Digital: the biggest trend in automotive retail. Everywhere you look, the conversation revolves around moving toward a digital process, connecting each area of the dealership. A big part of that transformation is documents.

Just about every dealership process includes documentation, but that doesn’t mean those documents have to be physical. In fact, I highly recommend they aren’t for three reasons – security, time, and damage. These reasons pose tremendous risks to your dealership. Here’s why.

Security

Despite concerns you might have about data breaches, it’s actually much safer to store and send files to vendors and customers in a digital format. Firewall protection and encryption allows you to improve the security of digital files.

By limiting access to only those who need it, you can have peace of mind. Physical files can’t make that same promise. If something happens to them, you might not even notice.

Not to mention, if you lose physical documents, you lose all the information they contain. Who knows where that sensitive information could land.

Time

Companies like Amazon set the standard for when consumers expect to be served. When they want something, they want it now. For those documents you have stored in the basement or off-site, how long would it take to find what you’re looking for? However long it is, it’s too long in the eyes of the consumer.

Think about the flip side – how physical documents affect your employees. With physical documents come filing, organizing, and searching. Employees spend 50% of their time searching for documents; on average, each one takes 18 minutes to locate[1].

Digital processes reduce the labor associated with paperwork, freeing up your employees to complete more valuable tasks and enhancing customers’ experiences.

Damage

You protect your personal assets – your home, your car, your family’s future. Why not do the same for your business?

Physical documents that go unprotected are open to the threat of being ruined, especially due to natural disasters – documents get torn, water damaged, or even burned in a fire. What happens when you need one of those documents? You could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in audit fines.

Moving toward digital documents is one of the many steps in making a digitized transformation. Connect data, people, and processes, and you will have a competitive advantage.

[1] Gartner

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