Are your salesmen and technicians spending more time fighting with your technology than selling and repairing cars? With your tight margins, can you afford to have your team’s productivity hindered due to technology issues? Let’s look at how managed IT allows your team to focus on closing deals and not the technology you use to do so.
How Managed IT Benefits Car Dealerships
It should come as no surprise that most of the time, the focus of a car dealership is toward the ‘front of the house. After all, that’s where the resources that drive the profitability the business needs come from. However, like most businesses, car dealerships rely on the support they receive from behind the scenes.
First, what is managed IT, when compared to traditional computer technical support?
Much like a car, if something goes wrong with your technology, you typically need to call someone to fix it. However, if you do your routine maintenance, the odds of something surprising you are much lower. Computers, servers, and network infrastructure work the same way. The only big difference is we can manage and monitor your IT in real-time, at all times. This means most issues can get caught and resolved before they inconvenience you.
In many ways, managed IT offers your business the same security that a bumper-to-bumper warranty provides your customers: peace of mind. If you can rely on your technology, and you know that problems will be resolved when issues arise, then you will get the biggest return on your investment. Not to beat the car analogies too much, but like an automobile, if you don’t invest in its upkeep, the greater the chances it will break down when you need it the most.
By partnering with a managed IT firm like us, you can prevent most of the frustration, loss of productivity, and money that comes when you have to spend time trying to get your systems back online. Here are some ways that managed IT can benefit your dealership.
Improved Overall Efficiency
It wasn’t long ago when most car dealerships used consumer-grade equipment to manage inventory, paper documentation, and analog phones on the sales floor. However, today’s dealerships are as technology-dependent as any Fortune 500 company. Paper documents are being replaced by email, online forms, and PDFs. Phones are being replaced by a wide variety of intelligent devices, including tablets and laptops, and finally, entire inventory databases stored in the cloud.
With this reliance on technology, computer issues can become even more of a problem. Your dealership can’t afford to wait for your paid-by-the-hour computer person to get around to fixing a sales workstation because, by the time they have, you’ve lost potential customers.
This isn’t unique to the car dealership industry either—most businesses have been feeling this frustration for a long time. This is where managed IT comes in. Managed IT offers a wide range of services whose goal is to ensure your systems have as much uptime as possible. Some of the services include:
- Monitoring and maintaining your systems. System failure doesn’t have to be a surprise. Managed IT offers 24/7 monitoring of your systems and can prevent catastrophic failure before it occurs.
- Security updates, patches, and antivirus are all handled. No more 20-minute interruptions while you wait for a computer to reboot and install updates, or making your sales team responsible for running a virus scan. We handle your IT as if we are your in-house IT staff.
- Migration and streamlining of existing systems to reduce redundancy and incompatibility while increasing productivity and stability. Essentially, if we see something that could be done better, we make it happen. We treat your network like it is our own.
Managed IT Can Reduce the Risk of Cyberattacks
Ransomware attacks should be the primary concern of any business regardless of size and industry, but some companies are more of a target than others. Car dealerships, like all businesses which deal with financial institutions and customer personal data, are prime targets. As such, they must have a plan in place to protect themselves.
If you get hit with a ransomware attack, it could lock you out of your systems until you pay whatever price the cybercriminal is asking for. Many businesses think that a ransomware attack just means reformatting a computer. In reality, the goal of a ransomware attack is to put your organization in so much distress that it is at risk of suffering irreparable damage. So much so, that you would do anything, including paying the ransom to regain control of your business.
Managed IT provides your dealerships with the tools to prevent a cyberattack from gaining a foothold in your system, as well as to reduce the damage caused if a new threat slips through.. However, the reality is sooner or later, some issue, whether it’s human error or natural disaster, will strike your business, and the same tools which protected your business from a cyberattack will also save you from disaster.
Custom-built Web & Mobile Applications
This isn’t really a benefit that most Detroit-managed IT companies can offer, but it is something unique to our company.
Are you still using overly complicated Excel spreadsheets to organize your data, create schedules or explain your business plans? We can help you develop and deploy a custom application to save you time and headaches and streamline processes for your business and your customers. When out-of-the-box software isn’t a perfect fit, and you’re spending too much time making compromises, consider a tailored application designed from the ground up for your business. Custom applications can help your company automate, integrate, and impress with your superior customer service.
Don’t Settle For a Cookie-Cutter IT Solution
Undoubtedly, the automotive industry is unique and requires a unique approach to how its technology is supported. An MSP who specializes in accountants won’t have the experience to understand a car dealership’s issues. Whether it’s creating a customized application to manage inventory or develop a wireless solution to accommodate not only customers in the showroom but to ensure your team in the back-office can catch a signal as well, we can be here for you.
If you’re a dealership working with legacy equipment that affects your bottom line due to a lack of productivity, now is the time to stop maintaining the status quo and embrace technology that does what it’s supposed to do. With us as your IT partner, you can stop worrying about your technology and instead focus on your customers and closing the sale.
Not sure if managed IT is right for you? Call 248.545.0800 today to schedule an appointment and ask us how we can help you become more effective and more profitable. Call today to learn more.
