DMS Select
Dealership Consulting
Cause and Effect
How we got here
By Tom Edwards
It all started as a simple concern in search of a solution.
Then it became a Problem.
As documents moved from paper to digital your staff began getting creative.
Instead of filing away paperwork in their desk drawers, they created folders on their desktop PCs. Dozens of PCs in your Dealership… Meant hundreds of folders in your Dealership. Then some of your employees began saving them online.
The logic was simple: If they could save their vacation photos on the Cloud, it would be easy to save factory bulletins there as well. (Stored between 2018 Colorado Vacation and Aunt Mary’s Wedding.)
As expected, dIfferent employees had different preferences. Some used Dropbox, others used Google Drive and it expanded from there… and just like that – Your Dealership’s documents were everywhere. (And of course, there were still a few tucked away in the desk drawers and desktops.)
The first step in creating a solution to unify all these different document collections was recognizing the problem. To design the solution, we need to understand the three key reasons your employees started storing documents on the Cloud.
Keep in mind that most employees were already used to archiving Closed RO’s, Invoices, Deals, and Reports. They just wanted to do the same thing with the rest of their world of digital documents.
The solutions weren’t perfect, but they were a solution.
Need to Share
Often, the first priority was the need to share. Service Managers had tech bulletins, Finance Managers had new lender guidelines and incentives that needed to be saved and shared. Some of these need to be restricted to managers, others needed to be available to all the employees in the department. (Unfortunately for many employees, the only way they could find a bulletin was to search their email.)
Must be Flexible
Flexibility is also important. New Vendor? No problem! Creating a new Vendor folder needed to be just as easy as creating one for Aunt Jessica’s wedding pics. (But finding the information at a later date became difficult as they started creating folders within folders.)
Accessible
As laptops and tablets became more common, saving documents so they were accessible at any time became important. Access from work, home, or literally anywhere they were working was required. In addition, accessible also meant sharing, searching, and reading documents from their PC, tablet, or mobile device. (This highlighted the weaknesses of a number of solutions.)
So these are the three key needs your employees valued.
- Shareable
- Flexible
- Accessible
But are these three really enough for a business?
Read the next Post: Built for Business
Built 4 Business
Finding a Solution that Works for Everyone
Our last post, Cause and Effect, covered the 3 Key needs your staff has for storing and sharing documents.
If you recall they were:
- Shareable
- Flexible
- Accessible
But the question is: Are these solutions good enough for your business? Are your employees considering…
- Security
- Versioning
- SOC 2 Compliance
Let’s explore these.
Security
Based on the number of times a week we all grant “cookie” access on our phones, and tablets, Security really doesn’t get high marks for personal use, but it’s critical for business.
Not only is there a place for everything, but SP4Dlrs.com also maximizes the special way SharePoint manages documents and reports.
Versioning
Saving a new version isn’t something that happens with birthday party photos, but it’s a must-have when a revised copy of an RO or Deal is saved. Tied closely to Versioning is Retention. Retention comes into play when considering “what should happen to the original document?” Retention is predetermined so that decision happens automatically.
SOC2
While you may not be completely familiar with the term SOC 2 your CPA is.
SOC 2 covers access control, document recovery, encryption, and a host of other compliance issues that may not be necessary for personal use, but critical for business continuity.
There is one solution that most haven’t even considered:
Microsoft’s SharePoint Online
Its ability to organize is unmatched, and it provides the features that are critical for both business and personal use.
Unfortunately, to get started, it looks a lot like a giant box of Legos. It has all the potential in the world, but for a dealership, its implementation would require months of planning, development, and testing.
Fortunately, SharePoint 4 Dealers (SP4Dlrs.com) changes that. It comes pre-built and ready to install and can work for virtually any dealership.
Not only is there a place for everything, but SP4Dlrs also maximizes the special way SharePoint manages documents and reports. Microsoft calls these Team Sites. You can think of a Team site as a Departmental Site.
This means that there is not only a place to archive Month End Reports, and Closed Documents like Deals, RO’s and Invoices, there is also a place where the Service Manager can store and share tech bulletins: a Sales Manager can share OEM announcements and stock reports, and a Parts Manager can save their annual inventory. It’s also a site where the Finance Manager can organize lender programs and incentives.
Surprisingly, it’s typically less money than many legacy archiving systems. And much simpler to manage than the current mixed state of document storage methods.
Interested? Visit the site, watch the videos, and let us know what you think.