Tracking Used Cars through Recon

My dealership had an issue with the length of time it took vehicles to get in and to the lot. Actually we knew it was long but never knew exact time. I created a online program that is managed by used cars and service and it shows all times and status of every vehicle going through the process. By doing this we were able to get our timing at or below 3 days.

Which we see is very important since we are really trying to increase our turn rate of our used inventory and every little bit helps. Especially when you make the most money with in the first couple weeks that used car is on our lot.

Does anyone else have a need for a program like this?

I created a site www.mydms.com

I would appreciat any feed back people have on this.

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Permalink Reply by Todd Young on March 12, 2011 at 5:41pm

3 days is a pretty agressive turn time, how many mechanics do you have in mechanical and how many in recon and are most of your cleans spiffs just to make up time? Do you have another link for more information regarding mydms?

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Dagesse on March 14, 2011 at 9:24am

We currently have 2 shops using it and we are at 3.4 days right now. It is possible but your service department has to treat used vehicles like a customers car. We have 20 techs at one store and 10 at the other store. Also about to put it into the largest Honda dealership in the country.

Regarding your clean question , could you rephrase not sure i understand what you are asking.

the www.mydms.com is the only site i have right now, as this has been a side thing i created for my dealership group and have slowly been getting ready to release it to the masses. I am hoping to have more info on the site soon about the application.

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Permalink Reply by Todd Young on March 14, 2011 at 10:01am

Does your 3.4 days include a clean also(Spiff i.e. a quick clean vs full details)or is this strickly mechanical? If you are cleaning cars do you have 3-4 recon techs or ???? Also, with the use of your software do you utilize a bar scan tool for the different stages or do you have one person who is continually updating the spreadsheet every minute of the day and that is there job?

Sounds like a great tracking tool!

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Dagesse on March 14, 2011 at 10:17am

Todd, right now the 3.4 includes clean. The cleans tend to be 70% full details. This also includes body work, sublet, and parts holds. The system has allowed us to find where our bottlenecks are and eliminate them. We have 5 detail techs in the bigger store and 3 in the smaller. The system actually is controlled and updated by each department. So Used cars can only enter cars into the system and once the cars are done they inspect and archive the vehicle. Once that is done service take it over on their end. and they can only edit certain fields like status, tech, advisor, costs and so forth. same thing for detail and body shop. I made it so it is the managers duty to make sure these are updated. I know in service our service advisors actually update it because they handle the internals. So i didn't have to hire anyone knew i just made it easier for everyone to update it and see what the status is. What is great is that if they forget to update it affects the duration and i can go to them and ask them what is going on with each car and i can make sure they are updating as soon as they know of a change.

Also aach car is archived so you can get reports on your average recon for each vehicle by year make model mileage.

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Permalink Reply by Todd Young on March 14, 2011 at 7:13pm

Chris sounds impressive. What type of volume do you control monthly for used cars. Do you control most of your sublet inhouse? Also do you offer a trial DVD or download to sample of your productivity log? Where does the bulk of your back log come from parts/hold or sublets?