Steve Southin's Blog (28)

What Dark UX is and Why You Should Avoid It

For anyone unfamiliar, User Experience (UX) is a term referring to the interaction that a user has with a website, application or product. The goal of UX design is to create an easy, efficient and smooth experience for the user. A happy user is a returning user and customer retention has never been more…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 28, 2020 at 9:47am — No Comments

Weighing The Cost of a Used Car Manager's Time

Anyone not responsible for vehicle inventory management may think it an easy concept but it is a stressful and labor-intensive endeavor normally bestowed upon one person: The Used Car Manager. This individual has an encyclopedias worth of knowledge in their heads about profit/loss margins of every vehicle on the lot - a figure that can change at the…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 25, 2020 at 10:14am — No Comments

3 Biggest Benefits of Automating a Workflow

The COVID-19 Pandemic has accentuated the need for automation across most service and manufacturing industries and the automotive industry is no different. There are countless tedious repetitive, task laden manual processes within automotive sales and service that greatly benefit from automation and its best application is to make business processes…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 21, 2020 at 9:54am — No Comments

Reshaping the Landscape

The latest and greatest digital shift since COVID-19 hit has reshaped the retail landscape faster than could have been imagined. It has brought new opportunities and challenges alike. Major retailers are closing physical storefronts and investing heavily in digital platforms with very…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 18, 2020 at 9:48am — No Comments

How Automation Has Helped Businesses During a Pandemic

Automation has become a key element of digital transformation.  This shift could replace nearly 70% of manual, repetitive tasks, according to a Brookings Institute Report. Automation, in fact, has been slowly transforming the…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 14, 2020 at 9:12am — No Comments

What To Look For In An Automated Workflow Solution

From sales to finance, and IT to marketing, workflow automation can liberate almost any departments from the burden of tedious manual processes. A workflow automation process begins with a clear objective and ends at process evaluation. I have already discussed the handful of ways in which dealers are already using automation so let’s take a look at how…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 11, 2020 at 10:16am — No Comments

How a Simple Analog Device Inspired a Digital Powerhouse

Kevin Systrom, one of the co-founders of Instagram attributes the creation of the powerhouse Photo Application and social network to a particular yet simple life event. He had chosen to study in Italy his Junior year of college, and a professor had replaced the state-of-the-art modern camera he had around his neck with the iconic but ultra-simple Holga…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 7, 2020 at 9:30am — No Comments

Automation Let’s You Fly!

One of the most popular metaphors in business is how leaders are the pilots of their organizations: in the driver's seat, handling turbulence, and getting employees and customers to their destination. This is an easy metaphor to apply to automation, especially since aviation’s adoption of automation follows a similar path as it does with the automotive…

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Added by Steve Southin on August 4, 2020 at 10:07am — No Comments

Have You Ever Considered Using Shopstreaming? You Are Probably Already Doing It

Last year, U.S. e-commerce sales generated about $365.2 billion in revenue. With the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in changing shopping habits as nonessential businesses endure mandated closures, there is more incentive than ever to invest in growing…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 31, 2020 at 9:57am — No Comments

How Automation is Already Helping Your Dealership (and Why You Should Investigate Other Ways) - Part 2

In my last blogI discussed how dealers have been using automation to manage internet lead processes. In this blog, I will take it one step further and explain how dealers are using an…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 28, 2020 at 12:30pm — No Comments

How Automation is Already Helping Your Dealership (and Why You Should Investigate Other Ways)

Sales and service processes have been modified and fine-tuned as long as sales and services have existed. Making a product or service accessible and appealing is what drives sales. These processes include many areas where repetition comes in to play and have been mostly managed manually.  As technology has improved, the ability to automate repetitive…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 24, 2020 at 9:58am — No Comments

What A Good User Experience Can Do for You

With most of the country in quarantine, people are more reliant upon digital applications like Netflix and Amazon than ever before. Netflix reportedly had 16 million new subscribers in the first three months of 2020 due to the coronavirus. It’s no…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 21, 2020 at 9:57am — No Comments

A Digital Retail Do-Over

Before the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis, dealers have been struggling to adopt and perfect digital retailing and the need has accelerated at staggering speed. Data from McKinsey & Company show…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 17, 2020 at 8:46am — No Comments

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

With Covid-19 creating a ripple effect across the socio-economic fabric of America, life as most of us know it has been disrupted, especially that of the retail customer journey which has migrated into the digital landscape. As a new normal materializes, even the more technophobic consumers have taken to digital retail platforms and applications to meet…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 14, 2020 at 9:08am — No Comments

Digital Transformation Is Happening Now

With the advancement of technology and sudden wave of consumer adoption, the automotive retail sector is experiencing a global revolution and that can only be attributed to digitization. Thanks to digital platforms and solutions, dealers have experienced many recent changes.

 

Total retail sales in the United…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 10, 2020 at 9:30am — No Comments

David Kain Interviews Steve Southin, Co-CEO of DiscoveryLoft About Their New Vehicle Inspection Tool

I am incredibly humbled that David Kain took the time to learn about PAVEInspect last week.

"David Kain, President of Kain Automotive interviews Steve Southin, Co-CEO of DiscoveryLoft about their new vehicle inspection tool, PAVE INSPECT. PAVE INSPECT allows…

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Added by Steve Southin on July 6, 2020 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Looking to Build Better Customer Relationships?

Customers are becoming incredibly sophisticated, elusive, and empowered since the latest digital retail wave. As a result, the dynamics of the relationship between brands and customers is evolving. But even in this new digital era of online engagement and transparency, the reality is that the relationship dealers should hope to have with customers…

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Added by Steve Southin on June 30, 2020 at 9:34am — No Comments

Adapting to Change May Be Hard but Also May Be Vital to Success

COVID-19 has reformed and redefined the customer experience (CX), and now dealers need to think beyond short-term fixes and look forward into the new normal of an increased desire by consumers for digital retailing options, according to…

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Added by Steve Southin on June 26, 2020 at 9:18am — No Comments

Efficiency and Revenue in All Departments through Digital Channels

The economic downturn the auto industry has faced beginning in early March was more devastating for those dealers who were not able to quickly and easily shift sales processes online if they didn’t have digital retailing channels already. Now as restrictions lift slowly across the country, we are waking up to a new digital era that could turn out to be more…

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Added by Steve Southin on June 23, 2020 at 9:44am — No Comments

5 Reasons why User Experience is the Foundation of a Strong Dealership

User Experience, by definition, addresses all aspects of an experience within automotive shopping, purchasing and owning of a vehicle from the customer's perspective. From interacting with an ad, to interacting with a website and to parking their new vehicle in their driveway, user experience guides the interaction of the customer throughout mobile apps and…

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Added by Steve Southin on June 19, 2020 at 8:52am — No Comments

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