Cross-department communications — and fixed to variable operations coordination — will be swift and precise and will rid recon of mixed and missed messages that cost sales, service efficiency and delay getting cars ready in three to five days.
Now, recon’s contribution to vehicle marketing and sales is measurable in variable ops. Use your recon data captured on every car to show online and showroom shoppers the care, trust and value you build into your used vehicles. There’s an app for that.
If shopping for reconditioning software is on your mind, you’ve chosen a prudent time to investigate and make an important decision to fortify your business for the market ahead.
From conversations I had at NADA and since, industry observers are increasingly concerned that margin compression is headed our way again (see April’s AutoSuccess, “From NADA: Deliver Transparency, Prep for Margin Compression”). They share concerns that even now, many retailers are still reeling from too much pandemic punch to engage the coming margin compression soberly.
Here’s what they mean when airing these concerns:
• Demand-supply dynamics have eroded disciplined skills throughout the dealership, particularly in sales and reconditioning for many stores, which increasingly drives retail success.
• Dealers still hold too many cars purchased for premium dollars for a market poised to fall.
• If not designed to drive continuous improvement in time-to-line metrics, reconditioning processes won’t deliver the speed-to-sale edge a compressed margin market will demand.
Too many dealers continue to operate reconditioning as if these proven practices don’t apply to their situation or style of management. That’s called magical thinking — and I challenge you to ask us to verify our argument. Even dealers moving as few as 50 units a month will see economic improvement through their operation by using scalable reconditioning workflow and communications software to replace or modernize their current recon methods.
Don’t buy more of a solution than you need, but don’t settle for less. Only one reconditioning software is used by more than 2,400 dealers. In three to five days, they consistently get cars sale-ready to cut holding costs, increase turn and build transparent trust and value in their used vehicles that build customer engagement and sales.
