Summer’s here and the Marine and RV markets are at their peak. It’s a busy time of year for dealers everywhere.

But economic uncertainties continue to impact consumer confidence, and forecasts point to the potential for tighter markets ahead. Which means it’s more important than ever for Partners in an industry that depends on discretionary spending to work together to support and nurture mutual profitability.

At IDS, we’ve always taken pride in the strong and stable relationships we’ve developed with our customers. And as we plan for the challenges to come, we’re working to make those relationships even stronger!

We’re making continuous improvements to our Support Department to ensure you get timely, accurate responses to keep your business running at full capacity during the peak season.

And we’re continuing to develop and deliver new products and new integrations designed to improve productivity, increase efficiency, and maximize profits.

For example, IDS offers a full menu of integration points with manufacturers and suppliers, designed to automate repetitive tasks and eliminate duplicate data entry, so you can turn your attention to more important things. Automated integrations are currently available for PO’s, Invoices, and Warranty Claims, to name just a few.

At IDS, we’re dedicated to helping you make every sale, every time. We’re excited about our new and upcoming product offerings and think you will be, too. Your success is our success!

For further details about our products and services, please contact your IDS Sales representative today!

Working together with Brunswick Marine, we both realized that something needed to be done to help out the dealer. For far too long, we both have heard complaints about the tedious nature of certain important dealership tasks, including product registrations, warranty claims submission, part orders and invoices, and part pricing files. It was time for something to be done to help speed up these processes.

Like previously released IDS integrations, including developing a seamless interface with Coachmen's Coach-Link, the combined efforts with Brunswick Marine will completely revamp the way that important dealership tasks are completed. To find out more about the IDS/Brunswick Marine integrations and how they will improve efficiency at your dealership, click the link below!

Ready to make your service operation more profitable? Our latest innovation, Service Scheduler, increases efficiency and productivity by matching job requirements to skill sets. Service Scheduler gives you full control over your dealership’s most perishable asset…a mechanic’s time! With Service Scheduler, you’ll enjoy the ability to schedule by Work Order, entire job, or individual Labor Line using easy ‘drag and drop’ functionality. Service Scheduler also offers Suggested scheduling based on skill sets and availability, plus at-a-glance views of mechanic productivity.

It’s been a while since we released a new version of Astra.  Why the wait?  Because the latest release includes one of our most significant enhancements yet … the new Astra Chart Of Accounts!

Chart Of Accounts (COA) represents a significant improvement for dealers who struggle with General Ledger (GL) consolidation. Whether your dealership uses different GL’s for each location, or shares a single GL across the enterprise, Chart Of Accounts can help simplify your Accounting and Financial Reporting!

Ever wonder what happens when you submit a problem to IDS? Curious why we need certain information to process your issue? It all relates back to the system we use to make sure our customers are taken care of as quickly as possible: The Queue.

• First, when a customer calls, emails or faxes issues into the support department, specific information is retrieved from the customer.
  
• Details such as, dealership name, contact name, phone number, location, menu sequence and actual issue are taken to facilitate a quicker response.
  
• The Help Desk Administrator or HDA locates the dealership in the database and that information is placed into an incident.
  
• Each issue receives a unique incident number and is then saved and sent to a specific team, based on the type of issue needed to solve.

For instance, if John Doe called in from Anytime RV / Marine because they were attempting to post transactions and received an “invalid transaction” message, their information would get entered into the system and sent to the accounting team. Then, an accounting member would be assigned the call and would correct the transaction and contact the customer, letting them know that the issue was taken care of. The “Queue” is our way of keeping track of our customer’s needs and issues. 

Tired of running around at the end of the month trying to figure out if everything is in order? Month end does not have to be a stressful time. Eliminate these headaches by clicking the link below to access Daily, Weekly, and Monthly checklists, as well as tips to use periodically and at the end of the year to make your dealership run as smooth as possible!

Efficiency within all parts of a dealership will generate more profit for the dealership. This is incredibly important in the service department, where your gross profit should be over 70-80%. Proper management, scheduling, status tracking, and customer follow-up on service technicians performance are all key elements of maximizing profitability of your service department. By finding out the best ways to measure service technician efficiency, your dealership will be able to get the greatest effectiveness out of one of the dealership's most underutilized departments.