Integration? What's that and what do I do with it? What about my DMS?

[umer.autojini]

Alex excellent post... Check out, Open Secure Access and Join... as it is designed to address these issues... http://www.opensecureaccess.com/ and concerns that Joe raised about security.

Integration certification is very expensive. Large chunk at start and then good sum monthly. I would share more but NDA... I hate NDA's on pricing. Worse are NDA's on a CSV file formats... oh come on.

As a developer, I have found integration to be less of issue then Data that I need to integrate for.

@Ronald we been proving RSS feeds since 2006 for all dealer inventory... example http://www.vcsmotorcars.com/en/view_inventory.cfm but the subscription rate is minimum. I don't even think any dealer has reached over 10 subscribers. Main reason is likely us not educating the visitor on this feature.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Joe - I guess you missed my last sentence of the article (the one in italics). Are you an IT Nazi or do you work for a DMS? ....I so love these anonymous posters.

Umer - great link. I will be checking into that some more. Thanks!

 

[Jennifer Schrader (blog)]

Great post! Many here know I am a website vendor and get asked many questions on a daily basis from dealers on this "Topic".

It comes down to knowing the products you sell and if it works or should I say INTEGRATE properly.

What I have done in the past is actually pick up the phone and contact "Rey Rey, Arkona, ADP etc etc" and even to the point of calling "HomeNet, etc" to ask those specific questions so I am prepared with the accurate and correct answers.

There is my 2 cents Alex and Jeff!

Back in the Dealership days, the ongoing frustrations on a day to day basis, as all dealers have encountered with being fooled with the "Oh yeah!! NO problem we can integrate it" line drove me nuts. I swear I digested a full bottle of Exedrin Tension Headache everyday!

 

[Justin Duff]

We also provide dealers with RSS feeds for both new and pre-owned inventory. It is a less used feature but I can see it becoming more and more popular as customers learn about this tool.

Top right corner of the inventory search area you'll see links to view the feed as RSS.

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audiporsche.sunmotorcars.com

 

[Matt Watson (blog)]

I'm not an expert on Arkona, but I do know they do major quarterly releases of their software and they are heavily investing in improving the technology. I would recommend that anyone at least take a look at them and Auto/Mate if you are considering a new DMS.

 

[Anthony Stanley]

Alex- Kudos to you for your google usage to look up such a big word that we are all so fimilar with, but I guess we could have all been snowed by the various sales people that come in to our places of business as tell us their product is going to revolutionize the way we do business or atleast the process of how we conduct it.

Jeff- You caught me one the perfect day!

Intergration, where do I start. Currently my store is working in two fairly major projects, both of which are to integrate on make my job easier. Neither of wich has happened yet. The common denomator in is both applications, is neither side will accept responsiblility for any gliches. The first is trying to get our online inventory host to properly post the right photos of different trim levels and colors of the cars that the VIN coraspondences with.
The other is ADP WebCRM and NetTrak trying to finally share information between systems. I have come to realize that ADP is a company that builds a product, launches it and then reacts to its faults. They always seem to miss part of the puzzle. Then it takes them several weeks to write a new scripts to fix them. As for NetTrak (or Buzztrak) whichever you prefer to call it. They seem to have their shit together in most cases. My store is the first store in my dealer group to go through the integration between these two products. NetTrak is suppose to push any new ileads to CRM and compare it against any current customers and leads in the data base. It will report back to BZ if the customer already as a history record, by marking it duplicate or invalid, but webCRM never notifys the currently assigned sales person of the new request. So how are we suppose to respond to this customer, if no one knows there is a lead? ADP is only suppose to report "Status Changes" i.e. duplicate,LOST SALE, SOLD or DELIVERED. What I am seeing is that more information is reporting back to NetTrak, but it is only a generic note. It doesn't actually diplay any information of value, nor does NetTrak send any information the WebCRM after the intial response. Isn't that really what would make most sense. If an ilead is worked in BZ that all the notes, tasks and calls be integrated to CRM too. That would make far too much sense, who wants to have to cheap track of two seperate systems to sell one customer? After all how many desk managers actually need the notes in NetTrak and/or in WebCRM?
I most of the features that ADP provides, it's a great "jack of all trades", but it is a master of none of them. BZ on the other hand is a great ILM, in comparsion to Autobase, AVV, or ADP WebCRM. Why did they ever sale out to ADP? It appears that ADP (the evil Empire) has given different departments each a section of this project to work on, however no one at either oraganization that I have spoken to seems to no all of the answers. I spoke with someone how seemed to be pretty we wired in a BZ and he claimed the irregularities I was producing were not suppose to work. I sent him screen shots and corasponding data to support my case. His answer was I didn't know the integration would do that. Maybe next time they make me the Guinea Pig, they will compensate me for my time and troubleshooting skills. Or possibly I will net fund them my consultation fee on our monthly bill. They seem to lop all of their service together and slide in other new programs and fees in on us too.
Or maybe the online Credit application they offered to sell me that integrates with WebCRM and DealerTrack. Prehaps if the sales rep had bothered to look at our website, he would have seen that we already subscribed to a more efficient product that actually cost less per month. And it actually pulls the credit for me too. So I don't even have to take it to another salesmanager or F&I person to get an answer. Isn't integration about saving time and money? So at that time I told the rep I wasn't interested in any additional ADP servies or resources to do his lack of knowledge of my business and their lack of proper preparation before launching an new products. So in short I will not be adding anymore integration to our process, unless something here breaks.

 

[Henry Merry]

The Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR) group started several years ago with the goal of creating an open standard so OEMs, dealers, and Retail System Providers (DMS, CRM, websites) could all talk to one another in the same language.

STAR is ADF (Auto-Lead Format)on steroids. Whereas ADF is a standard for internet leads, STAR handles lots more data about customers, vehicles, service, parts, and more.

Many OEMs, dealers, and RSPs are already on board. Unfortunately, not everyone does it well, either due to a lack of resources (time, money, skill) or a desire to maintain control over some piece of the process.

Reynolds & Reynolds is an example of the former. Reynolds Certified Interface (RCI) is the official STAR-compliant non-hostile interface (they don't use the word integration) for third party vendors. Even Reynolds Contact Management uses RCI to interface with the Rey Rey DMS. Ironically(?), Rey Rey recently 'upgraded' RCI and, in the process, broke some of the the interface. Even Contact Management can't correctly interface with the DMS. Estimated date this will be corrected - unknown.

So as you ask about interfaces, ask if the How follows the STAR standard.

For more info, check out these links:

STAR website

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starstandard.org

The Open Road for Information Technology White Paper - 9 page overview

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www.starstandard.org

Dealership Infrastructure Guidelines - 220 pages of technical stuff but browse the table of contents to get an idea of the scope

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www.starstandard.org

 

[Bob]

Alex,
I used to work on the DMS Side. SO from that perspective, I have many experiences of thrid party vendors to the DMS that so called "integrated" their solution to the DMS.
SOme of these experiences are thrid party vendors pushing data into the DMS, and the data overriding other data.
When the dealership calls the DMS provider to find out why the DMS company did this, the DMS company has to research who did what and when. When the DMS company finally figures out a third party vendor did this, they politely tell the dealer that it was not them, nd they will need to place the last backup tape in and have to manually reload from that date. Can you imagine the screaming the dealer does at the DMS provider at this point, and because the third party vendor screwed up, and yet the third party vendor has no way fo fixing the problem.

There are multiple reasons why a DMS vendor wants to have a "certified" process in place with a third party vendor.

The first is because of the above situation. If the third party vendor was certifed to the DMS, then all three parties (DMS, third party vendor, and dealership) know exactly what data is supposed to go where and when. When either support center is contacted, then each vendor knows exactly what the "integration" paths are. How would a retailer ask a DMS provider how to fix a third party integration issue if the DMS provider had no idea what was going on in the first place?

The second issue is about data security. Current law makes dealerships look like "banks" and with that designation, there are laws (federal) that need to be followed.

A great story of this, is one time a retailer "challenged" me and the company about this "data security" issue when the topic was "white hot" in the marketplace (about 3 years ago).
In my own way, I challenged them back. I asked the dealer and the CFO to provide me with the list of authorized companies who they had provided access to the modem line and therefore access to the data. I also asked them what specific data each of these companies had access to. I never received a
response as to what the companies had asked to, just the list of vendor names. The list contained 34 vendors names.
I told them that we (the DMS company)would monitor their system for 30 days and provide back to them all of the names of the vendors that accessed their system, how many times they accessed the system, and what data they took on each occasion. The list we provided back to them was 119, with most accessing the system daily, some weekly. Some vendors, were taking whole sales files to do some type of reporting, and yes those files contained social security numbers etc.....

Needless to say, the dealer was astounded, and stated that they had stopped doing business with the majority of those vendors quite a few years ago. The dealer finally caught on that these third party vendors were still accessing his data, and most probably selling their customers data.
Having said that, the DMS provider is jsut as legally liable for letting this happen as is the dealer (remember the bank designation I discussed earlier?) Ultimately, the DMS provider has more risk due to their size than a typical dealership. The lawyers would make a killing with this issue.

So, in the end, the DMS providers may not be the easiest to do business with from an integration viewpoint, but the third party providers may not have the financial backing to support the integration costs/support, and do not have the legal exposure.

Hope this helps in understanding this overall issue somewhat!

 

[Aimsmith]

Anthony: Let your bosses know that what they are doing with these two database programs is going NOWHERE! This is not he way to manage your data by using overlapping systems. ONE database only!

My qualifications here include 3 plus years in the automotive business and over 20 years as a database system analyst, developer and publisher. I have spent many hours analyzing BZ Results and WebCRM... you need a LEAD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. On scale of 1 to 10 they are both 4.5 or so...

Tip: Concentrate on LEADS...When the lead walks on the lot pass it off to another system.

But it all starts with Process Workflow Management. Who is your Honda Facilitator?

Randy

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Bob - thank you for presenting the other side. It is a very valid side in the legal-world we live in. I can only go off of my own experience, and that is a very protected DMS. I hear from all of our vendors that we're a little too overprotective. That leads me to believe there are a lot of dealers out there who are probably a little too liberal with whom they grant access.

On the other side of the coin, the sharing of data is imperative to the future. If the DMS companies make it difficult to share that data, then they will eventually be taken down as new DMS companies arise to fill the gap - good old capitalism!

Outside of the DMS realm, many companies easily (and without charge) partner with other companies for data sharing. It is fairly regular practice outside of the DMS realm.

Eventually the DMS realm is not going to be valued as highly as it is. The days of the DMS being the center of the universe are drawing to a close. As more technologies are written for Fixed Operations and accounting/F&I the DMS will simply become data storage. These monstrous contracts current DMS companies enjoy will melt.

I think they know this too. That is why they're rapidly working to build or buy CRM solutions, inventory solutions, site hosting platforms, and other things that work toward marketing instead of database security.