PR & News Solera to Acquire DealerSocket and Omnitracs

[Jeff Kershner]

Somehow I missed this news last week.

DealerSocket will be acquired by Solera, Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter pending approval.

Solera also plans to acquire Omnitracs, a fleet management software.

All three companies are portfolio companies of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. Vista bought a stake in DealerSocket in 2014, and Omnitracs in 2013, while a separate Vista fund took Solera private in 2016.

Last year, DealerSocket acquired franchised DMS provider Auto/Mate for an undisclosed price. The combined companies have more than 9,000 dealership customers.

Solera to Acquire Omnitracs and DealerSocket​

Full Press Release

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Updated: Massive layoffs hit Omnitracs and DealerSocket​

Source says up to 35% of workforce being let go by parent company Solera​

Updated: Massive layoffs hit Omnitracs and DealerSocket

A source says up to 35% of the workforce is being let go by parent company Solera in a massive restructuring plan to relocate positions to India.

www.freightwaves.com

 

[BillVaughnKMC]

...to India. Shocking.

 

[ChrisR]

I remember being on the vendor side, having a dev team in the Ukraine, and another in India. At one point, the page load times were growing so fast, along with CPU usage. Turns out the India team decided that when they needed to query the database for an inventory count, as an example, it would send a fresh inquiry. Even if the page had multiple, identical, queries on the page.

Outsourcing can be cheaper, until you have to pay others to reverse engineer issues, and fix them.

Good luck Solera.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

...to India. Shocking.

Yes, SHOCKING.

 

[jon.berna]

wow, no words

 

[Ryan Everson]

...to India. Shocking.

Seems like the beginning of a slow death sentence for Dealer Socket.

They're going to struggle to attract new dealer clients because dealers are emotional and like to know their "program is built by car guys." And existing dealer clients will get fed up with support.

Dealer Socket's only saving grace is the fact that it's a PITA to switch CRM's and retrain staff on a new system.

 

[BillVaughnKMC]

Seems like the beginning of a slow death sentence for Dealer Socket.

They're going to struggle to attract new dealer clients because dealers are emotional and like to know their "program is built by car guys." And existing dealer clients will get fed up with support.

Dealer Socket's only saving grace is the fact that it's a PITA to switch CRM's and retrain staff on a new system.

And their support was actually really good IMO.

 

[john.quinn]

Acquisitions are the death of innovation. "Strategic realignment..." blah blah blah bullshit. And they are just BRUTAL on the employees. At least the end came quick for some of these peeps... they don't know it today, but better to get cut quick than linger in purgatory year after year.

It's not rocket science... when your focus becomes solving problems on the Balance Sheet vs solving the problems that created the Balance Sheet, you're toast.

I can hear the execs at Solara now: "Quick wins... we need quick wins..."

 

[Marie Tucker]

Acquisitions are the death of innovation. "Strategic realignment..." blah blah blah bullshit. And they are just BRUTAL on the employees. At least the end came quick for some of these peeps... they don't know it today, but better to get cut quick than linger in purgatory year after year.

It's not rocket science... when your focus becomes solving problems on the Balance Sheet vs solving the problems that created the Balance Sheet, you're toast.

I can hear the execs at Solara now: "Quick wins... we need quick wins..."

We made the hUUGe mistake of signing up 3 Elway Powersports dealerships with Dealer Socket last fall after this "quick win" for Solara. They flat out LIED to us about integration with our DMS! The launch was awful, the build team had not completed ANY of the backend set up that we spent hours reviewing prior to launch. Six months later, they sent us a bill for the "training" day, that was included in our contract. It is hands down the worst vendor experience we've had to date.