Tell me an industry that has more data than Automotive retail….. I can’t think of any. Whether it be via new or used vehicle sales or vehicle servicing, a modern-day dealership reaches thousands of customers per month. Multiplied across the industry, it is likely that majority of the Australian population interacts with a car dealership at least once per year.

But what makes the data captured by dealerships even more interesting is the quality and depth of its data. To service, sell, register, finance, insure, trade-in, repair and market an expensive item like a car, a dealership must get varied, detailed and accurate data from its customers.

This trove of useful data and their high revenues are the primary reasons why they are increasingly being targeted by hackers and criminals. https://www.autonews.com/finance-insurance/retailers-prime-targets-data-theft. It’s a bit sad that hackers are extracting more data from dealers than the dealers themselves!

But why is this?

The primary reason is because most dealerships data isn’t centralised and worse still, isn’t interconnected. The Payrol system doesn’t talk to the DMS, the DMS doesn’t interact with the prospecting system, the prospecting system doesn’t relate with the OEM, the OEM doesn’t communicate with the finance company, the test drive app doesn’t talk to the document storage solutions etc.

To make matters worse, a lot of these stakeholders discourage the free movement of data between systems and therefore create these disparate data siloes. They believe THEY own a dealers data. When they do allow data connections, they often have a short-term focus on high fee’s, which discourages new entrants and innovation.  

DMS providers are unlikely to change their business model anytime soon, so dealers will have to start taking back their data….. And then use it.

Excel SalesLogs are an excellent way of tracking your sales performance of individuals but also of the overall team and their common target. They are also commonly used to plan deliveries and act as a source of truth for many dealership sales departments.

Despite, all the data being available in a DMS, dealerships still create custom spreadsheets to measure, compare and track their daily, weekly and monthly sales performance. Does it matter?

For a number of reasons, it doesn’t make sense for dealerships to persist with siloed spreadsheets. Ideally, a Dealer Management System should have a detailed and flexible sales log that just represents the data already inputted into a format that Dealers want. This is obviously not happening, or they wouldn’t be going to the effort to create complex spreadsheets.

Stop using spreadsheets!

They are inefficient. Your sales team has already entered in the data, whether it be the sales contract or other means, it is a waste of everyone’s time to re-enter the data just to produce a report that should be automatic.

If you add up all the hours these spreadsheets cost in inputting and maintenance, is the data that is extracted really that important?

They are not secure. Because spreadsheets have the flexibility of macros imbedded into their code architecture, they can be easily customised and automated to complete tasks. This is fantastic, but it is also a security risk. Hackers, frequently target business computer users with phishing emails which often have word and excel documents attached, which then have macros programmed to exploit a companies IT infrastructure. The best way of combating this is to have a network policy of preventing macros on all devices, however this can prevent many useful spreadsheets from operating.

In addition, these spreadsheets are often full of useful data and customer information which in the wrong hands could become a target of ransomware.   

The data is siloed. By having a dedicated spreadsheet for sales performance and delivery information, this data often sits in the spreadsheet never to be referenced or cross joined to other useful data. For example. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could compare and combine your sales delivery performance with your finance performance? Or easily understand which customers have a finance application pending? Or, measure the total income generated by your salesperson including aftermarket, finance and vehicle gross?

They are not historical. Often, SalesLogs are workbooks with tabs setup for individual branches or months. By having this data housed within individual spreadsheets, it is very difficult to compare that data to previous years or even months. 

Ditching the spreadsheet could be the best decision you make this year.