The new weapons against theft are the black light and a microscope. Law enforcement can now use a black light for quick identification of stolen vehicles or automotive components and a microscope to determine the property’s owner. DataDot Dealer Services (DDS) offers, a theft deterrent system that utilizes a unique microdot identifier that is fitted to 60-80 components of a vehicle.

The Product

DataDots are tiny microscopic discs (microdots), which contain unique information that links property and owners. As small as a grain of sand, DataDots are recognized as being one of the most effective ways of preventing theft, and play a crucial role in the recovery and return of stolen goods.

Single inscribed “microdots” were originally developed by the U.S. military in the 1940s to covertly identify items. It became obvious the tiny plastic discs would be useful for espionage as the grain size message carriers were very easy to conceal and transport. It was not until the early 1990s that microdots became a commercially feasible product. A U.S. engineer, Brent McLaws, was the first to develop a low cost process to inscribe information onto thousands of microdots.

Ounce of Prevention – Pound of Cure

Encoded on polyester substrate, Automotive DataDots can be installed on a production line or in a dealership. Either way, they provide undeniable proof of ownership. The adhesive used to apply the DataDots contain an ultraviolet tracing agent that fluoresces under an ultraviolet or black light, allowing dots to be easily read with a magnifier, but are difficult to detect with the naked eye. Water-based adhesive is clear when it dries and can be applied to any surface. When the adhesive is dry, it is resistant to solvents, road salts and cleaners. A typical vehicle offers many points of application, including the chassis, engine, drive train, exhaust, suspension system and after-market parts, where DataDots can be installed.

All DataDot Automotive Kits sold in the USA are registered on the DataDot International Database with the contact information of the purchaser and the unique PIN of the dots in the kit purchased. In addition, PINs are registered with the Insurance Services Office (ISO) – the most widely recognized database for patrol officers in North America. If a vehicle or part marked by DataDots is stolen, law enforcement can access these databases to affirm an owner and return recovered property.

Thieves are ever changing their approach and instead of stealing an entire car, they steal parts of the car. Catalytic converter theft has risen significantly due to the rising cost of the rare metals. Rental car companies have parts removed by renters and replaced with defective parts of the renter’s personal vehicles with no way to prove otherwise.

OEMs have struggled with warranty fraud for years. DataDots on vehicle parts proves if the part is OEM or not, eliminating warranty fraud from the substitution of expired warranty vehicles. Also, OEMs no longer have to compete against stolen parts and can increase their genuine parts sales.

DataDot USA Inc., currently is the only manufacturer that can manufacture VIN microdots for just-in-time delivery to OEMs anywhere in the world with five manufacturing facilities: Spokane, Washington; Taiwan; Sydney, Australia; South Africa (two plants) and the United Kingdom. The DDS automotive product comes with one to five years of warranty (dealer selected) and has a benefit of $500-$5000 (dealer selected).

Distribution, Sales and Support

In 2004, DataDot Technology (DDT) approached T. Rick Hughes, founder of DDS, to market the product in the U.S. as the exclusive distributor for the automotive industry. As a former employee of Pat Ryan and Associates, Rick had the training, the contacts and the vision to crack the U.S. marketplace. There are now over 100 million microdots on vehicles in the U.S. and the number grows annually.

DDS distributes the product to distributors, agents and major dealer groups. Major distributors are JM&A, EFG, Ethos Group, Ally Financial Services, Resource Automotive, IAS and others. In Canada, Leader Automotive Resources is their primary partner serving over a thousand dealerships.

All distributors are required under contract to provide an A-rated insurer if they choose to underwrite the limited warranty benefit (available for production levels of 15,000 monthly or greater). Assurant Solutions is the current A-rated carrier.

A partnership with IAS, using the SmartPad application, is the most recent addition to the marketing and sales presentation. E-Rating and e-Contracting are offered and there is full menu integration with over 19 menu systems and contracting in English and French, with Portugese, German and Spanish soon to follow is the result of the partnership DDS has with F&I Administrators.

Future Technology

The physical product used by DDS is either a polyester substrate or metal for higher heat applications. New stainless steel microdots are being delivered to a limited number of test sites and DDS expects to manufacture ceramic microdots for extreme heat applications beyond the automotive industry.

As more OEMs mark vehicles as they are produced for sale in the U.S. market, the move to a theft deductible waiver from the OEM and a VSC upgrade or combination will become available.

Today, DataDot Technology (DDT:ASX) is a publically traded company that manufacturers the microdots under the trade name DataDotDNA^®.

TYSONS CORNER – Sonic Automotive Inc. announced that it has built and deployed a mobile reporting app for the iPad and iPhone using MicroStrategy Mobile.

“Mobility and business intelligence are two of our top strategic priorities,” said Heath Byrd, vice president and chief information officer at Sonic Automotive. “Our executive and regional leadership teams live on the road, traveling from dealership to dealership. This app allows them to stay connected to the data they need to run the business.”

Using the new app, Sonic corporate executives and regional teams can access operational, financial and market information for their dealerships, reported F&I and Showroom magazine. The app currently provides a scorecard for each dealership, as well as insight into sales effectiveness and key operating metrics. The app also is used to analyze daily operating results and month-to-date financial results.

“The performance and convenience of our mobile reporting app on the user-friendly iPad and iPhone has been impressive,” said Richard Hanks, director of enterprise business intelligence at Sonic Automotive. “Our executives and regional teams save a great deal of time and gain valuable insights into the business every day. The application was surprisingly easy to develop and we were able to deploy in a matter of weeks.”

Sanju Bansal, chief operation officer at MicroStrategy, added: “Our mobile app platform is easy-to-use and enables companies to quickly build rich, intuitive applications that mirror the way people work.”

With technology being at the forefront of our business processes and being it is such an integral part of how we do business, I thought it would be interesting to see what some of the P&A industry’s product providers are focusing on and what they consider “HOT” for their business for 2011.

Of the companies I consulted with, F&I Express, Innovative Aftermarket Systems, Open Dealer Exchange (ODE) and Provider Exchange Network (PEN) provided me with what their companies are looking into, and in some cases are already working, on for 2011. Although the Automotive F&I industry has experienced quite a bit of growth technologically speaking, by looking at what the participants in this article are focusing on, I think you will agree that we have only scratched the surface of potential uses and capabilities for everyone involved.

Brian Reed with F&I Express confirmed this assumption when he made the following comment, “If someone had asked me in the 2000 when everything in the F&I office would be electronic, I would have replied 2005. Well, this is 2011 and we are still at the early stages of a true e-F&I Office. I think that this year though will be a breakout year, with the market place in general making big steps forward.

Many captives and independent lenders have rolled out or will be rolling out e-contracting for finance and lease contracts. At the same time, most every aftermarket administrator/provider has initiatives under way. As all of the major partners/suppliers for F&I Managers begin offering good electronic solutions, I feel that the F&I Department in dealerships will start rapidly embracing the new processes.”

F&I Express

Brian went on to explain a little about the technology solutions F&I Express offers and where they are looking at improving &/or growing these in their company:

F&I Express provides an e-contracting, e-rating, e-signature platforms for dealers so that they can go one place to process all their F&I Product administrators/providers. Many administrators/providers today offer dealer e-contracting options if they go to the administrator/providers proprietary websites.

The problem is that dealers and the dealer’s agents do not want to go to multiple web sites to e-contract their aftermarket products. We feel that the F&I Express platform solves this problem by providing the dealers an easy process with a great User Interface.

As we are focused on adding administrators and dealers to the F&I Express platform, we are constantly looking at how our technology platform can help dealers have easy, efficient, and effective processes for the processing aftermarket contracts. One of the areas where many dealers, agents, and administrators have been working to increase the sale of aftermarket F&I products is in the service lane. There have been some dealer success stories but also some efforts that have failed.

One of the challenges of selling a product like a vehicle service contract to service customers is the challenge of getting the customer to the F&I office. As new mobile technologies are being embraced by consumers and businesses, we think that they could help offer an additional tool to dealers.

This year at NADA we provided demonstrations of our new iPad F&I Express process. From the iPad the dealer can bring a Repair Order (RO) customer information, get eligible programs, prepare the contract, and then have the customer e-sign the contract on the i-Pad with their finger all in the matte of a couple of minutes. We have been touting the process as a tool to sell product in the service lane but in reality, it provides the dealer to sell the aftermarket products wherever the customer wants. It could be in the service lane, waiting area, showroom, or even out on the lot. We feel that this mobile aspect of F&I Express is another tool that can help dealers in expanding their aftermarket product sales without having to drag the customer to the F&I office.

Innovative Aftermarket Systems

Based on what Matt Nowicki with Innovative Aftermarket Systems (IAS) explained to me, IAS has plans for quite a bit of technological growth which will be a tremendous benefit to current and future customers. Matt explained IAS’s focus in the following excerpts:

SmartTrack Tablet Edition – We originally developed SmartTrac in 2001 and it has been a staple of our software suite since that time. SmartTrac uses video, audio, and other multimedia to present F&I products as an electronic brochure. SmartTrac started as a program intended to run on a standalone PC, but as computers got faster and more accessible, we modified SmartTrac to work on an F&I computer with a dual monitor.

We are now talking the next step in the evolution of SmartTrac by porting it to tablet devices such as Androids and iPads. At the same time we are modifying it to allow users to specify the year, make, and model of the vehicle being purchased which allows the tablet to display content specific to that customer. For example, if the vehicle being purchased is a Mercedes, we show content using Mercedes vehicles. And, obviously, with a Mercedes, repair costs are going to be higher so we tweak the presentations “on the fly” to present something applicable for that type of vehicle.

Electronic Interview – The vast majority of dealers in the United States utilize some form of the “interview/menu method.” But, most of those dealers only handle the menu portion of it electronically using software such as SmartMenu Complete.

We aim to change that approach by releasing a pre-F&I survey/interview which will pose questions to customers and then immediately deliver a “customer profile” to the F&I Manager complete with suggestions on which products have the highest chance of success for this customer and tips on potential ways to sell a given product based on the answers given by the customer. This solution will be multi-faceted: a web-based portal and/or a tablet version for Android/iPad devices.

SmartMenu Complete Administrator Dashboard – SmartMenu Complete offers so much more than just tiered and final menus, including various sales tools, OFAC reports, and identity verification reports. Up until now, most of our administrators (including agents and F&I directors) haven’t had easy to use tools to see how ALL aspects of the menu are being utilized. We are developing a web-based dashboard that will give these power users a plethora of data in easy to understand format.

Open Dealer Exchange (ODE) & Provider Exchange Network (PEN)

I spoke with Sarah Aberlich and Marty Zolan of ODE and with Mark Virag of PEN about what their respective companies are focusing on for 2011.

Open Dealer Exchange and Provider Exchange Network encompass software programs that work behind the scenes. So, many of the wonderful things a dealer can do electronically that so oftentimes are taken granted for are the things that ODE and PEN make possible. All of the data and the information that gets fed into the Dealer Management System (DMS) at the dealership is connected with Lender’s, TPA’s and Insurer’s to make the customer purchase and/or financing transaction flow seamlessly.

Through Credit Application, Contract Data Integration, and eContracting and Funding Packet Distribution, ODE’s focus begins with the Point-Of-Sales system within the dealership itself.

One “hot item” that ODE is focusing on (in conjunction with PEN) is Validation within the various systems. This is so important, especially when so many different documents are involved in eContracting and Funding transactions. Data from credit applications are validated against that entered on contracts which are also validated with information pulled from credit reports and other documentation. The key component here is that Validation is in process throughout the entire deal, not after it’s completed. This allows for changes and/or corrections to be made will before the contracts are signed.

What makes this possible? Real-time Processing! Real-time processing is the key factor in delivering ODE’s products and integration and validation services successfully to their end users. This is where PEN comes into play. PEN is the “behind-the-scenes” to ODE and allows F&I product providers and participating dealers the ability alers point-of-sales system. It does so because it can connect a provider to a variety of dealer systems, including (but not limited to) menu’s, portals, and DMSs.

PENs focus for 2011 is to expand on what is available to both Providers and Dealers and how to make the F&I process run much smoother and more efficient through the use of web-rating systems, eContracting, and access to up-to-date forms. This can be achieved through Validation and Real-Time Interfacing.

The Gist of It

Although we have only looked at what a few companies are focusing on, it seems that the advent of the mobile devices coupled with the internet and real-time processing are placing a demand on software companies that will push the strong and innovative to the forefront of the industry. These changes are necessary however, and are beneficial to everyone from the provider to the customer (and every player in between) through cost savings, efficient processes, and reduction of errors.

As providers and administrators, it is very important that your agents and salespeople who represent your companies and products are servicing the dealer clients well. This can be quite a challenging, almost mountain-high hurdle in the world as we know it today. Over the past few years, many things about doing business in the automobile F&I industry have changed quite drastically and the old way that an agency conducted business just isn’t sufficient anymore.

There are a couple of key ingredients that an agency must have just to get them to the dealer’s desk. First, today’s agent needs to be well versed in marketing your products. Second, the agent must have an offering of back-end profit opportunities, including NCFCs, CFCs, self-funded and retro contracts. Third, the agent must provide or have access to F&I training. Finally, he or she must have good account development and maintain positive relationships in the dealership.

Take your product offering, for example. Most providers now offer high-quality products with excellent A.M. Best ratings, and at an affordable price. Some providers would debate me on this one, but I believe most administrators have figured out how to efficiently take care of customers. But having top quality products and excellent service isn’t enough to catch the dealer’s attention anymore.

The dealers left today have come through the most trying business environment that they have ever experienced. Not only did sales significantly decline, but they also had to live under the fear that their franchise could be taken away. Some of them had their dealership confiscated only to have it handed right back.

Anymore, a dealer can’t afford to be loyal to someone “just because they have been doing business with them for a long time.” Even when an agent thinks he or she is safe, the dealer will make a change just for the sake of it.

So, if you don’t assist your agents and salespeople with the provider/TPA-agent/salesperson-dealer relationship and help them continually and proactively change, they are much more likely to lose their dealer-client base. And, that not only means profits lost, it also involves a very time consuming and difficult process ahead to attempt to re-acquire that lost dealer business.

It’s not good enough to be the best of the best anymore. These company representatives (either external or internal) need to be the only ones who do what they do. They must have world-class quality to compete! They, and YOU, can no longer afford for a dealer to say, “Wow, how that product (service) has changed.” You need them to say, “WOW, I have never seen that before!”

How do your agents and salespeople do this? The answer is INNOVATION. They need to out-innovate the competition! Set themselves apart from others. The providers who assist their agents with this will add value to their proposition, and make them stand-out from other providers and administrators.

So, what should your agents and salespeople focus on to out-innovate their competition? I recommend focusing on three key components:

• Establish a unique brand
• Have a powerful website
• Have the right technology to enhance their offering to the dealer

Establish a Unique Brand

Separating themselves from the competition means establishing a brand that differentiates them from others. An agency’s brand needs to be emotional. It must combine vision, visualization and emotional connection. It should show their entity’s culture, personality, products and services.

A part of brand differentiation is having a powerful logo - one that keeps you visually connected to your customer. The company logo can be a symbol like Nike or Apple.

It can be logotype like FEDEX or a combination of both such as AT&T (see below: click to enlarge).

Here are some examples of agencies that have emotionally connected themselves to their customer (see below: click to enlarge).

Have a Powerful Website

The Internet as we knew it is no longer. Today we have Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Hulu. We don’t just surf the web, we live the web! Companies that differentiate themselves today use their website to attract and retain customers.

Companies that are out-innovating the competition have developed powerful websites using the latest technology. The website is not just an electronic brochure, or a table of contents with no introduction and no brand message. Translation….no foreplay.

What should a good website have:

1. Mission Statement: It needs to be specific as to what you do. The customer shouldn’t be thinking, “What is it exactly that this company does?” This may be your unique selling advantage, such product offering, training available, or services, both via a company representative as well as online.
2. Intuitive Navigation System: It should be easy to maneuver around in the site, and it should be very clear as to where you will arrive when you drill down on an item as well as easy to get back to where you began.
3. Slider intro page: A slider intro page, on the home page, gives the customer intuitive navigation without them doing anything. It cues up important information for the customer. Our website (www.visionmenupro.com) gives you an example of a slider page after you hear the introduction.
4. A great visual experience coming into the website: Give the customer a memorable visual experience with navigation systems, clarity of offering and service that will make the customer stay and want to come back. The presentation should grab their attention immediately with sound and colors.
5. Great Logo: Stay emotionally connected to your customer with your company logo uniquely displayed on your webpage. It needs to say you!
6. RSS Feed Reader: All informational driven websites today have RSS feeds. These are stories or items of information that are of interest. This is a great reason for your website to be a destination for your sales people, agents and dealers alike. ADM Marketing Group has an example of this on the right hand side of their homepage, www.adm-fi.com.
7. TV Capability: Streaming video is very easy to do today. A video on your website allows your company to share messages to those customers who visit your site. Technology is the easy part. All you need to do is provide training videos, product presentations, company president intro messages, etc.
8. Newsletter: A company newsletter will keep your audience connected to you. They can sign up for it at your website, and your website provider should be able to send it out for you for little to no charge. All you have to do is provide the content.
9. Description of your services that differentiate you from your competition: Clearly define the services that you offer. Define them in such a way that differentiates you from others, but don’t make it a laundry list of services. The customer is not going to want to know every detail about everything you do. So be clear and concise!
10. Have logins to your technology tools on your homepage (i.e., Menu, Reporting, Desking, Claims Processing, Online training, etc.): This makes your website THE destination! I would suggest that you even private label your tools so that they have your personalized look and feel.

How do you make your website the destination?

Now that you have that powerful website, how do you get people to come there? Victoria’s Secret was the first company to see the importance of this. In a 1999 Super Bowl commercial, they encouraged viewers to come to their website to see a super model show. The main goal of this ad was not to create awareness for the Victoria’s Secret brand, but to encourage people to log onto the site.

I know that since you are not likely to have a super model show, I should provide you with some suggestions on how you can make your website the destination:

1. Collect e-mail addresses: It should be a primary company mission to collect as many contacts as you can. Contacts should consist of both customers and prospects. We started doing this at The Vision of F&I and VisionMenu from our infancy. We now have thousands of contacts who we can stay connected with. Of course, you’re going to need a tool to categorize your contacts and leads. We use www.salesforce.com, which is a Cisco company.
2. Have an administration person collect e-mail addresses. You would be surprised at how many people will give out an e-mail address when it’s properly asked for. Links to your website: Ask your product providers if they can link your site to theirs. They will probably initially say legal won’t allow it, but keep pursuing them until they relent.
3. Social media links: Do you know where 10 percent of all time on the Internet is spent? Facebook. I personally don’t get it, but it certainly can’t hurt to be socially connected to sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Have the Right Technology to Enhance Your Offering to the Dealer

Below are some examples of the use of technology to enhance website and software capabilities for the dealership (see below: click to enlarge).

Yes, life as we know it in the automotive F&I business has changed. It is not enough to offer great products, services and training, or to simply ‘maintain’ existing relationships. Your agents and salespeople need to WOW their dealer clients. They need to say, “WOW, I have never seen that before!” And an agency needs to say of their provider, “WOW, that’s different!”

You can do this by helping out-innovate your agent’s & salespeople’s competition. You need to have a unique brand, and you need the right technology tools that will help your salespeople and dealers make more money!

In the environment that we are in today, only strong, innovative companies will survive. The others will wither away…

As F&I product providers and administrators continually work to improve and streamline their operations, technology solutions are driving the latest evolutions in the industry. Patrick DeMarco, president of Ristken Software Services, spoke with P&A Magazine about the technological advances he’s seen in the past few years and Ristken’s efforts to lead the way in the future.

Q. How do you add value to your clients?

We consider ourselves a technology service provider, which powers the forward-facing agenda of our customers. We have two elements to our business: our service application business (F&I menu and F&I reporting) and our e-business solutions. We take our customers’ process and technology requirements as they relate to e-rating, e-contracting and e-remittance and build an appropriate e-business solution. While there are elements of each customers’ solution that are similar, much of it is customized and driven by what our customers want to provide their dealers.

Q. Looking back over the past few years, how have your processes changed?

Our processes have evolved because the markets evolved and our customers’ needs for technology have changed. The appetite and requirements for technology to drive a dealership’s business and a service provider’s business has grown and evolved. Technology is so much more relevant in the dealership today.

We’ve gone from essentially providing applications like menu and reporting tools to being more partner driven. We take our customers’ business needs, apply our technology solutions and make them more efficient in their operation. We’ve obviously had to grow and make improvements to our technology.

Q. Looking forward, what changes do you see in the near future?

We’re going to continue to see the requirements for technology continue to grow. Providers and administrators are going to demand more robust, efficient solutions and technology will have to be taken to another level to meet those needs. I only see growth and greater appetites for bringing new technology to dealerships.

Fortunately, we are now seeing great acceptance at the dealership level for technological advancements. Dealerships are showing that they have the ability to change culturally from paper forms to electronic forms. Dealers have not only accepted, but, in many cases, really embraced new technology.

Q. Ristken has been developing product rates, electronic forms and electronic remittance for a couple of years now. Have there been any challenges in the evolution of e-business services?

We definitely encountered some pitfalls. There’s a bit of customization to what each provider wants to do, so scalability is challenging at times. You can’t build something for Service Provider A and rubber stamp it for everyone else to use.

Some of the biggest challenges have involved understanding customers’ requirements and business processes and truly becoming an integrated partner with our customers. Building an appropriate e-business solution requires us to understand their needs and how they want to service their dealers.

We’ve also had to get our clients to understand what integration is and to start looking beyond the basic menu with some sort of electronic rates attached, which everybody has. The e-business solutions that we’ve built can be used with our menu or they can be used as a standalone system. The dealerships don’t have to use our menu and they don’t even have to be sold in F&I. For example, they can be sold in the service drive. There’s been a need for education in the marketplace to try to differentiate how we handle e-business and how we build it and how we work with our customers. The message is definitely getting through as we have seen a surge in demand for our e-business solutions just in the last quarter. Companies are understanding that they need these types of solutions to stay competitive.

For service providers, this is not their core focus. A lot of them decide they’re going to build their own e-business and host their own forms and there’s a lot more to it than they might think. We try to educate them about the issues they really have to consider. The following are important questions that must be asked: Are you building a system that your dealers will actually use? Do they have to use it with certain menu providers?

Q. Compare the efficiency of development and the ability to consume technology related to e-rating, e-contracting and e-remittance.

E-rating is the easiest for service providers to get their arms around because it can be viewed as an iterative process. We’re starting to see strong evolution from paper rate books to an electronic format regardless of whether that is integrated into a menu application or on a standalone system. The process of making service providers’ rates available to the dealer electronically is most prevalent right now.

The electronic contracting piece is interesting because it has gone in a couple different directions. There are service providers who say “we’ve got our own forms library and anybody who wants to electronically contract can do that and we can do it ourselves.” A company like Ristken can either build an entire back-end e-business solution and host all forms or build web services that allow our system to communicate directly with the service provider.

We’re starting to see more and more e-contracting and dealers are becoming more accepting because there are efficiencies realized both at the dealership level and service provider level. Ford has been out in front and other OEMs are starting to take initiatives. A lot of them have it on the retail contract side, but then they don’t necessarily have it on the F&I product side.

E-remittance is different because many providers don’t have a system set up to be able to accept electronic remittance. This functionality requires some business intelligence and business process about how exactly the provider wants these forms remitted. For example, what constitutes a finalized contract? Quite frankly, a lot of service providers are not technically able to receive electronic remittance at this point. Right now, it’s often a hybrid: they may do full electronic rating and contracting and their remittance is still manual. I anticipate that in the next 24 months – and hopefully even sooner – we’re not going to be having these conversations and everyone is going to be paperless. We’re not going to be sitting here in five years talking about printing out contracts and using the mail or a fax machine.

Q. Are dealers on board with e-remittance if service providers could accept it?

If you build a system in which there is ease of use at the dealership level, they will use it. Dealers are thriving and seeing efficiencies in their business operations because of e-business initiatives, whether it’s just e-rating or the full gamut of rating, contracting and remittance. I don’t anticipate that that’s going to do anything but grow. Dealers, if provided the opportunity to sell a service product that they can electronically rate, electronically contract and electronically remit, they’re going to lean toward selling those products rather than the products of a service provider that doesn’t offer those types of technologies. I think it’s becoming the competitive nature of the marketplace that service providers that are able to provide those types of efficiencies are ultimately going to win.

Q. How do you see mobile technology fitting in to menu and reporting applications?

Mobile technology is definitely something to pay attention to. We’re currently working on some applications related to reporting, so I absolutely think you’re going to see growth along the lines of mobile devices and mobile applications. What mobile devices can do today versus 12 months ago is amazing.

The applications we’re working on will allow an F&I manager or dealer to review any reports that we have via our F&I reporting tool on their smart phone. The industry is starting to realize that tomorrow’s F&I manager is sitting in a college dormitory right now and will never accept the current technologies that are provided in the F&I office of a dealership.

Q. Where do you see the business of menu and reporting evolving?

There are two parts to this answer that are interconnected. The first consideration is the business of menu and reporting as it relates to DMS integration. If you’re not in a certified program with a DMS provider, then your applications and your ability to have consistent delivery to your customers (i.e., service providers or dealers) is going to be jeopardized. The certification of the DMS is going to be critical to the ability to deliver a consistent application to dealers. Back-door integration can put customers in jeopardy and the companies using that approach are going to be short-lived in the industry.

The second piece in this evolution is a greater focus on the reporting aspect and the ability for service providers and dealers to use reports in a way that we can better drive the operations of their business. Menus have become more of a commodity because you either believe in the menu selling process or you don’t and you either put that process in place or you don’t. I think dealers and service providers are going to require any vendor to provide a full, comprehensive F&I reporting system whether a menu is in place or not.

DETROIT – Ford’s growing reputation as a technology-driven brand is helping the automaker wring more money out of every car it sells, the automaker’s vice president of product development, Derrick Kuzak, said today.

During a speech to an auto electronics show here, Kuzak said Ford’s average revenue per vehicle jumped 14 percent from 2008 to 2009, to $26,100, Automotive News reported. He attributed roughly one-third of the increase to new technologies such as the Sync in-car communication system, which gives drivers hands-free ability to operate the media system and mobile devices.

“Technology has been fundamental to our improved brand and business,” Kuzak said.

Other reasons for the increase in revenue per vehicle, he said, are improved pricing and more customers opting for pricier trim levels.

Kuzak said one-third of people who bought a Ford, Lincoln or Mercury said the Sync system helped sway their decision. He said Ford will continue to use technology as a differentiator – including its new MyTouch system, which runs on the next generation of the Sync platform.

MyTouch, now offered on the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX crossovers, provides navigation, entertainment, Bluetooth and climate controls all connected through a touch screen.

Kuzak said Ford plans to offer MyTouch on 80 percent of its vehicles within five years, including the 2012 Focus.