Auto Dealer Monthly, June 2017

June 2017 adt magazine com 15 bers for all of your prospective new stores existing equipment including PCs servers switches and routers This allows your IT staff to see among other things how old the equipment is It also tells them which items will need to be replaced sooner rather than later another significant cost many auto dealers dont take into account during the buy sell process Generally the useful life for PCs and servers is about five years For network equipment its seven years Its not unusual to discover that one third to half of all PCs in a dealership need to be replaced which could add up to a significant chunk of change If the seller is reluctant or unable to provide this information you may want to consider sending an IT person to do a mini assessment of their equipment Even a brief visual inspection of the PCs and server room equipment can give them a good idea of what youre dealing with 3 Integration The first part of the integration equation is your existing dealer groups network Is it standardized and built for scalability If your own network has been patched together with different types and brands of equipment its going to make the integration that much more difficult For scalability purposes make sure all your existing networking equipment is enterprise grade and preferably the same brand In dealerships its not uncommon to see consumer grade equipment being used because One of the top complaints I hear from dealers is I just implemented this new technology Its not working properly and my vendor says I need to upgrade my IT network We just upgraded two years ago My response Big sigh This is an all too common problem when dealerships purchase new software systems and applications Most of todays technologies are big fat bandwidth hogs Are you considering one of these Mobile tablet applications for service sales or F I Any third party cloud based application Expanding capacity for vehicle computer system updates Wireless shop tools Any location based technology that tracks customer or employee movements in or around your dealership Not all vendors will be forthcoming about the upgrades youll need until after you sign on the dotted line After all if the vendor told you that youll need to spend 100000 in network upgrades for their technology to work properly you might not be so eager to sign Then you get hit with the news Your internet connection isnt fast enough You need to triple the number of wireless access points Your network switches need to be replaced Seventy percent of your PCs need to be replaced Usually this occurs during the implementation phase but many times dealers dont find out until their employees become frustrated This creates two problems You have lost employee buy in and you still need to upgrade your network Fortunately its easy to prevent this scenario It just takes three steps 1 Know the current state of your IT infrastructure Have your in house staff or an IT firm conduct an assessment of your dealerships network A basic assessment should tell you the current internet speed in megabits per second Mbps whether your dealership has a redundant back up internet connection and the speed of that connection a heat map showing the strength of your current wireless coverage the number of enterprise grade wireless access points you currently have the number type and age of network switches the number of PCs older than five years and how many software applications dealership is running 2 Give the assessment to the vendor Ask if your current IT network will support their technology Dont take Oh sure that should be fine for an answer In fact if that is your vendors answer you should run for the hills 3 Ask the vendor what their minimum IT requirements are First you need to know what type of internet connection they recommend The majority of dealerships need a high speed enterprise grade fiber optics connection Second how many wireless access points will you need About 70 of dealerships have wireless throughout their property Regardless of the size of your store expect to double if not triple the number of wireless nodes Third will you need to update your network switches Historically dealerships have used switches with 100 MB of throughput per switch Todays data demands require switches with a minimum 1000 MB or one Gigabyte of throughput per switch Finally what are the minimum requirements for PCs and tablets to run this technology effectively New applications do not run well on old computers period If your employees are working on PCs older than five years toss them the computers not the employees If your dealership spent money upgrading your IT network in the last three years youre probably wondering why you need to do it again The reason is because you probably only upgraded to what your needs were at that particular time A typical dealership with 80 to 100 employees now has hundreds of connected devices running dozens of applications I always recommend upgrading your network to what your needs will be three years from now Ask yourself How many new software applications or solutions will you be adding or replacing Do you plan to implement mobile tablet technology Will you be migrating from any server based software solutions to a cloud based solution If the answer is to any of these questions is Yes upgrade accordingly WAIT BEFORE YOU SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE 15 MILLION The amount a dealership was fined for using unlicensed software on 300 plus computers SOURCE HELION