Rapid Recon - Anyone use it? Hear of it?

[flosho]

Rapid Recon


Got an email about this. Looks very interesting, especially since it could help the dealership I work at. Just curious if any of the DR folks are using or have heard of this software?


Also I wasn't exactly sure where to put this post so feel free to move it.

 

[Jarrett]

I have not heard of this tool. I have seen others with similar objectives, also most inventory management tools are attempting to bring this concept into their suite.

In 2007 we had been using an excel sheet to keep most of this information updated. I think many dealership employees are comfortable with excel and for some things it works well, however it is limited to one desktop. Sure you can map shared network drives, and try to not have access ownership issues but it is not sufficient.

We found the Desk Managers needed access to this information more often than anyone. The concept of how quickly can this vehicle be ready for the line is very important, and should be focused on. However we are all selling out of our inventory before it hits the line (in certain cases). Granted you must have the vehicle smogged and safetied prior to retail sales.

So to get the Desk Manager access to where and at what stage the inventoried item was currently in we moved the data from excel to our CRM tool. Seemed appropriate. Below is the screen shot.

Since then we have made sales we may not have otherwise as we are able to see if a unit is sell-able. Did the software lower our days in recon? It is hard to say that it did, but if we wanted to focus on seriously lowering our days in recon we would have reporting and analytics in place to do so.

 

[ArtMorris]

I heard about this when one of my GMs sent me the link, it looks like the in-house system I built but with a bit more polish.

We have found that by using this to keep track of our used cars we have fewer problems with vehicles slipping through the cracks. If a car is waiting on parts the used car manager will know this without talking to recon. If a sublet vendor is taking too long, we know.

Our in-house system keeps track of how much time is spent in each of the mechanical / recon / sublet phases.

Just like Jarrett we had been using shared spreadsheets, but this web-based system has some distinct advantages.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Are there any systems that can tie into the DMS rather then waiting for a human to hit the next button? I'd love to help the used car manager who pens it out by hand every other day.

 

[ggarvin]

With so much attention on turn rate and pricing vehicles, the amount of time that some dealerships take to get inventory recon'd is crazy. You could/should be able to manage the vehicles through the chain better... while this takes some human interaction and a process is one of the best things you can do... any tool seems like it would be well worth some investment to help you shave time in this area.

 

[andwrig]

I'm with Mitch in that it would be great to use DMS data, such as the vehicle "status code", to power this type of system. We also use an in house spreadsheet to track this via query builder using status code. The product is intriguing but having another system to log into is daunting.