As suggested in the previous posting, it’s time to share some of the issues, perspectives and experiences gained from our work as a dealer communication system and with other dealer communication systems. If you sell through dealers—regardless of your product or service—you need a DCS. And, based on our experiences in this area, there are a set of principles that are essential to effectively selling and servicing through this core piece of automotive retail infrastructure. So think of this blog entry as a declaration of DCS principles.
DCSs are not just for automakers. DCS infrastructure enables the selling, servicing, financing, insuring and ultimately remarketing of cars and trucks. So any company that does significant business in automotive retail should have one in order to support interaction with the computer systems that dealers use to run their business—whether DMS, F&I, CRM, Desking or any other.
DCSs must be real-time. Customer satisfaction demands this, and makes the difference between getting product sold or not. Relying on a batch, overnight process doesn’t give dealers an opportunity to respond to a customer standing in front of them.
DCSs must support bi-directional communication. It’s not enough to see what’s happening at the point-of-sale/service if you can’t take action with a meaningful reply that supports the specific situation in the dealership.
DCS must support application to application integration. This is essential for two reasons. One is that unsupported (aka hostile) interfaces can’t effectively support real-time, bi-directional communication. And the second reason, particularly in a multi-franchise world, is that dealers can’t afford the wasted time and effort to work between their systems and a hodgepodge of their business partner systems.
DCSs must be internet-based. The internet is inexpensive and ubiquitous—even for small stores.
DCS must support dealer choice of systems. Competition among dealer system providers drives innovation and lowers costs to dealers. Plus some systems are undoubtedly better suited to certain dealer business needs than others, and dealers are best to judge those business needs.
DCS must be flexible and extensible. This is essential to support all the business processes needed in the automotive retail environment. Simple parts orders and credit applications aren’t enough. Competitive advantage will go to the dealer business partner than can support complex DCS business logic and workflow for incentive selection and submission, vehicle order management and e-contracting for extended service plans and other insurance products.
DCS must deliver business intelligence. By layering business analytics and real-time monitoring on to integrated business processes, business intelligence becomes a competitive weapon for automakers, lenders, insurers, online and auction sellers, parts suppliers and certainly dealers.
This is Oxlo’s DCS Declaration.
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