Tekion?

[apatrickb44]

Tekion is garbage. Don’t get it. It cuts down on efficiency in the service and parts departments.

 

[Dan Sayer]

Tekion is garbage. Don’t get it. It cuts down on efficiency in the service and parts departments.

Not sure I would agree @apatrickb44. If you've worked through growing pains with Tekion (I have at 7 stores), I can relate to the prior frustration, but they seem to move quick. Tekion watches this Forum so if you state your current issue, I would bet they'd reach out. Of course, the best route is to go through their support and account channels but if you need to state facts for your 'garbage' statement, do it here.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Not sure I would agree @apatrickb44. If you've worked through growing pains with Tekion (I have at 7 stores), I can relate to the prior frustration, but they seem to move quick. Tekion watches this Forum so if you state your current issue, I would bet they'd reach out. Of course, the best route is to go through their support and account channels but if you need to state facts for your 'garbage' statement, do it here.

When switching DMS software, you'll always have some employees more resistant to change than others...

 

[P@rt5Mgr]

Tekion is garbage. Don’t get it. It cuts down on efficiency in the service and parts departments.

Please explain what is garbage. We are looking at Tekion at my dealership and I want to know what questions I need to ask and where my focus should be. I cannot just say that someone thought it was garbage.

 

[P@rt5Mgr]

We switched all our stores from November through December. There were tears. Call me next week. PM me.

I'd like to know more. We are looking at Tekion next week. After the CDK hack, and nothing done on their end, we just want to look at our options.

 

[Dan Sayer]

I'd like to know more. We are looking at Tekion next week. After the CDK hack, and nothing done on their end, we just want to look at our options.

I messaged you. I think the best thing is to just speak with our parts and service managers.

 

[TScheer]

In our experience many of the installers did not communicate with each other nor did they seem supported. I recall one of them showing up with a Tekion embroidered shirt and the other installers asking how he got one. He just replied that he made it himself because he felt weird going into installs without something that said "Tekion" on it. They were all a little disillusioned, or it seemed to me. This was Nov/Dec 2022. The biggest issue, since we would be launching 7 locations, was they did not follow our instructions to set up all stores the same way. Sales desking, Op codes, service schedule, etc ended up being set up differently and installers seemed reluctant to communicate with other installers across town in other stores doing the installation at the same time. Most installers commented that ours was the first "enterprise" installation they had done. It was clear they were not wired for enterprise, just one or two store set-ups. Some of the installers had never worked in retail automotive, which is fine, but their lack of context made it frustrating in the way they set up some items, especially in a non-traditional store like ours.

I did have them pump the brakes on CRM. It was clear I was asking the sales team in the CRM demo questions that they had not had before. They DID come back a month later with updates to the system at my request, but it still was not enough as well as they were lacking that enterprise functionality. They had "I worked at a dealer" employees but clearly, they had not been in the CRM at their dealer nor really understood CRM for anything other than "log that customer and do the tasks". Before our installation, they pulled their digital retailing tool from the market. We weren't going for it regardless but if you can't figure out a DR tool in 2022, something is broken.

I'm rooting for them but with Ford EV now partnering with Salesforce I am sure we will have no choice but to use the CRM required by our OEMs. We already must keep one instance of XTime for Mazda and run all other service schedulers on Tekion.

@Dan Sayer , would love to chat with you about the challenges you've had. We're working with a couple other dealer groups who are on or who are migrating to Tekion to help them integrate the DMS, CRM, etc into data lakes and CDPs so there is a central data warehouse that then talks two-way with the DMS and other existing systems in the dealerships so that all of the rooftops are connected to a highly secure hub to give those groups control of 100% of their data. And yes, we are certainly talking enterprise systems here.

 

[TScheer]

I'd like to know more. We are looking at Tekion next week. After the CDK hack, and nothing done on their end, we just want to look at our options.

We're working with a couple dealership groups to help them with their Tekion implementation and integrating their other systems so all systems are talking to each other. If you'd like to chat about your thoughts and concerns, would be happy to have a call. And, no, we have no relationship with Tekion other than being able to help dealers implement the systems so they are effective.