We can all agree paper is a dependency in dealerships. You need it for customer information, contracts, and service documents. But paper has significant costs and is prone to getting lost and damaged. Dealerships across the country have begun to adopt technologies that allow them to digitize processes they used to complete on paper. Below is an excerpt from Timbo May, Director of Operations at CrossRoads Automotive Group. His dealership group was able to create an automated process, and now does 2,500 deals a month without a single piece of paper. He sat down with our team to share his story.

“In the last 10 or 12 years, the deal file has almost doubled in size because of all of the regulations and paperwork. There is a lot of paperwork to do at the sales tower and in the finance office. We had deals stuck in contracts in transit and it was hard to locate all of the necessary files for a deal because of the mess.

We process about 2,500 deals a month and when done on paper, they end up everywhere. We had six or seven 43-foot containers to hold deal files. We had deal files in box trucks, overhead in the parts department, and piled around the accounting office. Because of our centralized accounting office, we were spending $20,000 a month in courier and overnight fees just to process deals.

We decided it was time to make a change.

For the last three or four years, we have invested in technology to eliminate paper.
With docuPAD^® and Integrated Document Management, we have been able to eliminate paperwork in all of our deals. The Electronic Deal Jacket allows us to pull up a deal right away instead of sifting through a bunch of papers. It can then go immediately to accounting once F&I is finished. There’s no lag time when a deal gets funded. Now, we process 2,500 deals a month and not one is on paper.

Our customers love this new technology, too. When a deal is complete, instead of the customer getting reams of paper, we hand them a USB with a digital copy of all of their documents.

We don’t need paper now that we have an electronic process. All of the documents are right there at our fingertips, available whenever we need them. If you’re a dealership that’s planning on being around a long time, it’s time to get on board. Paper is going to be gone very, very soon.”

With the right process and people in place, limiting paper becomes a pretty easy task. There are many opportunities for change, including scanning documents into a server, greeting customers on the service drive with a tablet, and electronically posting deals. You don’t have to do it all at once, but by implementing automated processes a little at a time, you can tackle the paper monster in your dealership.

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