Dear Dealer Partner,
It goes without saying, the automotive industry is certainly feeling the impact of the current push by CDK in their campaign to monetize your data as a whole. What needs to be celebrated and shared is the continued support from Dealers and the obvious pressure this is placing on CDK senior management. Not a day goes by that I do not hear about a CDK sponsored focus group or super user meeting that took place. In these meetings, dealers such as yourself are asking the hard questions about CDK's current tactics and then challenging the scripted answers you receive often times from the most senior of CDK's management team. The message to CDK is clear, these repressive actions carry with them a real cost, a cost measured in credibility, customer satisfaction and in the long run a real risk to CDK's market share. We are having an impact! This impact is measurable as we have seen a reduction in new dealerships being added to the list of profile disruptions. We also can report that steadfast Dealers are having success in getting CDK to stop the blocking of their profiles.
I personally want to take a moment and thank you all for your continued loyalty. Your assistance in recreating profiles is also a huge help in our mission to keep the data flowing. Your support has allowed us to focus our efforts where they need to be at this time, which is addressing the proverbial line in the sand- the December 31st deadline.
This line has been drawn with much drama and continued fanfare. Everyone wants answers and to that I can report we have made significant progress on multiple technology solutions. These solutions are currently deployed in select dealerships for beta testing and user feedback. As we have said before, we are confident we have a technology solution to these anti-competitive blocking actions. The challenge continues to be how we deploy the solution across thousands of dealerships in the most efficient fashion. We anticipate having a more substantial update based on current development and testing activities by end of the month. Please stayed tuned.
In the meantime, we want to take this opportunity to release the second video we created regarding CDK's anti-competitive behavior. I believe this video will help continue to build awareness around what CDK's current course of action really means to dealerships and most importantly the automotive industry as a whole. I have had many conversations with dealership principals asking what they can do, I address this within the video as well.
Click to view video.
As always, I welcome your calls, emails, and even smoke signals. Our motto is as true now as it was when we first started in 2002, we can only grow our business by helping you grow yours first. At Authenticom, we are all committed to the growth and protection of this great industry and providing real security from any and all threats.
All my very best,
Steve Cottrell
CEO & President, Authenticom, Inc.
