How to Run a Heart Healthy Dealership

How healthy is your heart? Not your physical one; but the heart of your dealership – the business office?

You might not know the answer, but asking that question about yourself can tell you how important it is. You might think to yourself, “It’s healthy because I exercise and eat healthy” or “It could be better… I should do something about that,” because the things you do have a direct impact on its’ health.

Your business office is the same way. The processes that every other department have will directly impact the health of your business office.

One of the biggest clogs? Paper.

Paper is the junk food of the dealership – it might feel comforting, but it slows you down and can clog up your processes.

This summer, focus on your business’ heart health (and maybe your physical heart health too)! Here is how you can unclog processes throughout your dealership to run a heart healthy business.

Variable Operations

Let’s face it, saying the words “paper deal jacket” might make a few accounting personnel wince. It’s a lot of paper, and it’s a huge clog.

In the accounting office, a paper deal jacket requires changing multiple hands, manually inputting information, going back and forth with F&I to understand variations, handling missed signatures, and then storing the mountain of paper. All of these pieces turn a paper deal jacket into a burden.

Then, once stored, it only adds more wasted time to find the deal later down the road. And after finding it, a day or two may have passed, leaving a potentially sour taste in a customer’s mouth when they needed it.

Digitizing the deal jacket transforms every step of the process that was cumbersome. When the deal jacket is stored electronically, the business office doesn’t have to worry about spending hours sifting through banker boxes worth of paper to find a deal; they can do it in minutes.

Additionally, when you have a tool that digitizes the F&I experience, the deal jacket is automatically stored in your system, electronically sends to the business office, and allows the deal to be worked on simultaneously. Paper deal jackets are a thing of the past, and your processes are simplified and efficient.

Fixed Operations

Service RO’s and invoices are another clog for the business office. Once all these documents are compiled, they are once again physically stored somewhere. If a customer ever requests a copy of his invoice, it requires your employees to locate it, scan it, send it off to the customer, and then re-file it. Hours and hours of time are wasted!

Then, to make things more inefficient, your staff has to take another trip to the storage room for invoice reconciliation. What can be a fairly quick task becomes hours and hours of hunting down documents.

When these can be stored electronically, the business office can get back to the job they are paid to do. Finding an invoice for a customer takes a matter of minutes, and it can be emailed from the system. Reconciling invoices becomes stress-free. Your employees can quickly and easily reconcile from the system, drill into invoices or other documents to get the information they need, and drastically cut down the time it all takes.

Conclusion

When you digitize your processes in variable and fixed operations, document retrieval is a breeze, reconciliation takes less time, and deal posting is fast and easy. All of these lead to a happier, more efficient business office, and a leaner, healthier dealership.

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