By Sandi Jerome
Last summer, Mike Roscoe, the Owner of DEALER magazine, approached me with the idea of a technology magazine for dealers. I jumped at the opportunity to help provide a dedicated resource for dealers to discover automotive-specific technology.
A lot has happened since that summer night at the Texas Auto Dealers Convention when we plotted the publication. My fellow speaker at the convention, Maryann Keller, has left Priceline. A few of the other dot coms have either reorganized their marketing strategy or dropped off completely.
Another piece of big news last summer was that Reynolds +Reynolds entered into an agreement to give General Motors 10% of their stock in return for preferred vendor status. This was not the same as the GM purchase of EDS years ago. General Motors paid dearly for EDS, and the small group of dealers being serviced by the Automotive Retail Group was not a factor in their business decision. I wasn't concerned when it happened, and over the years I found no influence and control by GM over EDS' ARG.
But I couldn't have said enough bad things about this proposed GM/R+R agreement. The prospect of a computer company "giving away" their stock for an unsubstantiated endorsement, along with the prospect of a manufacturer gaining access to a dealer's data that resides on that computer system, is just a bad deal for everyone. Dealers I spoke with were suspicious of GM's motives, and an endorsement by GM is often a detriment in making a purchase decision on a new computer system.
As I write this article, a press release pops up from my Internet news clipping service that reports it's all over. R+R has abandoned the plan. Was it something I said? I trust not. Hopefully R+R and GM listened to their true customers, the thousands of dealers who are concerned about the privacy of their databases.
Are you concerned about someone using your data? Here is an easy trick for you to try. Just add your flaky brother-in-law (who has never bought a car from you) to your in-house system customer database. Give him a nice "dummy" car for his vehicle record, but change his first name slightly from Herbert to Herbie. Make sure it's not a version he would ever use. If "Herbie" starts getting mailers for that "dummy" car and phone calls that didn't come from one of your follow-up providers, then someone is using your database. Of course, you'll have to train "Herbie" to save that junk mail, so it might be easier to set up a blind P.O. box for your dummy customer instead.
Dealers have come to recognize that one of their most valuable assets is the data on their in-house computer systems. Recently, they have been aggressively mining this data, and a few of our articles will discuss this issue. I am also pleased to have such a qualified list of contributors, such as Ted Fellowes and Jim Skeans. It's not often that you find exciting articles about fixed operations!
I'm especially excited to tell you about our "Digital Dealer" this month-Mike Johnson. He' s one of my oldest (not by age) dealer friends and a perfect example of a dealer who "gets it" when it comes to technology. Mike can watch his early morning service drive-up from a laptop on the beach in Fiji - via the Internet. I've met his wife, and I'm sure she just loves that!
In the upcoming issues, we plan to give you lots of tips, information, and training on technology. Hang on for a wild ride and watch for the next copy of Digital Dealer magazine. We've had an overwhelming number of system administrators, controllers and Internet managers who have e-mailed us requesting a personal subscription. They fear the dealer's copy might not trickle down to them. For this reason, we're offering a low cost paid subscription to the magazine so you can be assured of receiving your own copy. I hope your enjoy our premiere issue and please e-mail me with your questions and comments.
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