Better late than never....
and sorry if this comes across as salesy - I'm really not trying to be.
I saw the pamphlet ad in Auto Success and I'm reading your whitepaper now.
1. Is this out yet Alex?
2. What's up with the dealerrefresh co-branding - at the bottom of every page - in the whitepaper and ad, I’m confused?
It's a good paper so far
Whoa
how did I miss this thread! Oh yeah....I've been in the CRM development cave cranking away. Building CRM is no simple chore.
1. Yes sir. We are doing a limited run up to NADA 2013 for dealers who want to get in early at grandfathered "early adopter" pricing.
2. I wrote the initial content of that whitepaper almost 2 years ago on DealerRefresh (
How to buy a CRM. An introduction to CRM for dealers.) and Dealer.com handled the creative and preparation costs in order to turn it into the whitepaper you're now reading. It was truly a collaborative effort.
I'm glad you're enjoying it. Did you read it from cover to cover? ....I know it is long as hell.
I requested a Demo of the DDC CRM product while we were signing on to be a DDC website customer. I was very impressed with how clean and simple the interface is and the innovative way managers can look at traffic flow. They have a few dealer groups using it now (They don't say beta but if it walks and talks like a duck...). I was told it most likely will not be released to the public until at least NADA. From what I can tell the bones of the program are all there and from a core standpoint it is fully functional but it is not fully baked just yet. They do not have a desking tool and are working on that for release. They are also missing integration with a number of vendors. I will be taking a very serious look at it though when they are ready because I think they hit the nail on the head when it comes to Less is more in CRM.
We currently use Dominion CRM (Autobase) and from what I hear they will have the new web based product out likely around the same time. It's an interesting time for CRM with two major players releasing all new CRM products that have been built from the ground up.
Glad to hear you liked what you saw. We have a very solid foundation that is really showing its true colors now, as it allows us to add things on top at lightening speeds.
I can see how you'd want to call it a beta, as we've been offering CRM selectively. We're being very careful not to scale beyond our abilities (support, training, and architecturally speaking). One of my biggest frustrations with some of the technologies I've used in the past have been what happened when they had more dealers using the software than they could handle. I want us to learn from others' mistakes.
All week? John, it is just Tuesday, don't make it sound like you're putting in some work.
One of my greatest pleasures in life is picking on Mr. Quinn. Purple ties, jorts ....he's such an easy target
But John has a lot of blood in this and he even brought his family along for the ride. He's been instrumental in the development of the pencil tool and has become a great friend along the way. Many thanks to Kershner for introducing us after years of John and me arguing about another CRM system on DealerRefresh.
