Thank you so much for your note and support. The vAuto Performance Manager is an extremely important position. We understand that true sustainable performance improvement occurs only when a proper strategy is well executed. In other words, it’s about strategy, people and process. Note that tools are never the answer, they only assist people with process and strategy. To this end, our performance managers are highly skilled, used vehicle industry professionals that are tasked with the responsibility of helping our clients understand and execute strategy and process. These individuals must possess many skills, both human and analytical.

The position of performance manager at vAuto is a very difficult one to obtain. Candidates have to endure testing and multiple interviews. Once selected, our performance managers must spend months in Chicago learning every aspect of the vAuto system. If you’re interested in applying for the position or simply learning more, please send me your resume and I’ll forward it to the appropriate individual. Again, thank you for your enthusiasm for vAuto and the Velocity Strategy of Management.

Respectfully,

Dale

Dale,

I am an 11 year veteran of the car business; I have worked
in almost all areas of the dealership and even had my own place for a few
years. I am a believer in vauto and I believe that it is revolutionalizing the
business. I love my Job now but I have been thinking about changing careers and
with my knowledge of the auto industry and belief in your product I was curious
about what your performance managers do on a day to day basis and how I might
like to get to know more about your company.

Thanks,

Justin

Congratulations on your record month and thank you for the outstanding suggestions. I will take each one and write them up for our development evaluation and prioritization process. They all make a lot of sense to me. In fact, I depend on this type of feedback from smart users like yourself, I’m most appreciative.

One thing I want you to know, however, regarding your suggestion about tracking vehicles through the recon process. vAuto does have a tool called Lifecycle Management that does much of what you describe. I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but I’d recommend that you ask Larry Greene, your vAuto performance manager to show you how it works. I would be most interested in hearing from you after you’ve seen it. I commend you for recognizing the need for and the value of efficient reconditioning processes. The reconditioning process for most dealerships continues to be one of the last bastions of old-school management thinking and practice. As a result, it is a tremendous hidden profit leak and velocity impediment. Keep the drum beat going on this issue within your organization.

Thanks so much,
Dake

Wow, that’s really great to hear. At this point, I think there should be little doubt that the Velocity Method of Management works. The real challenge however is to have those dealers that use the strategy understand that it involves much more than proper pricing. In fact, it really requires rethinking just about everything in the variable departments and in some cases, other departments as well. It involves a lot of understanding, change and patience. To this end, our greatest challenge is to have these new strategies and practices become understood and institutionalized in our industry. Clearly, we are all learning together and the time has never been greater to dedicate resources to education, discussion and community building. Congratulations on your success. In this spirit, please continue to contribute your knowledge and experience to the cause.
Dale

Thanks so much for your note. vAuto is currently working well on the new iPad, with a couple of exceptions. First, today, we issued a new release that was previously preventing the VIN scan from working properly. This should now be in order. Currently we have a bug fix in testing that is preventing the photo upload from working properly. I anticipate this bug fix to be released and in production within days. Please let me know if this information is consistent with what you experience. I really appreciate the feedback.

Dale

Thanks for noticing and for the wonderful review. I am hard at work on book number 3, and I’ll do a better job at getting this one out there sooner in digital format.

Dale

All the Best

First, wow, thanks for the awesome compliment. I’m truly fortunate to work with a bevy of amazingly talented professionals, and we’re all extremely passionate about our work. That’s what makes for a great and successful company. Regarding the DMS providers, don’t be too quick to sell them short, they’ve got a tough challenge. Stop and think about the non-stop pounding that a typical dealer management system takes every day. For the most part, these systems are fairly bulletproof and suffer virtually no down time or errors of operation. Take it from me, a guy who develops software, that is no small task.

The larger question, however, is how will the information challenges of dealers be served in the coming decades. The cost of technical development has come way down over the years, and that means that young start-ups can more easily rival established system providers. This creates an intense competitive environment, which offers dealers more choices and entrepreneurs more opportunities. The real challenge however is to what extent all of these systems can be integrated. I clearly understand that dealers are fed up with the reality of multiple logins, databases that won’t share information and support staff that chronically point the finger of fault at each other. While I don’t think that it’s realistic to believe that any single company can or should attempt to be all solutions to all dealers, I do think that there are some logical solution clusters that should be a unified solution suite. Certain dealership workflow processes have identifiable inflection points as well as dependencies and these are the characteristics that create the opportunity for superior unified solutions.

Having said this, identifying such solution sets is a quickly moving target. I firmly believe that the way vehicles will be bought and sold will change significantly in the next decade, and so too, the proper solution sets. I don’t think that anyone has all the answers. What I can tell you however, is that the AutoTrader.com organization is very focused on anticipating the changes in creating best-of-breed solutions for dealers to more efficiently and profitably serve dealers, consumers and auto manufacturers.

Dale