Adobe Auto Sales is a single location Buy Here, Pay Here (BHPH) dealership  located in Lubbock, TX. When General Manager Titus Weston joined the team in 2011, the dealership switched to the AutoStar dealership management system and would remain users for 5 years. That is, until the dealership felt tethered to their server-based DMS and needed a system that would allow them to access it from anywhere.

 web-based capabilities and the ability to work remotely was the leading driver behind the dealership's migration in January 2020. But little did Weston know that this decision would pay dividends and set the dealership up for success the next two months and beyond.

Ensuring cash flow with collections

During the peak COVID months, IDMS enabled the Adobe collections team to work from home and continue accepting payments from customers. Weston also praises IDMS’s collections tools for being intuitive and quick. “It’s beyond easy to accept payments from our customers,” Weston said, “and that should always be the number one function of any collections program.”

According to Weston,  AutoStar’s collections system required an unnecessary amount of screen hopping and far too many steps to collect a simple payment. “Even though I’m not heavily involved in collections, I can pick up the phone if all of our agents are busy and process a payment in 30 seconds with IDMS,” Weston said.

The IDMS account management solutions feature queues for account segmentation, automated emails targeting all accounts meeting certain criteria, automated reminders for outreach, and other solutions that result in more efficiency.

“Even though I’m not heavily involved in collections, I can pick up the phone if all of our agents are busy and process a payment in 30 seconds with IDMS.”

Titus Weston

General Manager

Coping with the inventory shortage

Like all dealerships around the U.S., Adobe Auto Sales struggled to acquire inventory due to the impact COVID had on the supply chain. However, inventory is yet another challenge IDMS web-based access addresses.

“I’m able to spend that extra 3 hours in the afternoon finding the perfect inventory with some peace of mind having a pulse on the dealership,” Weston said.

Once inventory is acquired at auction, Weston can quickly get it into the system with the IDMS VIN decoder, which aggregates all vehicle details and automatically loads them into the system.

Also, now that Weston can access IDMS from anywhere, any time, he can provide deal approvals for teams and clients without asking them to wait until he returned to his laptop back home, or at his hotel — a benefit their previous, on-premises solution couldn’t offer. 

“I’m able to spend that extra 3 hours in the afternoon finding the perfect inventory with some peace of mind having a pulse on the dealership.”

Titus Weston

General Manager

Delivering on support

The life force behind the DealerSocket end-to-end solution for dealerships is its customer support team. And although Weston’s team doesn’t call in for support regularly due to the intuitiveness of IDMS, he notes that on the rare occasions they have an issue, it’s typically resolved right there and then over the phone.

In cases that require a more technical fix, Weston appreciates the smooth transition between the support and product teams.

“Too many of our other vendors want to try and fix it themselves and end up screwing something up even more,” Weston said. “The DealerSocket support team isn’t afraid to sometimes admit they don’t have the answer, but they always find us the person that does.”

Advice for other independent/BHPH dealers

Weston acknowledges that any technology vendor switch can be stressful, and getting buy-in from the rest of the dealership can be difficult. He says, however, that once you overcome the initial fear of change and understand how everything works in the system, there’s no looking back.

Weston argues, “Making the change to a product you can utilize in the 21st century and not feel like you’re stuck in the dial up or AOL days should be an easy decision."

After demoing and exploring other DMS systems for independent and BHPH dealers, Weston says, “There isn’t another vendor out there that can provide the same level of convenience and functionality to us in a single platform.”

Give your independent/BHPH operation the upgrade it deserves with IDMS.

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