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Which CRM are you using?

We have an interesting situation. After 25+ years with a Reynolds DMS we are changing over to ADP because of various reasons that some on this forum may already know. With that being said we are also changing our CRM from Reynolds to ADP's CRM . It's going to be very "interesting". One of my challenges is not being able to find one person who is using ADP's CRM and is head over heals about it. I think their system will do ok for showroom traffic but the ILM portion is going to be "interesting". Their partnership with BZ's buzztrak could be an interesting ad but it still does not integrate fully with the system when you talk about pushing and pulling based on their explanations.

P.S.-I do have other strong feelings about this that I may voice latter but I don't want to have to eat my words...So for the time being I am using words like "interesting" and "challenging".
 
Alex - I am happy to help you with your ADP CRM questions. We were on it, and you can make it work, but you are definitely going to need help from someone outside ADP. Those ADP CRM trainers will confuse you more than help you.

Start looking for an ILM tool now. ADP CRM will not handle your Internet leads consistently. Also keep in mind they have no way to monitor whether your emails are being blocked by spam blockers.

I already feel your pain :shakehd:
 
Alex - I may have to take you up on that because I have already had specific questions that it seems like I won't have answers until we are live...Even simple stuff!

For example:
-Do you have to designate someone to manually send out all emails for the dealership? It doesn't seem to make sense that you cannot setup automated schedules in their CRM other than one sales autoresponse.

-Can you setup a text notification to go to all salespeople on your internet team so the first person that "grabs" the lead get's assigned the lead?

-Can you control the times that Automated emails go out on your schedules?

-If someone walked in the dealership 8 months ago and they haven't been contacted by a floor sales person...when the "new" internet lead comes in does it automatically get assigned to this salesperson or can you define rules of a "non-active" prospect?

My questions go on and on but it's obvious to me I will have to see for myself.
I will have both of my sites converted over to Dealer.com soon so lead machine may be an option. The only challenge is it only pushes to the CRM. Also, there is the issue of staff learning two platforms like you commented about.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
 
1. Do you have to designate someone to manually send out all emails for the dealership? It doesn't seem to make sense that you cannot setup automated schedules in their CRM other than one sales autoresponse.
2. Can you setup a text notification to go to all salespeople on your internet team so the first person that "grabs" the lead get's assigned the lead?
3. Can you control the times that Automated emails go out on your schedules?
4. If someone walked in the dealership 8 months ago and they haven't been contacted by a floor sales person...when the "new" internet lead comes in does it automatically get assigned to this salesperson or can you define rules of a "non-active" prospect?


1. Like when you do a print-run on the postal letters? Not 100% sure because we never sent a single email out of ADP CRM. They didn't have any spam control and they also couldn't work with our Active Directory - they wanted to use our corporate email addresses (@checkeredflag.com) which is never a good idea with a CRM company. So, we continued using our trusty old ILM for the Internet Department & email campaigning and let sales people email customers as they liked through their own corporate account. Back then, they weren't sending much. But I do seem to recall something about email checking from the demo - my thought then was: that's a little Joseph Stalin-ish.....are dealers really that paranoid to request such a feature?

2. :lol: that's a joke right? Did you forget which company we're talking about? They couldn't even get email right.

3. Not sure about how well it works with automated email, but this is the absolute best thing about ADP and I have yet to see another CRM vendor get this right yet: Campaign Manager. If I were you Alex, I would learn how Campaign Manager works as soon as possible because this is where you can overcome the problems with ADP CRM. Nowhere can you get so targeted with your database and be able to do a lot of different things with it. Once you get in there I think you'll start to realize the possibilities.

4. ADP did not have duplicate lead checking of any sort when we were on. They launched an ADP ID system that was supposed to fix all of that, but we left shortly therearter and I didn't get to see whether it really worked or not. You can ask Peg at iMagicLab what she thinks of dealer database imports from dealers who came from a CRM with no duplicate lead checking....I'm sorry Peg....thanks again for all your help getting through that mess :bow:

I think I've done enough ADP bashing in this thread. They still service our DMS and a few other products, but we just had a terrible time on the CRM. If you could fumble it, they did. They certainly tried to get it right for us, but they just couldn't move fast enough. There is definitely some blame on our end as well, but at the end of the day we're much happier now. We have times with our current CRM providers where we take 1 step back, but when it is fixed we end up taking 2 steps forward. With ADP CRM it was just the opposite.

Want to give this one its own thread Alex?
 
We had a mega-dealer in our office recently that sells over 1,000 cars a month. I always find it interesting to talk to dealers and find out they are using like 3 or 4 CRM programs because they can't find a single one that will do everything they need from showroom, desking, Internet and their service department.
 
We have been using DealerMine for over a year now and it's Great! We don't have a bad thing to say about it. The best thing is that there is a full service side to the program, which we found a lot of others lack. They are a smaller company and therefore can reeally individualize the product to fit your store.
 
VENDORS DO NOT CALL ME...THIS IS NOT THE OPPORTUNITY TO "MAKE A SALE"

Here are some things to consider about the "ALL-NEW" improved ADP CRM system. I will try to give an unbiased (fact-based) review, based on my 3 week experience.

We started with ADP's CRM about 3 weeks ago (July 17th) and so far I have been less than impressed. I have to say that the salespeople are the best thing about ADP CRM because boy did they SELL us. They spoke about the positives and deflected the negatives or things they truly did not know the answer to.

Here are some things that I am not enthused about: (There are more but I don't have time to write them all).


  • No access CRM access from your home computer unless you have a VPN setup (This has been a huge pain) They also have no mobile solution to counter this issue.
  • After 3 1/2 weeks the data (notes, customer information, etc) has still not transferred over. I'm still waiting on the "smooth" transition in terms of integration. This is one of the things they sold us on "SEEMLESS INTEGRATION"...However, it has been a absolute nightmare. :mad:
  • The system does not have an "out of office setting" You have to manually change the salesperson lead distribution every time someone takes a day off if you don't want them receiving leads. (Alex your right - their system doesn't effectively handle internet leads...one of their support people actually admitted it. I had him cornered off)
  • System only works in Internet Explorer which cuts out Mac users
  • The system cannot send notifications to more than 1 person at a time
  • Cannot forward emails from the system to your mobile device.
  • You have to manually send out ALL emails. You cannot setup fully automated schedules.
  • You must create individual jpg images in a photo editing program for your sales peoples signatures. (This just doesn't make any sense)
  • The templates have very little functionality and don't work properly. ex...If you put a merge field in for (assigned salesperson) when it gets generated it will show last name, first in the actual email that goes out. Also, no merge fields in subject lines of email templates.
  • The notifications don't work properly. I have had a ticket open on this for two weeks. I call everyday and they tell me they are "working on it".
  • Leads come in unassigned all the time which means if someone doesn't manually assign them they just sit there
  • When a lead is reassigned to a new salesperson, no notification goes out to the new person.
  • When unassigned leads come in, only one person can be notified.
  • Must jump back and forth between multiple two/three screens with-in the system to effectively manage contacts (Very cumbersome system)
  • Reporting is suspect but I'm still learning
  • Cannot change source after a vehicle is sold. (There are cases where salesperson does not put in correct source or no source at all)
They also seem to come out with meaningless "upgrades" that take 3 to 4 months to come out. The support staff seems to be very polite but there are only a few that really know there stuff. The others put you on hold - translation (They go ask one of those few people the answer).

In short - ADP CRM has a long way to go to catch up to what I am hearing other CRM vendors in the market "SAY" they can do. Well, come to think of it ADP sales reps claimed they could do a lot of these things and either they cannot or no one there knows how....sorry for the run on sentence but that's what happens when you VENT!:cursin:

Time to get back to work to figure out more WORK AROUNDS!