Why Should Car Dealers And Garages Invest In A Dealer Management System?

Car dealers and garages looking to simplify daily processes in order to save time and increase their profitability can do so by investing in a dealer management system (DMS), allowing them to manage and understand every aspect of their business from a single platform.

As opposed to using different software programs or manual records to manage your car sales, workshop and parts departments, a DMS brings everything together under one roof and gives you complete control of your dealership or garage, finally putting an end to needless time spent logging in and out of multiple systems throughout the day and the inevitable double entry of information.

Switching to a dealer management system is a step change. Your leadership team needs to ensure that new processes are adopted by your staff during the implementation, making it important to evaluate systems carefully for ease of use and ensuring that their features will help streamline operations across all departments of your business.

You should begin your DMS search by identifying the tools each member of your team needs to efficiently complete their jobs. The ideal dealer management system will include features that cover all the daily processes required for each department, with individual logins and permission settings creating an experience more unique to each employee’s role, while remaining easy to use with intuitive menus and screens so that your staff can quickly adapt to the new software.

Your car sales department will heavily rely on a dealer management system once it’s in place, so the software will need to provide full control of your vehicle stock, track reconditioning costs and accommodate both appraisals and valuations. The dealer management system should offer robust accounts integration and must also accurately handle the used car Margin VAT second hand goods scheme, ensuring you meet HMRC requirements. Finance integration is also essential to allow your sales team to quickly create deals for customers in front of them, who will want to know on the spot whether the affordability of their desired vehicle is within their budget.

Once your vehicle stock has been uploaded into the DMS, which should be a straightforward process, you’ll want to send vehicles quickly and easily to online car selling portals such as Auto Trader, in addition to your own website, at the click of a button. As soon as you receive any enquiries from the vehicle adverts, your dealer management system should be creating new sales opportunities for your team by automatically feeding these leads back to you in the software’s customer relationship management (CRM) feature, even outside of office hours.

Switching to a dealer management system which integrates with your car dealer website will save you even more time in the sales process, with online features available to take deposits, approve finance and value part exchanges for your website customers, whatever their location. Streamlining these steps in the sales process means you just simply need to complete the deal and arrange the handover, maximising potential sales with all the free time you’ll now have.

When it comes to aftersales, your dealer management system should be equipped to send service and MOT reminders to customers and notify your team of any previous advisories to maximise upselling opportunities for your workshop or garage. Service customers will also be more likely to return for repeat business thanks to the trust built from this and other DMS features, including vehicle health checks, pre-delivery inspections and customer follow-ups.

Efficiency in the workshop will improve immensely when you switch to a dealer management system with a live overview of the service department, instantly showing you work in progress, upcoming arrivals, estimates and invoices. A comprehensive parts management system in the DMS will also enable the easy issuing of parts to service job cards and counter sales whilst accurately tracking stock levels, and include perpetual stock checking which can be performed digitally and at a fraction of the time.

Accurate reporting is another essential feature of dealer management systems, with your company’s performance digitally tracked and easy to monitor, creating the opportunity for you to make data-driven decisions that can lead to increased profits.

Dragon2000 provides the DragonDMS dealer management system, integrated car dealer websites and mobile apps which are designed to take care of all of the above features and has been trusted by car dealers and garages since 1995, with software that has been crafted using first-hand experience working in the motor trade and running dealerships at the highest level.

If you’re interested in Dragon2000’s dealer management system, car dealer websites or mobile apps, then please contact us at sales@dragon2000.co.uk or call 01327 222 333.