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Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

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Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#151

Post by blorenz »

Oh boy, has this made issues and opportunities for my automotive B2B SaaS. My product's customer are car dealerships and most of my customers are on CDK. This is definitely creating a void of data for them though fortunately my product won't fail without the expected DMS data. In terms of opportunity, dealers had paperwork that would be generated for the F/I department from CDK which I was able to port into my SaaS and prefill with data we can capture at the time of sale. All the praise is due for FOSS like `pdf-lib` that I was able to incorporate in a matter of a few hours. All the disdain for Adobe Acrobat Pro which fought me tooth and nail when converting their paperwork to fillable PDF forms ( - if you're the Product Manager on that then please get a UX audit of it!) Currently, we are supporting our CDK dealers in this critical time by getting them paperwork filled and printed to keep the car buying experience going.

Also, we're hiring! I could use another solid dev and a solid designer that wants to create a delightful experience out of an awkward wait time in dealership. Challenges abound but persistence prevails. Primary stack includes React, Remix, Xstate, Remotion, Framer motion, Python, Django, Graphql. Contact devs@zipdeal.com if interested and we can go from there.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#152

Post by pjmorris »

For about ten years, I've theorized that we will see the rise of 'boutique' doctor, dentist, and law offices that keep only paper records for the sake of the privacy of their clients.

There are a bunch of problems that connection and automation bring with them, the rise of digital monocultures seems to be one of them.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#153

Post by recursive »

bee_rider wrote: post #71
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow sounds awful for them. They might have to get up from their desks.

They might have hundreds of cars and not every feature is immediately visible.

Say it takes 5 minutes to manually enumerate all the features of a car. This seems more than generous. An intern can go through 12 cars per hour at this rate. This is a major inconvenience, but it doesn't sound like a thing that would completely disrupt business.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#154

Post by kevingadd »

itsoktocry wrote: post #43
kevingadd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, because in theory the requirement for independent dealerships could promote competition - they can compete to offer the lowest markup over MSRP, offer different addons, or offer better service. Just like going to a specialist shop for computer parts or audio gear or whatnot. But instead we ended up with a system where car dealerships basically own local lawmakers and got laws passed that not only pr…

> But instead we ended up with a system where car dealerships basically own local lawmakers and got laws passed that not only prevent the manufacturer from competing with them, but make it really hard for people to start new dealerships to compete with them. There are practical reasons for this. People buy expensive items and expect to be able to get those items maintained and serviced. If the business was cutthroat,…

Yes, I've bought cars a couple times, and also had to trade-in cars. Every dealership experience I had was drawn-out misery where they tried to scam me. Maybe it depends on where you live?

Carmax was fairly OK in comparison to my experience with dealers but still took like 8 hours.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#155

Post by tracker1 »

tejohnso wrote: post #140
PaywallBuster wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> direct manufacturer auto sales are prohibited in many states by franchise laws requiring that new cars be sold only by independent dealers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes not a monopoly per se, but "forced demand"

Doesn't just about everyone hate dealing with a dealership? Shouldn't it be very easy to vote to fix that in a democracy?

It depends. Most jurisdictions allow for a ballot referendum to put measures to a popular vote. This has gotten more difficult with signatory requirements that have gotten larger in most states, mostly orchestrated to keep the dominant parties in power and limit grass roots efforts in general.

Going through existing congressional process means getting at least a champion on board and overcoming dis/misinformation from many insider corporations, often large local donors.

edit: From my understanding,successful campaigns via referendum tend to cost anywhere from $2-20 million usd. Often involving paid signature gathering and local advertising.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#156

Post by kristjansson »

sureIy wrote: post #60
metalliqaz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you go too far. I too have a deep dislike for dealerships, but they are not useless. Specifically, it's a place you can go to test drive cars and they have OEM-certified garages for warranty repairs. Can't test drive when you buy online. I think the main problem with dealerships is the government granted monopoly. If a dealership is in a region, most states prevent any other dealership from setting up shop in…

To be fair, how many copies of one car do you need? Once you got 15 models on display you should be good to go for testing purposes. You don’t need a parking lot with a hundred cars.

Some people want to buy a car _today_. Lots of people want to buy a car this week. Fewer people have the patience and funds to pay and wait for car on order.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#157

Post by codemac »

bilsbie wrote: post #12

I think every process needs a paper backup. There’s just no telling when something will be down. If you run a SAAS you could offer this as a feature. Even hire data entry people to input transactions later if needed.

You can price this relatively quickly, and see that it's probably not worth it.

~1 week outage once every ~5 years, let's say you lose 100% of revenue that week, that's 0.38% of revenue. Now most likely they're not losing 100% of revenue, demand for cars is not very elastic... it starts to get pointless all around.

Which is frustrating for consumers, but the profit for perfection isn't usually there.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#158

Post by SoftTalker »

recursive wrote: post #153
bee_rider wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might have hundreds of cars and not every feature is immediately visible.

Say it takes 5 minutes to manually enumerate all the features of a car. This seems more than generous. An intern can go through 12 cars per hour at this rate. This is a major inconvenience, but it doesn't sound like a thing that would completely disrupt business.

A smart intern would take photos of the window stickers, OCR them, put them in a Google drive folder, and salespeople could then search them. Could be done as fast as walking from car to car.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#159

Post by iso8859-1 »

ThalesX wrote: post #47

I was involved in the building of the 911 system for my country. When doing that, we had to design it with this in mind. If the system ever fell down, the operators had standard templated papers they would fill, and once the system would be back up they would add the case data back in.

Why say "my country"? There are less than 300 countries world wide, people should know all of them.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#160

Post by hot_gril »

pjmorris wrote: post #152

For about ten years, I've theorized that we will see the rise of 'boutique' doctor, dentist, and law offices that keep only paper records for the sake of the privacy of their clients. There are a bunch of problems that connection and automation bring with them, the rise of digital monocultures seems to be one of them.

I rented from a small landlord office, they were using Windows XP long after dropped support and got infected with ransomware.
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