Old Friends and New at NADA

Walking through Chinatown, my wife and I gave a dollar to an old man playing Auld Lang Syne on his violin – the Chinese violin, called an erhu.  This year, NADA began with the Chinese New Year, which was especially nice in San Francisco.  The parade was the week after, though.  We missed that.

Walking past the Route One booth, I was hailed by CEO Mike Jurecki and my old friend Pat McPherson.  A dealer was asking them about bi-weekly payment plans.  I ended up demonstrating the sales tool I had designed for U.S. Equity, on a MenuVantage account, in a Route One frame.  “Mark helped us design our system, too,” Pat added.

I read the dealer’s business card and said, “you sell a Resource warranty and you recently stopped using MenuVantage.” He wants Flash in his menu, so I referred him to Impact Group.

My new friends include a number of menu systems – formerly competitors.  We have announced the deal with Impact Group.  Others are in the works.  This is part of my “many to many” strategy, making PEN the single connection between all product providers and all dealer systems.

See You in San Francisco

I will be representing Provider Exchange Network again this year.  All PEN providers will get a visit from me or Ron Greer.  In addition, we will be calling on menu suppliers and other systems that might benefit from a PEN interface.  For convenience, all my set meetings are at the ADP booth, and this is the best place to find me on Saturday.  I will also be spending time at the Reynolds booth.

Stone Eagle Joins the Network

When I say that Provider Exchange Network has connections to F&I product providers, this really means connections to the providers’ admin systems.  So, I am pleased to announce our relationship with a leading purveyor of these systems, Stone Eagle.  The official announcement is here.

Electronic contracting is now available to users of the Stone Eagle SCS and ARCH systems.  I particularly like ARCH.  It is the AJAX based system I mentioned in my latest post on software development. Providers often ask me to recommend an admin system and, of course, I am recommending Stone Eagle.

Reed Says Provider Sites Obsolete

Brian Reed has a post over at P&A Magazine on provider sites for e-contracting.  I would say that he cribbed my analogy with online credit apps, but I know Mr. Reed is an old hand and he has lived through the same history.

In the mid to late ’90s, a number of auto finance companies developed their own system for dealers to electronically submit credit applications.

I agree with Reed’s central complaint about the provider sites.  As I have written previously, they break the dealer’s process.  I might add that DMS integration isn’t getting any easier.  So, what is the best way for a product provider to support e-contracting?  Continuing the analogy with online credit, Reed suggests a single web site for multiple providers.  Think of Dealer Track, only with products instead of finance contracts.

I see a few problems with this idea.  First, providers will not support a shared platform if it allows rate shopping.  Then, of course, there is the problem of DMS integration.  But the biggest problem flows from the online credit analogy.

Lenders can now bypass the aggregation sites, in favor of direct links to the DMS.  Marty Zwolan calls this “disintermediation.”  It’s the mission of Open Dealer Exchange.  The best way to support e-contracting is to exploit a system the dealer is already using.