Solutions to Common DMS Integration Challenges
The importance of having accurate inventory listings on your website cannot be overstated. As more consumers shift their shopping online, displaying up-to-date listings on your website can decrease customer confusion, drive more shoppers to your site and boost sales at your dealership. But how do you ensure always-accurate inventory listings?
DMS integration, the process of pulling inventory data from your DMS to your website, can make the whole process a lot easier. It alleviates the majority of manual inventory updates on your website, adding and removing listings as inventory changes. And, it ensures that your online shoppers always have up-to-date information.
Still, DMS integration can be a time-consuming process. In fact, it can take an average of two to six weeks to integrate inventory, depending on your DMS and the quality of your data. But the end benefit of DMS integration are well worth the work and the wait. This article will outline the process of DMS integration and show you how to overcome common dealer pain points associated with inventory integration.
Insights you'll take away from this article include:
- The Importance of a DMS for Your Dealership
- The Importance of DMS Integration
- Best Practices to Optimize the DMS Integration Process
The Importance of a DMS for Your Dealership
A DMS (dealer management system) is the single source of data for all dealership inventory. A DMS allows you to manage all aspects of your inventory and your business, improving both productivity and sales. It can track all inventory in your store and the number of units you sell, while also recording sales team notes, spec information and more.
While some believe that a DMS is only for larger dealerships, in practice the technology has several practical benefits and applications for dealers of all types and sizes, with one major caveat—you have to find and choose a DMS that’s right for your dealership.
Picking a DMS can and should be very specific to every dealer’s individual needs. The right DMS for your dealership will depend on several factors, including complexity, customization features and how it integrates with your point of sales system. And while many DMSs perform similar functions, when it comes inventory integration, not all DMSs are alike. Some are more sophisticated and make the process of inventory integration much faster and easier.
While your website vendor will try to accommodate any DMS you want to use, some simply integrate with third parties and export data better than others. On occasion, a DMS may not be compatible with your website platform – compatibility is an important point to consider when choosing either a DMS or a website vendor.
The Importance of DMS Integration
Again, DMS integration is the process of pulling all inventory data from the DMS and exporting it to the dealer’s website, without having to manually and painstakingly re-create it, unit for unit and listing for listing. Although the particulars of the technology and the transfer process itself are more complex, DMS integration essentially accomplishes two main dealership goals.
First, DMS integration allows you to easily translate and transfer inventory data onto your website, so you can more efficiently market your inventory and make it more visible. This facilitates automation to save you time and effort, streamlines data entry for greater productivity and minimizes manual errors and duplicate entries, while maximizing accuracy.
Second, DMS integration allows you to feature dealership-specific offerings on specific inventory listings, including coupons and sales, so you can move inventory faster and more efficiently, improving sales and profitability.
Even if the process can be complicated and time-consuming, full DMS inventory integration with your website is essential in today’s digital retailing world. Dealers that fail to adapt to this modern retail environment run the risk of falling behind the times and losing sales to more forward-thinking competitors.
Best Practices to Optimize the DMS Integration Process
The process of importing inventory information from the DMS to your website can be prolonged and fraught with pain points. There are a few common dealer complaints with DMS integration, but with every pain point there tends to be a simple solution. While your website vendor takes on the task of integrating your DMS, there are a few actions you can complete to optimize the process and potentially cut down integration time.
If you’re a Dealer Spike customer, you can use our DMS integration guide to understand our DMS integration process and prepare for a smooth DMS integration for your dealership. Click here to learn more.
Challenge: All DMSs Are Different
The ease of adding inventory to your website depends on the type and sophistication of your DMS. Different DMSs offer different integration features. Currently, there is no industry standard for how a dealer’s data should be entered and presented in a DMS. In fact, there are 50+ DMSs, and each has their own interpretation process and integration protocols.
Because of this, exporting, importing and uploading data files may be different every time a website vendor undertakes a DMS integration. This can make every integration process unique and exploratory, while introducing different variables. Not only does this slow the process, it also introduces complexities, complications and possible integration errors.
Solution: Pick the Right Provider
The ease of DMS integration should be a big consideration when choosing a DMS provider. You should consider the process of pulling and exporting data, adding custom photos, pulling stock photos and the DMS’s direct integrations with OEMs to pull spec data sheets. With some DMSs, the process is as simple as scanning a bar code to auto-populate all information onto your website. Other DMSs require you to manually enter model numbers and other necessary inventory information.
Take time up front to choose a DMS that will integrate easily with your website and a DMS integration tool that works with your inventory module and/or e-commerce platform. If a part sells, its listing will be automatically removed from your website—no need to manually update unit counts. Often when partnering with an e-commerce vendor, you will receive their preloaded data, but you’re the party responsible for uploading your own data.
Challenge: Data Mapping Differences
With DMS integration, all data fields in your DMS must be mapped to equivalent data fields on your website. This introduces the possibility of integration errors, as the names of fields often differ between your DMS and the data mapping. For example, you may fill out the “stock number” field in your DMS, but the corresponding field name might simply be called “stock num.”
The initial mapping process when integrating inventory can be tedious and time-consuming. DMS specialists may have to connect with your dealership to understand custom fields and their intended purpose. While some DMS providers are working to provide solutions to these issues to avoid relying on personal interpretation of data, small differences between data fields can make mapping and transferring data more complicated. Multiply this by all the mapping that occurs within a DMS integration, and it’s easy to see why so many dealers consider this a pain point.
Solution: Keep Clean Data
The quality of the data that you and your team enter into your DMS will be reflected on your website. That’s because DMS integration transfers inventory information exactly how it was entered into your DMS. If you put well-organized data in, you’ll output well-organized data to your website. When data is easy to understand and map, integration is smoother and the process takes less time.
Take the time to fill in the year, make and model of a particular inventory unit into your DMS. This will make it easy to match and find that unit in the vendor’s system, and pull in the spec sheet from the OEM. Failure to include this kind of detailed inventory information may mean the difference between a difficult and smooth DMS integration.
Challenge: Length of Time to Export and Map Data
On top of all the technical complexity involved in mapping and transferring data, most dealers’ main concern with DMS integration is simply the amount of time integration can take. After all, time spent on integration may mean down time for you, the dealer. Again, in most cases, the integration process can take two to six weeks, depending on the complexity of mapping the data. This time, along with other factors impacting the ease and/or complexity of integration, should be a major deciding factor when choosing a DMS provider.
Solution: Review All Information Before Integration
It’s important to have a plan for your inventory and work closely with your DMS and website partners. Decide how you want your inventory to be displayed on your website and work with your website vendor to begin building your inventory import logic. Your website vendor may assign a coordinator to help you gather this information at the beginning of the website build process.
You should also check with your website vendor and meet with your integration team to ensure that you can complete all necessary steps prior to integration. This may mean that you will have to read and review any integration guides or materials provided by your vendor. Just remember, a little homework upfront can mean the difference between a smooth and difficult DMS transition.
Your DMS provider may also have requirements you will need to complete before integration, not the least of which will be to facilitate communications between your DMS provider and your website vendor. These two parties will be working closely together and you can be the go-between to facilitate communication and the transfer of information.
Lastly, choosing a DMS vendor that offers an API (application programming interface) helps to speed up the entire integration process. An API is a programmatic interface that allows software applications to interact with one another and share resources.
Vendors that have APIs have taken the time to determine an export format for their DMS data and a way for outside parties to access it easily and securely. This will allow your vendor to directly pull your inventory information and map it to their internal data model, before presenting it on your website.
Keep Your Dealership Competitive
Displaying accurate, up-to-the-minute inventory listings on your website is more important than ever. As more shoppers look to complete deals online, DMS integration has the potential to drive shoppers to your site and boost sales, while helping you avoid many of the customer complaints and confusion inherent with inconsistent listings. It’s no wonder that you (and so many other dealers) are eager to have your inventory available to your shoppers, so you can stay on their radar and stay competitive.
Implement the foregoing solutions at your dealership—pick the right DMS provider, keep your data clean and review all information before integration. With a little preparation and the right perspective, you can overcome the problems and pain points that sometimes come with DMS integration and take action to optimize your inventory listings and start reaping the rewards of more personalized, customized digital retailing.