Suppose you’re at the helm of a chain of used car dealerships, and you’ve grown from that single locale in the heart of Downtown, to a flagship location flanked by satellite dealerships from Detroit to Pontiac to Lansing. If you’re growing, that’s obviously a great thing, but while we all love a growing and budding business, we definitely loathe the problems that go along with it. Like any business comprised of multiple locations and operations, we’ve all experienced similar problems: lack of visibility, difficulty tracking performance and sales, difficulty analyzing revenue and cash flow, and much more.
Now, that entry level accounting solution may have hummed along and worked just fine when you were that single location: Downtown ACME Motors. But if that same ole accounting solution is no longer purring like a kitten under the hood, you might need to consider replacement. Ask yourself if your accounting software is slowing your business down to the point where you’re forced to spend too much time trying to solve problems that seem to occur with increased frequency. If that’s the case, it’s only a matter of time before the most important aspect of your business (your customers) feels and notices your inability to meet their demands and needs.
Power under the hood
If you’re on the lookout for a better alternative, then consider a cloud-based accounting solution that offers easy implementation and integration of every operational facet from sales and revenue to inventory, and more, so you can streamline data entry from one end of the dealership to the other. Even better, consider Gravity Software® (Gravity), an accounting solution written on the Microsoft Power Platform (aka Dynamics 365). Once implemented, Gravity provides each of your dealerships with secure, web-based access to real-time data. With Gravity in place, every associate, every team member can perform at a higher rate of efficiency.
“Zero to 60”
With Gravity, you can streamline the operations at each dealership through data consolidation into one, secure database. By consolidating the data of multiple locations, you instantly save time and increase efficiency in a number of ways:
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Easily Track Inventory Levels: From one dealership to another, see where you’re overly saturated and not selling, and where they’re flying off the lot. Not just transferring and delivery of used cars, but of all parts and components as well. With any car, you don’t want it sitting on the lot any longer than necessary. Having a handle on this crucial data will help you determine (from one locale to the next) if and when to implement extra incentives to sell any long-sitting cars.
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Sales Performance Tracking: By sales person, by location, as a consolidated whole. See how you’re doing against local and regional competition. See who’s selling cars like hotcakes and who’s not.
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Real-Time Data: In a matter of a few clicks, your associate at ACME Motors, Pontiac can immediately see if a particular model, year and color is available at ACME Motors, Detroit. No more last minute phone calls or desperate emails searching for a needle in a haystack because they’ll already have the answers that a customer wants.
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Security Access: Remember, you set the parameters and determine who can access what. Just because you’re giving access to vehicle availability inventory levels to a Level 1 Sales Associate, doesn’t mean you’re handing over the keys to the kingdom. While the associate might be able to check availability, it doesn’t provide access to check overall revenue, or profit and loss reports. It’s up to you.
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Dashboards: Gravity’s easy-to-navigate dashboard with drill-down capabilities, allows you to view any and every facet of your business. Whatever you decide, you’ll create your dashboards with specific data on what’s most important to you.
Many accounting applications are structured to have a distinct and isolated database for each entity. This silo effect creates a whole host of problems. Gravity can centralize your used car dealerships’ multi-entity operations while still providing detailed and customized reporting for each location. Learn more and schedule your online demo.
Gravity Software
Better. Smarter. Accounting.
