.FLYINGHEAD CUSTOM SOLUTIONS
.TITLE Keeping track of car dealer inventory
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Geoffrey Bonser takes you inside the secret world of the car dealer in this exclusive report. If you’ve ever been interested in sales automation tools, or ever wanted to get a leg up on your local car dealer, this article will give you some interesting insights. Maybe you’ll start thinking about custom solutions for your own sales department!
.AUTHOR Geoffrey Bonser
Many businesses are looking for ways to make it easier for employees to use computers to improve their efficiency. Auto dealers are no exception. Having data at the fingertips of auto sales personnel can a whole range of everyday business tasks easier to do. In this article, we’ll explore how a custom solution for auto dealers was developed using the PalmPilot
Jeff Sacks and Associates (JS&A) is an automotive consulting group that provides their auto dealer clients with accounting and computer system solutions. Sandi Jerome described the problem they were trying to solve: "Most of our dealers complained about the lack of good inventory reports and their employees’ inability to use the in-house computer system to search for a vehicle. Most sales managers and salespeople use stock cards or invoice books (paper solutions) that are difficult to maintain and often inaccurate."
JS&A decided that the PalmPilot made perfect sense as a handheld companion to their mainframe and desktop-based sales tools. So they devised a software solution, called "SalesLink" to allow auto dealer employees to use the PalmPilot to access their inventory data.
SalesLink consists of several pieces:
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.BULLET a dealer’s in-house system which can be ADP, Reynolds & Reynolds, UCS, Dealer Solutions or EDS systems (all industry-specific dealer systems);
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.BULLET a custom conduit running on the desktop built with Windward Group software known as RTAccess;
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.BULLET and an Auto Inventory application that runs on the PalmPilot.
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While JS&A is more familiar with auto dealer solutions, my company, The Winward Group, has experience developing PalmPilot applications. We worked together to produce SalesLink. I wrote the synchronization and handheld portions of the system.
Since most PalmPower readers aren’t auto dealers, this article isn’t intended as a pitch for SalesLink (and PalmPower editors wouldn’t let us publish it if it were). Rather, I hope you’ll get a good understanding of an interesting industry-specific solution for the PalmPilot.
.H1 Benefits for the Dealership
SalesLink provides an easy way for the dealership to provide a detailed listing of its inventory to the dealer (usually the owner), sales managers, used car buyers, salespeople and special finance departments. According to Jerome, "The cost of maintaining an inventory is the largest expense for dealerships, and dealers have few tools to market and manage this inventory."
A dealer’s in-house system can be difficult to use and is not too portable. With SalesLink on a PalmPilot, dealers always have an easily searchable inventory listing in hand. That lets them better serve their customers. Mike Johnson of Durand Chevrolet in Durand, Michigan describes it this way: "I’m always running into customers at the mall or at meetings and they ask me if I have such-or-such of a model in stock. With this in my pocket I won’t have to ‘get back to them’ later."
Dealerships with multiple locations have found an additional advantage. They download the inventory from all their locations into PalmPilots, and when a customer asks for a certain model or color, the salesperson can search for cars that match the customer’s request. "This is a wonderful, wonderful tool for salespeople," says dealer Ray Sparling of Sunset Chevrolet in Sumner, Washington. "This is the easiest thing that we have ever used to know what’s in stock. We plan to expand to a building across the street and those employees will be able to use this to know what we have in stock at both lots."
.H1 How does it work?
SalesLink runs a query of the inventory from the dealership’s in-house inventory database system during the night. It can also be set to run every 10 minutes during the day. The data is automatically extracted and put into an Access database. This database is then synchronized with individual PalmPilots when each user performs a HotSync. The PalmPilot displays a list, shown in Figure A, which includes make, model, color, and price information.
.FIG A The list view displays a quick listing of each vehicle’s important attributes.
When a record is selected from the list, the detail view shown in Figure B appears with more information. Categories and category information for the records are defined in the import file when it is extracted from the in-house system.
.FIG B The detail view gives additional information about a vehicle. Note the in-stock check box.
In addition to the fixed fields available in the application, the dealer also has four custom fields with customizable labels, as shown in Figure C. This screen is only displayed if there is custom data defined for the record.
.FIG C This screen on the PalmPilot shows the custom fields and labels.
The application is fully searchable from the PalmPilot’s built-in Find function. One of the benefits of using PalmPilots for this solution, of course, is that dealer personnel can also use the built-in applications of the PalmPilot to track customers, meetings, and tasks.
.H1 Other solutions
Auto Inventory also has a useful business management application for dealers taking a physical inventory. Pam Ruggles, controller of Sunset Chevrolet, used to send a clerk out every week with a yellow legal pad to take inventory. With Auto Inventory, the clerk is able to check the "in stock" box, then come back into the dealership and print a list of the units that are missing. This saves them three or four hours of reconciliation time a week.
.H1 Future directions
JS&A is exploring other customized PalmPilot applications to make their customer’s jobs easier. They are working on a system that allows the dealer to view financial data on a PalmPilot. This will enable dealers to discuss the number of open repair orders or repair order averages while in the service department and gross profit averages when visiting the sales department.
They’re also working with a research company to provide marketing analysis on the PalmPilot. A dealer will be able to view market research information such as consumer buying patterns and regional demand for each vehicle. This will help a dealer at auction or during lot reviews determine if the dealership should hold onto the vehicle or accept a quick sale to turn over a slow mover.
.H1 Sales force automation
With the portability of the PalmPilot and the ease with which applications of this type can be developed, I expect other sales force automation-type applications will follow quickly.
One final note: a special thanks to Sandi Jerome of Jeff Sacks and Associates for her help with information and quotes for this article.
.BIO Geoff Bonser is a Software Engineer at The Windward Group. You can learn more about Windward at http://www.wwg.com, or by writing to info@wwg.com.
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