The next major dealership efficiency gains may not come from adding more people, but from using the people and technology dealers already have better. That was one of the key themes Greg Uland, VP of Marketing at Reynolds & Reynolds, heard from dealers at the company’s Amplify 2026 event. Uland joins us on today’s CBT Live segment to discuss productivity, AI, automated processes and the importance of execution inside today’s dealership.
Employee expenses and productivity were among the biggest concerns Uland heard from dealers at Amplify 2026. He said one dealer described employee costs rising 40% over five years without a matching increase in output, a gap that has pushed profit per employee into sharper focus. Uland said those conversations naturally led to AI, though he cautioned dealers against treating it as just another tool to add. Instead, he said dealers need to use technology to help their existing employees work more efficiently and get more value from the investment they have already made in their people.
Utilization was another major theme from the event, with Uland noting that the dealers pulling ahead of competitors are the ones fully using the technology and processes already available to them. He pointed to a Reynolds Performance Manager who worked with a New Mexico dealer to implement exception tracking in its service department, a move that lifted the store’s effective labor rate from $163 to $180 and generated nearly $200,000 in additional service gross profit. The example, he said, shows that operational gains don’t always require a major new investment. Better processes and more consistent execution can meaningfully improve profitability on their own.
Nevertheless, Uland highlighted AI’s expanding role across dealership operations, from automated accounting and fixed operations to CRM and used-vehicle inventory management. He said a session on automated deal posting, which eliminates manual work between F&I and accounting, drew some of the largest crowds at Amplify. He noted that some dealers are already relying on AI rather than employees to price used inventory. Uland called Rey, the company’s agentic AI assistant, one of the event’s biggest highlights, noting that it works from a single unified data layer rather than a patchwork of siloed AI agents. Still, he stressed that people remain central to dealership success. “It’s people, process and technology, in that order,” he said, adding that dealers need to deploy their strongest employees effectively, build career paths for them, and let technology make those employees more productive rather than replace them.
