Your dealership’s digital workflow can have a significant impact on day-to-day operations, customer experience and overall employee productivity. Building a digital workflow is the process of creating a digitized system to make arduous or time-consuming processes easier and more efficient.

While you can use a digital workflow to streamline nearly any area of your business, there’s one key area where dealerships can benefit most: paperwork. From contracts and wet signatures to repair orders and technician notes, your dealership accumulates thousands of documents over time. What’s more, you need to have copies to comply with state record retention laws. 

These papers can become cumbersome and disorganized, making it a challenge for employees to access what they need, when they need it. As a result, customer experience is negatively impacted and productivity is reduced.

You can’t just get rid of the paperwork, but you can create a digital workflow that transforms your paper into secure digital copies so you can say goodbye to your overflowing file room. Here’s what you need to know to build a streamlined workflow for your dealership paperwork.

Set Up Your Digital Cabinets

Your digital workflow is only as good as the system you use to organize it. Without the proper preparation and execution, employees will lose just as much time looking for paperwork digitally as they did in the storage room. 

Before implementing your new workflow, use the following steps to make sure you’re ready to digitize your paperwork.

  • Determine naming conventions: If multiple departments or dealer locations are scanning files, it’s critical that there’s a clear naming standard in place so everyone knows how files should be organized. 
  • Create internal processes: Answer key questions like, which departments need a scanner? Will there be one person who scans? Will everyone have access? What type of training do we need?
  • Designate a scanning champion: This person is the go-to employee for anyone who has questions about the scanning process. They know how it works, how it’s organized, and can troubleshoot issues. This can also be the person who goes to different dealership locations, if applicable, to help support with implementation. 
  • Decide what will get digitized: You can scan any file, from HR records to accounts payable documents and insurance paperwork, but do you want to digitize all those files? Determine this now so each department is clear on how to handle their paperwork.

Bulk Scan All Your Existing and New Documents 

You likely have overflowing filing cabinets, or even an entire storage room filled with paperwork. When building a digital workflow, you want to make sure everything is easily accessible, which starts with scanning whatever current paperwork the team needs access to on a regular basis. 

Luckily this is quick and easy to do with bulk scanning software, which allows you to scan multiple documents at one time. With the right software, you can even automate the naming and organizing of your files with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. OCR automatically determines the file type and then adds the document name and transfers it to the correct folder for quick, seamless retrieval in one centralized location. 

Once your storage room is scanned into your new document cloud, be sure the entire team follows the new processes you set up to regularly and properly scan all new files. The digital workflow only works if everyone commits to doing their part. If not, you go back to square one, where employees are left digging for paperwork and wasting time in the process.

Sync the Digital Files With Your Existing DMS Platform

Once your paperwork has been scanned into a digital format, the next step is to integrate these files with your DMS. Syncing your virtual file database with your DMS will further optimize your digital workflow because it enables you to access, track, edit, share and collaborate on documents in real time from anywhere.

While this is valuable for internal use, it can also be helpful in client interactions. In the best case scenario, an average car dealership transaction will take about two hours, experts at Autotrader estimate. Imagine how much time your team can save if it’s easy to locate files quickly when working directly with customers. 

Being able to quickly pull up a purchase order, for example, means the customer waits for less time and is ultimately happier with their service. 

Having all of your records in one place is also particularly useful during a warranty audit. Instead of digging through file cabinets to find that one critical piece of paper, you can simply grant the auditor access to the correct digital cabinet. A process that once took hours or days can now be done in minutes. 

Reinforce Online Security Protocols and Infrastructure

In 2021, Volkswagen reported a massive data breach that affected 3.3. million existing customers and potential buyers across North America. This cyberattack was the result of unsecured files in the vendor’s electronic database, causing a leak of sensitive contact information and vehicle purchase documents.  

What can you learn from Volkswagen’s blunder? It’s vital to create and maintain a robust online security infrastructure in order to regulate who can access files and, ultimately, protect both consumer and business data within your digital workflow. 

You also need to make sure the scanning solution you choose to underpin your new digital workflow is encrypted, secure, and run through a reliable network server. SOC 2 compliance is a must. 

SOC 2 compliance for the software vendors you rely on is critical because not every vendor puts a priority on data security. SOC 2 certified vendors, however, have proven that their ongoing data practices are suitable in the long run. Vendors need to pass detailed audits of their policies, procedures, and internal controls for each of the trusted principles to obtain the certification. The certification process, therefore, provides transparency into a vendor’s data security and management, so that you can have confidence that your customers are protected. 

Don’t forget to train your staff on security policies and measures to be taken when accessing this data to minimize human error.     

Optimize Your Dealership Workflow with Digital Transformation

If your dealership is overrun with paperwork and inefficient legacy processes, now is the time to create a seamless digital workflow. This will improve transactions, while making daily operations feel simpler and more manageable as well. The vehicle industry is becoming more virtual, with 30 percent of new car sales in the U.S. last year having taken place online, says automotive retail consultant Alan Haig. Embrace the shift to digital in your own dealership and reap the benefits.