I was on the road earlier this month visiting dealers. As you probably already know, I love to visit our customers. On this trip, however, I had the opportunity to do some cold calls. I usually leave that to our sales team, but I just couldn’t pass a couple of them up while driving past them outside of St. Louis.

I visited a multi-location construction equipment dealer and a multi-location golf car dealer. Both were using an off-the-shelf system to manage their businesses, a package called Sage MAS 90 (also known as Sage 100 Standard). As a CPA (with an inactive license because owning a software business is more exciting), I have always had high regard for MAS 90, but I also know that it is not capable of handling the unique needs of servicing dealers.

There are several important dealer management features that an off-the-shelf program like MAS 90 cannot accommodate:

• The nuances of tracking parts versus units. The fields on these two types of inventory records simply cannot be the same – the way you stock units is completely different from the way you stock parts. Unit ordering changes every year due to new models and configurations. Parts have super-sessions and units don’t.

• Whole goods tracking. Many things can change the value of a unit throughout its time in inventory. Pre-delivery inspections, setup, modifying the configuration, refurbishing used, and tracking attachments are all things that impact the carrying value of a unit. In addition, there are many attachments and configurations that need to be tracked so you know where they physically reside.

• OEM and supplier integration and parts pricing. Major OEMs don’t work with off-the-shelf companies to provide integration with their tools. Many software companies are not open to connecting their system to other types of technology your dealership uses. In addition, the chances of them connecting to online flat rate guides (like the UEDA FRG) are slim to none. These integrations provide a great deal of efficiency to the dealership – anyone who has manually keyed in a 1000-line spring parts order into a parts portal knows what I mean.

• Rental tracking and utilization. Rental is a strange animal for both construction and golf car dealers. Most construction dealers have use tax consequences, capacity concerns, and rent to sell. Golf car dealers rent in large unit groups and regularly swap out units. In addition, they don’t know what unit they will be renting until they literally load the trailer. Off-the-shelf packages have no way to accommodate these differences in how business is run and can’t easily allow for the nuance that you have a rental fleet that not only needs to track specific rental income by unit but also what repair costs and other investments have been made into those units.

While I’ve only named a few differences between an industry-specific business system (like ASPEN) versus off-the-shelf, I could go on and on. Off-the-shelf can serve many industries, particularly manufacturing and service-only. But as I told these dealers whether you look at our system or not, it is a good idea to at least see what is out there for industry-specific systems. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

For more information on how Charter Software can provide the dealer management features you’ll need to meet the special needs of golf car distributors, agricultural, construction, industrial, outdoor power, and powersports equipment dealers please visit our website.