Dealers and industry professionals discuss the pros and cons of switching from established DMS providers like Reynolds and DealerTrack to Tekion, a newer cloud-based alternative founded by a Tesla veteran. While Tekion offers cost savings and has generated significant interest (selling out 2023 installations at NADA), users report issues with understaffing during migrations, incomplete CRM functionality despite sales pitches claiming otherwise, inconsistent implementation across locations, and a disillusioned implementation team—suggesting it's a promising but still-maturing platform not yet ready for risk-averse dealers. The consensus is that Tekion may be worth the switch if coming from an inferior system, but requires realistic expectations about what features are actually operational versus on the product roadmap.
We switched all our stores from November through December. There were tears. Call me next week. PM me.
Props to the guys who do installations for a living. I have done a few and the word "easy" did not cross my mind once.I did a Tekion migration last year. Severely understaffed company for the migration, CRM was super far from being ready even though the pitch deck showed it as completed. Ended up having to do the DMS only and postpone the CRM for 1 year based on their estimates of what I would consider "basic CRM functionality".
That being said, they're at least making an effort in this space, which should not go unnoticed. Moving from DealerTrack to Tekion, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Just be wary of "all the things it can do", because some of those things are on a backlog even though the buttons are in the UI. The installation crew had a very different tone than the sales crew (as with a lot of vendors). It's also been a year since I did that migration, but that backlog was BIGGGG and we had to make internal changes fast to accomodate!
In our experience many of the installers did not communicate with each other nor did they seem supported. I recall one of them showing up with a Tekion embroidered shirt and the other installers asking how he got one. He just replied that he made it himself because he felt weird going into installs without something that said "Tekion" on it. They were all a little disillusioned, or it seemed to me. This was Nov/Dec 2022. The biggest issue, since we would be launching 7 locations, was they did not follow our instructions to set up all stores the same way. Sales desking, Op codes, service schedule, etc ended up being set up differently and installers seemed reluctant to communicate with other installers across town in other stores doing the installation at the same time. Most installers commented that ours was the first "enterprise" installation they had done. It was clear they were not wired for enterprise, just one or two store set-ups. Some of the installers had never worked in retail automotive, which is fine, but their lack of context made it frustrating in the way they set up some items, especially in a non-traditional store like ours.
My initial concern was "developed by some guy that worked at Tesla". I suppose the thought was we should all be impressed someone darkened a door at Tesla and have suddenly become a DMS expert. The idea to take a fresh look at the dms is good. The money we pay for a dms is crazy, but this approach didn't strike me as they are ready for prime time and can stand on real strength of their product. Maybe some day.
Dealers and industry professionals discuss the pros and cons of switching from established DMS providers like Reynolds and DealerTrack to Tekion, a newer cloud-based alternative founded by a Tesla veteran. While Tekion offers cost savings and has generated significant interest (selling out 2023 installations at NADA), users report issues with understaffing during migrations, incomplete CRM functionality despite sales pitches claiming otherwise, inconsistent implementation across locations, and a disillusioned implementation team—suggesting it's a promising but still-maturing platform not yet ready for risk-averse dealers. The consensus is that Tekion may be worth the switch if coming from an inferior system, but requires realistic expectations about what features are actually operational versus on the product roadmap.
