Time is on your side: Use reporting to get more done.

One of the problems you face is time. There isn’t enough of it, it moves too quickly, where did it even go?

Here are three ways you could get more time back:

• Stop compiling reports. Do you hear the sound of the printer in your nightmares? A lot of dealers arrive in the morning, then run and print multiple reports for each area of the dealership. Then they pull parts of one into a piece of another to get the information they really need. Sound familiar?
• Stop sitting in your office. Wouldn’t you rather be out managing staff or talking to customers? If you’re spending half a day gathering reports, you still have to find the time to analyze them to figure out what’s going on. Only after that can you make management decisions and take action.
• Stop waiting on your money. Ever wondered how to improve cash flow? Just because you always have several open ROs at the end of the day or your contracts-in-transit has remained steady at 6 days, doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to be. More importantly, there are easier ways to figure out your average CIT or how many open ROs you have so you can start moving money faster.

How is it possible to get back this time? You don’t need to build a time machine. You need a digital reporting tool that helps you to take back your time. In the past, I’ve talked about how automation is important. But now, the focus is on pushing past automation and focusing on digitization. Digitization takes automated processes throughout the dealership and allows them to communicate, with no extra work from you. For example, with automation, you could have your office manager run the daily reports you set up and then email them to you if you weren’t in the office. If you saw an issue, you could reply to her and she’d check out the problems. Beats snail mail, right?

But with digitization, you can log into your reporting tool on your phone, see issues, and email the appropriate manager yourself. This saves you and your office manager time and effort.

Here are three more examples of how digitized reporting can help you:

• All the information you need, in one place. With digitization, the information you need pulls directly to you, without any manual manipulation. Furthermore, it’s easy to read and there isn’t a need to mishmash different reports together. Need to see how much money you made on that Mustang trade-in last week? Set up automatic emails to arrive while you’re eating breakfast at home.
• Manage better. Instead of spending time focused on finding data, spend time using data to make better operational decisions. If you gave your highest-grossing F&I manager four of the deals your lowest-grossing F&I manager did last month, what would the impact be on your gross profit? Use a tool to help you easily see that potential in your store.
• Find your money faster. Use built-in note tracking to find out where money is getting held up. The increased focus on accountability will help make sure your employees are working as efficiently as possible. Use a tool with color-coded exceptions and pacing metrics to quickly see exactly where your money is.

Find a tool that gives you the ability to spend more time managing your staff and less time wasting time.

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