I can not tell you over the last 16 years of operating this business, how many dealers have told me they don’t have the time or desire to get a customer’s full name, address and phone numbers when all they want to do is sell something and get them out the door. I’m going to try to give you a few reasons why you should always collect a customer’s data and a few ways to engage the customer in the collection of that data.

A few very important reasons why you should always have a customer’s data is being able to view purchase history, help them out if they lost a receipt and need to return a product, identify repeat customers quickly and automatically even though you might not have ever met them, help a wife out when she needs to purchase something for her husband’s birthday and doesn’t know exactly what type of unit he owns, allowing the customer to login to the system and check their own service tickets and sales history, aid in sales campaigns. I’m sure there are more reasons I’ve left out but that is a good start. The point is, there are many reasons why this information is important to have and it should always be collected.

So the most common reason I get for why it can’t be done? Time of course. So lets address time and see where it all falls in the big scheme of things. To do this, lets first take a look at the amount of time it takes to collect the data. The important data needs to first be identified and recognized: Phone Number, First and Last Name, Address and Zipcode. These are the core parts of any customer’s data that should be collected and stored. However, if you are not on board with all this yet, maybe you could eliminate the address and zipcode and only collect a name and phone number. This is better than nothing, and you can grow from there. Another key component that I’d like to add is an email address.

Email addresses are probably the handiest thing to have with Lizzy™ because she will automatically notify them on all sorts of occasions, such as special order parts arriving, service ticket completion, sending invoice copies electronically instead of constantly printing them, and allowing them to login, if you wish, to check their own accounts. All of this is automatic, free, and built into Lizzy’s™ everyday processes so why not take advantage of them?

To collect the above information from a customer might take you a total of 1 extra minute, and only the first time they arrive. Afterwards you only need their name to locate the record in question and place them on the invoice. So I’d have to say the argument of time really doesn’t hold up well if that truly is your excuse. Next, lets take a look at the second most used argument, which is: “The Customer Won’t Give It To Me”:

Collecting this information doesn’t need to be presented to the customer as a pain or problem. It needs to be presented as a cool new tool that you have that engages the customer at the point of sale. After all, we do want this person to return to our store don’t we? Lets start with their very first moment at the counter. Here are just a few examples of things you could do to make this a fun process that gets you the needed data and gets your customers something as well. How about a monthly contest where you randomly pull a person from a hat and give away a $25.00 gift card? People like free things and Lizzy actually comes complete with your random selection tool to quickly find a customer and give away the gift. This gives them a very good reason to participate and provide their information and gets people back in your store to buy things that might not have come back at all.

You should provide your sales counter people with a whole list of reasons why the customer’s information is important, not to you, but to them. Use a few of the ones mentioned above and make up your own as well. You don’t need a whole list, just a few to make your point. You need to start making this an important part of every sale. It also helps your employees to start remembering names of people that frequent your store and lets management recognize people that they might want to give discounts to since they come in so often. This can even be done from home at night while everyone else is sleeping..

So even though the General Customer type is available for you to use, I personally hope you never do.

–glenn hancock

Speaking of Departmental Accounting: Instead of having a separate system that deals with Departmental processes, Lizzy’s™ are all part of the GL routines. This means that just like the GL requirements to balance before completion, the Departmental hits are also kept in line and integrated with everything else. So if there are any problems along the way that would cause something to go out of balance, Lizzy™ will report it to you ahead of time instead of you constantly wondering why your reports don’t match.

This release was so large in comparison to earlier releases that the version has now been moved to 2.2.0.1. Now that the system has had its last major module completed, we are now free to start knocking out all the smaller cool stuff we’ve been dying to get to. Things are really going to start hopping now.

Lastly, the Lizzy™ Learning Center now contains 100% of the Administration and Service Department videos. I am now working through the Major Unit Sales and Finance Departments and hoping to knock out Accounting within the next few weeks. This system is going to greatly increase the level of our users abilities and we can’t wait for everyone to start using it. Another aspect that we’re excited about as well is the fact that new customers are going to have a much shorter learning curve when compared to other systems on the market.

2.2.0.1 Release Notes

Stay tuned, as we’re just getting warmed up.

–glenn hancock

Imagine a system that allows you to take a new hire, have him/her receive training before ever reporting to work, take tests and be evaluated as to whether they are a good fit within your organization, and to be efficient at their job before showing up for work the first day. Something that they can refresh their skills and learn while not at work or that would allow you to do initial training all at once for all departments instead of having to wait for a trainer to get to each person.

This new online video training center is just that. In its first form it breaks training down between departments so that employees don’t have to dig through tons of manual pages to find what they’re looking for. They login, go to their department and they are presented with only the training necessary to do their job related functions.

We’ve taken all of the things that have worked best for us over the years of training hundreds of businesses, to structure the new video learning system. Here are just a few things the new system brings to the table:

All videos are quickly updated to reflect the latest changes and processes within the application. No need to worry about trainers telling someone the wrong thing to do.

All departments can train simultaneously, allowing a much faster conversion process from an older system to Lizzy. We think this will reduce training to 1 week for the complete dealership instead of months using the older methods.

Evaluation processes for individual employees as they progress through the training with live feedback as how they’re doing. This allows them to identify quickly which videos they need to re-watch and get the most out of their training.

Our goal with this new learning system is to provide a learning experience on par with the system itself. I mean, why not provide the best learning experience for the absolute best system? So look for the new learning system rollout in the next few weeks and as usual, give us feed back so that we can continue to improve it going forward.

Lots of things are about to start happening so make sure to stay tuned!

–glenn hancock

After searching the web and researching possible programming languages such as Flash, JAVA, Silverlight, C#, ASP and so forth, we finally settled on using standard HTML/Javascript processes. This enables us to run literally on any device supporting a browser, cuts down on the complex processes needed on the client side and throwing in a huge helping of AJAX, enabled us to pull off an OS level feel, right from inside the browser. The AJAX processes also sped up the overall solution to a point that we hadn’t thought possible at the time.

To be clear, Lizzy™ is probably one of the first 100% AJAX solutions found anywhere on the Internet. There isn’t a single thing found in Lizzy™ that isn’t pulled up as needed, including the menus themselves. This is the primary reason you will NEVER press the back button while using Lizzy™.

Next up, we knew that we were not ever going to farm out programming to another country. We wanted our programmers all on staff and in sight so that if a problem were to arise we could deal with it the way it should be dealt with. So NONE of our programming now or in the future will ever be conducted outside of our offices.

To the Clouds!
Cloud computing is everywhere these days. Salesforce.com, Sugar CRM, Amazon, Google, everyone is using it. So what exactly is it? Why is it called a cloud and what are the benefits and downfalls you’ll see if you use it? After a lot of research and soul searching, here is what we came to.

First, its called a Cloud because just like a real cloud you can’t really touch it. Its made up of all sorts of software written by all sorts of people and found all over the world.

Benefits include: you not having to write as much software because someone else somewhere else has already done the work for you. You just tap into what they’ve accomplished and put together a custom package that works just the way you wanted.

However, in reality it isn’t really that simple, and those that have jumped in head first have already discovered it. To help explain lets take a look at a typical development environment. We have 5 developers working together in the same office. Each has their own personality, their own beliefs and their own way of doing things. If any of you reading this have employees of any type you’ll understand where I’m headed. Trying to keep these people working together daily without ever having a problem is almost impossible. Eventually they will have issues with each other and you will have to deal with it. But hey, at least we can all sit down like adults and work through the issues. And of course, in the end, you’re the boss, so you can lay the law down if need be.

Now lets take a look at the Cloud. With the Cloud you have no control over the individual pieces that you’ve used to make up your solution. Which means if the guy from India decides to make a minor tweak to his code to make it run better, it may just kill the interface between it and other applications that you’ve selected to use. Of course you could try to call the guy, but he really could care less of your issues as he works for free and is just doing this out of the goodness of his heart. So its doubtful that you’ll get far with that approach.

So the next step is to hire a developer to help you keep things working together. This works for a while but as you add more modules you find that one developer is not enough and eventually decide that you need to hire a firm of developers to help manage the project. In the end, you have the same issues as before but on a larger scale. Because each piece of the project is designed by different people with not only different beliefs, but different views of life as a whole and that live on different parts of the globe, it becomes overwhelming to try to keep it all patched together. If you think this might not be true then look into why Salesforce.com started an entirely new division of their company just for this purpose.

For these reasons, nizeX, Inc. decided up front that all of our programming and development services would be internal. All of our modules that make up the system were all written 100% by our staff and supported by representatives that work hand in hand with our developers. In the end, this allows us to provide the MOST integrated solution on the Internet today. Our developers touch almost every aspect of the system which insures that if a new element is added to the inventory module, that the Invoicing and Purchasing sections are aware of it and can deal with it.

Our CRM system has access to information in real time with any other module that it needs. From Sales History to Order Shipments. This doesn’t mean we pass information back and forth between modules that require an integration path, it means because they all live in the same domain that they can directly access the real data whenever they need it.

So before you move to a cloud based solution, do the research and give Lizzy™ a try. We’re more than confident you’ll immediately see the difference.

–glenn hancock

We are setting up to do a presentation next Thursday with members of our DPAC (Dealer Product Advisory Committee) group to go through all things F&I. The goal is to get feed back on how the product works and to identify anything that might be missing. I will post back once the meeting is over to list the results and the response we receive from the members.

Everything is looking really good and you can see the excitement starting to surface with everyone here at nizeX, Inc. and SSI about finally having everything ready to go. It’s been a long 4 years working on this project and I for one am really excited about having Lizzy™ already installed in a number of dealerships and the reaction we’re getting back. The fact that F&I is about to be rolled out just puts me over the edge.

There is still a lot of work to get done, but most everything remaining is mainly cleanup and adding some of the advanced processes that don’t get used very often. We’re also working on converting over the first TBA customer so will be reporting back the progress on that as we proceed.

Training on the new system has also begun internally as we start the transition from TBA to Lizzy. We will still be supporting TBA going forward but you’ll start to see more of the staff able to assist with Lizzy as well. We have a lot going on at the moment and all is very exciting.

On a side note: I’ve been stuck in a closet writing code for the last 10 years or so and have lost the contact with a lot of you that I use to have. While I’ve obviously gotten a lot done in that closet, its been really nice getting let out and meeting up with some of you guys again. I’ve been conducting demos almost every week with new and old dealers and its been refreshing having the discussions and hearing the input first hand. Its also been really nice having one of you asking for something new in Lizzy and being able to deliver it to you a few days later. Anyway, just wanted to thank you guys for standing behind us on the leap forward and assure you that we are listening and we are going to continue to provide THE product everything else compares to. Lizzy™ is the most exciting solution I’ve ever had the privilege to work with and my development and support teams couldn’t be better.

Since I’m getting so gushy here I want to also thank my development team for sticking with me these last few years. Its been really stressful taking on this project and you guys rock. Every member of the team fits a need perfectly and we wouldn’t be where we are if we missed even one of them.

Ok, I’m through with my speech, you guys have a great day and we’ll be in touch soon. Things are going to start moving really fast from this point forward.

–glenn hancock