Key insight
"I should have changed to Titan ten years ago."
Dealer Principal, Sam Elabbasi, installed Titan DMS across the separate dealerships on his site to bring the business together on one DMS and ensure he could have oversight on one platform.
Here's his feedback on the software and installation process.
I’ve got to run three sites now, and there’s no way I could do it without the Titan system.
Accurate financials
"My new and used car gross figures are now spot on.
We used to close off each month and have a $20-$25K discrepancy."
Zero leakage
"We had an issue in our service department on our previous dealer management system, regarding productivity and efficiency but the Titan system doesn’t allow this kind of thing to happen."
Excellent support
"Customer support is great compared to some of those others.
You never sit on hold waiting for 10 minutes either, like other dealer management system providers."
Great value
The monthly fees we commit to Titan, compared to others, are less than half of what other systems charge, and you get a lot more out of the Titan system.
What sets Titan apart?
The main thing for me was that Titan is an internet-based system and a live system that didn’t require service or back up tapes to be run as it was all live data. Customer support is also great compared to some of those others. You never sit on hold waiting for 10 minutes!
Cost versus benefit?
The cost factor did play a part in us choosing Titan. We had only just switched dealer management system providers, so the costs involved in changing to a third DMS provider had to be justifiable – and it was.
I should have changed to Titan much sooner. The monthly fees we commit to Titan, compared to others, are less than half of what other systems charge, and you get a lot more out of the Titan system.
You mention that real-time data was a big advantage, can you explain more?
Yes. The deals are processed when the vehicles are delivered – it invoices the car and auto transfers the profit over to the appropriate department, so there’s no manual deal processing.
With the other dealer management system each vehicle still had to be physically processed manually, so if your staff are off sick for a week you don’t know anything about the vehicle until they return and process it. In Titan, as soon as the car is delivered, it’s in the system.
The reports that are sent to me at the end of each day immediately shows what we’ve sold and delivered for the day, and anything that needs invoiced can be done straight away. You have accurate data daily, regardless of the department, as it’s automatic – it’s live data.
The accuracy of the data out of our previous system was all old – we’d find out two weeks after end of month that we lost money in the sales department. With Titan, it generates the deal profit as soon as the car is sold, so profit and loss is shown daily, so you can see whether you’ll make profit leading up to month-end.
How was the transition to Titan?
Titan managed everything regarding scoping and converting old data to the new system. It was all done in a brief before we changed over, so there was no issue there at all.
Leading from that, we were able to say how we wanted to run our business, and how we wanted the system to handle the costings, so it was very specific to our business. This was all managed from before we went live.
The product knowledge of the staff that we had knew Titan back-to-front. When Titan staff were onsite from day one, we had one in parts, one in service and two in sales. There were a lot of Titan staff on site too. We had people from Titan there for another three weeks after go live. They didn’t just convert the data and leave us – they were holding our hands through the whole changeover.
You learn best from doing it, and Titan was there to support us through that. There was Titan sales staff I could talk to from my level, and they showed me how to tailor my reports how I wanted to see it. My training was very specific to what I needed.
Thanks for the feedback, Sam