How are the outages at CDK Global affecting F&I teams? We are now joined by Cory Collins, Speaker and National F&I Trainer for Automotive Reinsurance Concepts, to tell us what he’s seeing.
Takeaways:
- Corey Collins emphasizes the importance of being proactive rather than reactive when dealing with CDK outages. He shares an example of Jerry Hunt Supercenter, which quickly adapted by leveraging a prior relationship with ProMax to continue business operations. This approach enabled them to maintain sales momentum, selling 150 cars despite the outage. The dealership’s quick thinking and resilience highlight the necessity of having contingency plans and the ability to pivot swiftly in the face of technological disruptions.
- F&I teams had to resort to manual entry and alternate systems to manage without their usual DMS. At Jerry Hunt Supercenter, deals were loaded into ProMax and manually entered into Darwin to create menus, with plans to transfer data back to CDK once restored. This situation underscores the importance of maintaining relationships with multiple vendors and being prepared to implement manual processes temporarily to keep operations running. Scanning deals with a PDF program for later transfer to CDK was another proactive measure to streamline the transition back to normal operations.
- Collins stresses the critical need to keep customer service at the forefront during such outages. Ensuring that deals are processed and funded efficiently is vital to maintaining customer satisfaction and trust. Additionally, he points out that this incident serves as a wake-up call for vendors to bolster their cybersecurity measures to protect dealership operations and customer data. The industry-wide impact of the CDK outage highlights the necessity for all vendors to have robust security protocols to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Check out our full coverage of the CDK cyberattack here.
"When an F&I manager walks into the office, a sales rep quickly appears seeking information about a deal from the previous night. It's understandable to get frustrated in that situation, but remember that reactions can impact others' perceptions." – Corey Colins
