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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

#341

Post by n4r9 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #241
lainga wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a particularly disgusting book called "Competitive Strategy" by Michael E. Porter, that plainly explains how and when to carry out each of the monopoly-preserving actions you have listed

From what (little) I know, Porter's generally considered to be the expert on Strategy. What did you find disgusting about the book?

Not familiar with Porter, but being an expert doesn't necessarily make you ethically untouchable. Warren Buffett for example is well known for investing in companies with aggressively anti-competitive behaviours.

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

#342

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

akira2501 wrote: post #283
mywittyname wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a quiet irony in car dealership networks being fucked like this. They spend so much money ensuring their government-mandated monopoly, only to fall victim to a different kind of monopoly.

> their government-mandated monopoly Anyone can open a dealership, except manufacturers, and it looks to be a reasonable and non discriminatory process. Critically, the government does not mandate the minimum or maximum number of dealerships in an area, so competition is not harmed in any way. This really does not seem like a monopoly issue.

Unpopular opinion: Manufacturers like this model, in the sense that artists "like" ticketmaster.

Dealerships take a lot of inventory and capital risk away from manufactures. Most (unlike Tesla) do not what to deal with retail customers directly.

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

#343

Post by tmcdos »

abtinf wrote: post #146
tejohnso wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

See “Public Choice Theory”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice Or watch the BBC comedy “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” to grasp how government (as well as most large companies) actually works.

Direct democracy (https://klissarov.eu/en/books/platform-of-the-pp-direct-demo...) can change the status quo - if enough people get up from the couch and do vote for it. It just needs to reach a critical mass - but at the moment people are too lazy and wait for someone else to do the job.

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

#344

Post by red-iron-pine »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #145
tejohnso wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not when dealers pay politicians to keep it that way. Even if you ran a petition and forced a state ballot measure, dealers would run a propaganda campaign to make it sound like a pro-Tesla measure.

"they're giving YOUR RIGHTS away to BIG CORPORATIONS. Vote NO on Bill 9928"

when, of course, that very line was funded by large corporations. such is life in Modern America

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

#345

Post by rootusrootus »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #102
n4r9 wrote: post #13

This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...

My entrepreneurial mind immediately thinks: Let's create a better solution to revolutionize this industry and make the old, expensive incumbents obsolete. We can drive to the affected car dealers and migrate them one by one. Of course, I'm not going to do it and it's probably extremely hard :)

People try all the time. The usual problems are 1) CDK doesn't just do the DMS, they have a whole bunch of connected software that interoperates with it, and so you can't just spin up a DMS to compete. And 2) A bunch of the value CDK brings to the table is supporting the business with things like compliance (laws relating to car dealers change constantly, there are teams at CDK which keep up with all of this regulatory stuff as their full time job).

That's my perspective, as someone who has worked at CDK.

If you want something corroborating that, go look at r/serviceadvisors and see why people say they can't switch to anyone from CDK. The tiny dealers are the best candidates for moving, everyone that's reasonably big has too many needs the other DMS providers do not address (yet).

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

#346

Post by rootusrootus »

n4r9 wrote: post #13

This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...

IIRC our market share is closer to 70%. It also includes businesses that people don't usually think of but are broadly similar to car dealerships in business model and therefore can be served with nearly identical software. Heavy equipment, etc.

R&R doesn't have as wide a product offering as we do, and the upstart DMS providers trying to disrupt the market are even narrower than that. For all its problems, CDK is dominant for good reason.

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

#347

Post by rootusrootus »

blantonl wrote: post #49

I bought a new car this weekend and some of the symptoms of this were: * dealer didn't have a good handle on what was available in stock on the lot * anything related to a title for a tradein was massively hampered. * appears USAA's auto insurance online add/replace vehicle on your policy is broken * everything was literally hand written, down to the sales contract I would imagine the impact of this is in the tens of…

> appears USAA's auto insurance online add/replace vehicle on your policy is broken

FWIW, USAA did some kind of upgrade recently and there have been several functions that broke utterly. They had a message for a while apologizing for it. Not sure if it's fixed now, it could be that which you are experiencing and not related to CDK. Or you may be right.

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

#348

Post by rootusrootus »

brian-bk wrote: post #196
blorenz wrote: post #151

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 a…

What are cdk and dms in this context? I'm only familiar with them on AWS

CDK is the company name. Stands for Cobalt (marketing firm that got bought and has since been spun off), Dealer Services (CDK used to be a subsidiary of ADP called ADP Dealer Services), and K (Kerrigan, the international arm of the business, it was spun off).

Should just rename it back to Dealer Services at this point.

DMS, as someone already mentioned, stands for Dealer Management System.

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

#349

Post by rootusrootus »

akskakskaksk wrote: post #202

Crazy how we are talking about this like a weather event, like it's just an unfortunate outage. Cyberattacked by whom? How? What vulnerabilities allowed the intrusion and what organizational processes created those vulnerabilities? Naturally the people who know these answers are very busy today but hopefully we will hear more soon.

> Naturally the people who know these answers are very busy today but hopefully we will hear more soon.

Most of us don't actually know the answer, to be honest. They're not telling 6500 employees what really happened. I know more than you, but not that much more, and I'm definitely not saying anything about it.

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

#350

Post by rootusrootus »

spamizbad wrote: post #4

I know some (former) CDK alumni and I'm not surprised. Notorious for paying below market in engineering and IT. A place to cut your teeth but not to stay.

That's highly variable. In my area of the company the pay is very competitive (and I don't have to worry about any Enterprise Java, as per another comment of yours ;-)). But I don't work anywhere near IT, nor on the DMS.

The real problem IMO is that Brian MacDonald is focused (again, this is his second shot) at squeezing the company for every penny so he can make a buck turning it public again. I hate to see all the work people are doing 24/7, but a little part of me is giddy with the thought that BM is getting bent over hard by this. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

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