Wait a second, a CRM solution for my dealership supposes to help me make more profit, easy to use and help me to organize files better. How can it work against me? Well you are in for a treat for some of the hidden problems your CRM solution vendor wouldn’t tell you. Let’s put aside about the outrageous price tag for a moment, just focus on the tools, features and programming logic. Most of today’s automotive CRM solution are all web based, worse yet they are designed by the ex-car sales manager who has absolutely no training or education in computer science or programming languages. The product is usually produced by developers or application programmers who have no clue of automotive business. This gap in knowledge and experience can result in some poorly developed web portals that can be counter productive and outright backwards. Because most of the CRM solutions today are web based, there is the first issue of system performance. Although a web based system is cheaper to develop and easier to maintain, but it is vulnerable to hackers and attacks compare to a full blown desktop application. Imagine every data field and text input has to be processed by some PHP script on the server, you will have to wait for server response on every page load. How much time do you think that system will waste compare to a desktop application? If used incorrectly the CRM will add unnecessary complexity to a very simple situation of selling cars. But because most of the sales manager are impressed by the I.T business overall, they love to know if the portal has the latest capabilities or integrations without knowing the long term effect it can cause the dealership, or in another word the “big picture”.

If the system deployed is not user intuitive enough, it will most likely require training to use the system properly. Now if the training is missed, or the user didn’t retain the training course, he or she can enter bad data, or worse yet, no data at all into the CRM, which will defeat all the intended purposes. Just remember the next time you meet with your automotive CRM or DMS system vendor, take a look at the user interface, does it make sense to be where it is? Is the system clearly labeled? Can a high school student figure it out without any training? Unnecessary complexity is not always a good thing, it often create more problems than it solves. So don’t get caught up with the tech savvy acronyms. Make sure the system is secure, well designed and developed, above all users friendly!

So the next time you are putting your CRM solution to the test, make sure you are getting what you are paying for. I hope this article can help you make some more informative decisions when it comes to your next automotive CRM solution. This article is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, to visit us online please visit http://www.dealerelites.ca