Car shoppers are looking for more ways to research and purchase vehicles, but that doesn't mean they want to do the entire process online (yet.) The car business is a people business, which means that in this day in age, it's more important than ever to understand people.

Napoleon Rumteen is the Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations at Tekion; a modern cloud-based DMS that is on a mission to streamline dealer operations across the entire dealership.

What we discuss in this episode:

• It's a challenge for dealerships to source various inter-department problems and then figure out how to connect them together with the variety of vendors required.
• The average dealership utilizes 15 - 20 different platforms in order to operate their business, most of which are siloed and not able to effectively communicate with one another.
• The car business is a people business. That doesn't necessarily mean that ti will require the same level of human touch as it currently does, but it will require that we understand people.
• The market is telling us how they want to transact on vehicles and it's our job to meet that demand.
• In order to do so efficiently, dealers need systems that can speak to one another and maintain a pure flow of data.
• When connected technologies can speak in real-time, then you can have machine learning. With machine learning, you can have systems that correct themselves instantly to meet the consumer's behaviors, which is required for a fully online transaction.
• We're at a place in the automotive community where we can facilitate true Artificial Intelligence
• One of the best places for dealerships to start preparing for a more connected ecosystem is internal with their inter-departmental communication process. By utilizing systems like Slack or Discord, dealers can have a communication network that allows each person in the dealership to have quick access to the information they need when they need it. In so doing, they are able to provide a more efficient customer experience.
• Listen for even more insights from this episode.

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Thanks, Napoleon Rumteen

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