As we’ve discussed in previous articles in this series, adopting a dealer intelligence platform can significantly enhance a dealership’s operational efficiency, strengthen customer relationships, and drive better decision-making. Whether you’re considering implementing such a platform for the first time or exploring alternatives to your current system, it’s important to consider how you’ll evaluate its effectiveness once it’s in place.
Understanding key factors and metrics of the platform– such as ROI, customer satisfaction, turn rate, and other crucial metrics – can help you not only choose the solution that’s best aligned with your dealership’s long-term goals, but also assess the value of your software investment after implementation.
Here, we’ll look at what factors and metrics you should monitor to ensure you are getting a good return on your software investment.
Software performance monitoring categories
To accurately evaluate the performance of their dealer intelligence platform, dealers should analyze key categories that reflect alignment with your dealership's goals. Looking into metrics such as customer engagement, sales performance, operational efficiency, and data quality help provide insights into how effectively the platform drives customer relationships, streamlines internal processes, and enables accurate decision-making.
By drilling down into a few distinct categories to monitor, dealerships can gauge how the platform is impacting their day-to-day operations and long-term strategy. Focusing on the right metrics will highlight areas where the platform excels and help identify opportunities for improvement.
Key performance metrics to monitor
As you consider adopting or upgrading a dealer intelligence platform, it's a good idea to think ahead about how you'll monitor its performance to ensure it aligns with your dealership's goals. If you are in the decision-making stage, ask your software vendor if they provide tools and tips to measure the metrics included below. Once your platform has been set up, establishing a plan and schedule for tracking key metrics can provide clarity on how it is impacting your dealership and guide informed decision-making.
Here are just a few tips when it comes to performance monitoring:
Monitoring your platform’s performance on a monthly basis can provide insights into short-term trends and operational changes, while quarterly and yearly comparisons can uncover broader patterns like seasonal trends and growth patterns.
To accurately assess your platform’s added value, benchmark these comparisons against both your dealership’s historical performance as well as the results of previous software systems or manual processes you’ve been employing.
Organize reports into clear, accessible dashboards set up to align with your dealership’s priorities to allow stakeholders to quickly interpret data and make informed decisions.
For metrics like employee adoption, customer engagement, and sales performance, frequent monitoring (weekly or bi-weekly) can help identify any issues early on, while metrics related to operational efficiency and customer satisfaction may require less frequent but more detailed evaluation when enough data has been collected to analyze.
Customer engagement
Engagement metrics help dealers understand how effectively they are connecting with customers and identify opportunities to improve communication, tailor experiences, and anticipate their needs. While there are a number of ways to improve engagement, the first step is understanding whether engagement measurements are positive, negative, or flat.
Response time: What is the average time it takes for team members to respond to customer inquiries or follow up on leads? A faster response time indicates a streamlined communication process, while a slower response time means that you may need to enable automated responses or follow-up notifications so employees can take quicker action.
Customer retention rate: What percentage of your sales is from repeat business? Increased retention rates signal higher customer satisfaction, while decreased or flattened retention rates might mean you need to take actions that will improve the customer experience.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): Are your customers demonstrating their satisfaction? The CSAT score measures customer satisfaction through feedback, often after service or sales interactions. If you aren’t already using this metric, learn some ways to
measure and analyze your customer satisfaction score.
Net promoter score (NPS): Are your customers recommending your dealership? This score measures how likely customers are to recommend a dealership to others, reflecting their overall experience with the dealership. Learn how to
calculate and measure your NPS score.
Contact after sale: Refers to maintaining communication with a customer post-sale to ensure their ongoing loyalty and potentially generate future business. This has a strong correlation with NPS and can be measured by calculating discrete efforts your teams are taking to reach out to customers by phone, email, or text messages.
Troubleshooting engagement issues:
Low customer response rates: Are your follow-ups and messages being sent at the right time and frequency, and are they personalized to customers’ needs? Using software tools like
customer text messaging can help your team meet customers where they are and improve conversion rates. Additionally, enabling automated reminders on a sale after it is settled keeps sales reps accountable when it comes to follow-up engagement efforts.
Declining retention or loyalty: Are you using the platform to set reminders for timely follow-ups and promote equipment your customer might be interested in? Ensure that you are effectively leveraging your
Dealer CRM by connecting purchase history and inventory preferences so that you know which customers to engage and when to contact them.
Sales performance
Evaluating sales performance is critical to understanding how effective dealership teams are at closing deals, managing leads, and maximizing deal opportunities. Understanding these metrics alone will not necessarily improve sales, but it will help you understand where your weak links are and what measures to take.
Lead conversion rate: What is the percentage of leads that result in sales? This metric can indicate how effective your platform is at helping move prospects through the sales pipeline. Your dealer intelligence platform should have automation that puts leads in front of sales teams; ensure that these automations are enabled so that all leads are promptly followed up on.
Sales cycle length: What is the average time from initial contact to sale? This metric indicates how streamlined and impactful your sales funnel is. While you cannot always speed up the sales cycle, by making use of your software’s pipeline management and lead nurturing tools, your sales team can head off customer attrition and minimize lost business to competitors.
Quote-to-close ratio: How many of your dealership’s sales quotes are converted into actual sales? These numbers reveal insights into pricing strategy, sales effectiveness, and your software’s ability to help increase close rate.
Average deal size: What is the average revenue per sale? This metric can indicate whether your software is helping sales teams upsell or cross-sell products. Because your dealer intelligence platform connects your customer and inventory data, your sales teams can recommend higher-value machinery and attachments according to a customer’s purchasing preferences.
Troubleshooting sales performance issues:
Lack of visibility into sales team performance: Are you using the sales data to identify top performers and areas where additional training is needed? Utilizing your platform’s
sales pipeline management tools is critical to managing sales teams and giving sales reps proactive steps to close deals.
Ineffective lead nurturing: Is the platform segmenting leads accurately based on interest and engagement level? Are workflows set up to ensure consistent touchpoints with leads throughout the sales funnel? Check that your software’s
inbound marketing lead tools are being properly utilized.
Operational efficiency
Operational efficiency directly impacts productivity, cost management, and customer satisfaction. Evaluating improvements in efficiency allows dealers to identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and optimize resource allocation. Because most inefficiencies can be quickly identified, this is one category where more frequent monitoring is recommended.
Task completion rate: How many routine tasks or follow-ups are completed on time? Do your teams apply automations for follow-up reminders on finished tasks? This metric demonstrates the platforms’s impact on managing workflows and ensuring accountability for taking the next steps.
Inventory turnover rate: How quickly is inventory sold and replaced? While not a direct indication of the software’s effectiveness, this metric helps dealerships assess how well the software manages inventory demand and turnover.
Sold, not invoiced: How much revenue is tied up in sales that have not yet been invoiced? Tracking this metric highlights potential bottlenecks in the purchase order (PO) and invoicing process, helping dealerships identify and address delays in converting sales into recorded revenue. This can also spotlight gaps in PO workflows, which, when resolved, expedite revenue recognition and reduce carrying costs on inventory. With higher interest expenses, minimizing these delays is increasingly critical to financial efficiency.
System integration integrity: Are the software’s integrations working properly to provide accurate data? Integrations should make processes smoother and faster when dealing with data in other systems, and this will be reflected both in the accuracy of the data and the speed at which it is transferred. A dealer intelligence platform should provide access to near real-time data from quote, dealer management system (DMS), and other dealer systems.
Troubleshooting operational efficiency issues:
Ongoing workflow bottlenecks: Are you using the platform to map out and automate repetitive tasks to reduce manual inputs? Dealer intelligence platforms include task automations, some of which may need to be activated for specific tasks, including
trade assessments,
PO and invoicing, and
equipment inventory searches.
Data entry and maintenance issues: Are team members consistently inputting and updating data in the platform to maintain accuracy and enable effective automation? Although integrations and automations can reduce errors and inefficiencies, your platform relies on sufficient and accurate user-input data to function properly.
Financial metrics
Financial metrics help provide a clear picture of profitability, cash flow, and overall business health. Monitoring these metrics helps dealers track revenue trends, manage expenses, and make informed decisions about pricing, inventory, and investments.
Revenue per customer: What is the average revenue generated per customer? Similar to “average deal size,” this metric can reflect the software’s role in driving revenue through repeat business or upselling.
Cost per acquisition (CPA): What is the cost of acquiring each new customer? This shows the efficiency of marketing and sales efforts. Using your software’s automated lead management tools and optimizing engagement are crucial to saving time and resources on acquisition.
Return on investment (ROI): What is the financial return on the software investment (calculated by comparing the revenue generated due to software use against its cost)? Although difficult to attribute to software directly, metrics such as increased revenue, increased turn rate, quicker workflow processing, and more can contribute to the ROI of dealership software. (Use a
dealership software ROI calculator to see other relevant factors and get a good idea of the kinds of savings and increased revenue you can expect.)
Open deal opportunities: How many open opportunities are there in the pipeline (currently and on average)? Has this number increased or decreased since
implementing your dealer intelligence platform? Tracking open opportunities via your dealer intelligence platform ensures a structured approach to nurturing leads and converting them into successful sales.
Troubleshooting issues with financial metrics:
High cost per acquisition (CPA): Are you using the platform to track marketing spend and analyze which channels generate the most cost-effective leads? Lead management tools provide functionality to track these and other inbound lead metrics.
Stalled or lost open deal opportunities: Is the sales team using the platform to track and prioritize high-value open opportunities? If your platform provides detailed pipeline reports, these can be used to glean insights into why deals are stalling or lost somewhere in the sales cycle.
Lack of insight into sales forecasting and strategies: Are you leveraging your platform’s analytics data to forecast trends and sales by month and quarter? Dealership intelligence platforms provide
actionable insights that can help dealerships better understand the market and anticipate customer needs, which can guide sales and campaign strategies and help the finance team forecast sales for budget purposes.
Employee adoption and engagement
If a dealership’s employees aren’t fully adopting or using the dealer intelligence platform on a regular basis, it risks underperforming in processes the software is designed to enhance. Although the implementation and training stages should provide enough time and resources to get all employees on board, monitoring the use of the platform (at least for the first few months) is critical to ensuring long-term adoption.
Usage rates for platform and solutions among all employees: How frequently are employees using the software in their daily workflows? Engagement metrics (such as login frequency, usage of specific solutions, and feedback from team members) can reflect adoption levels and reveal whether the platform is user-friendly and meeting the needs of dealership workers.
Usage rates by managers: Are your sales managers using the platform regularly? If your monitoring shows that managers are not heavily engaged with the platform, it is more likely that sales reps are not engaging as well. Focus your monitoring efforts on usage by managerial roles first.
Engagement competency and efficiency: Are there any inefficiencies created through human error or misunderstanding of how to operate the platform? Even if all your employees are regularly working within the platform, that doesn’t mean they are using it correctly. Ask employees for their feedback on usability and drill down on problems occurring within specific solutions or features.
Troubleshooting employee adoption and engagement issues:
Resistance to new workflows or tools: Are all employees clear on how the software simplifies their daily tasks and adds value to their roles? Leadership can provide demonstrations and continuous training to address concerns and show how the platform improves workflows for all users.
Lack of accountability for usage: Is there a clear system in place to monitor and encourage software usage across teams? Selecting one leader on each team to ensure consistent usage can ensure everyone is on the same page and the software is being used to its full potential. Additionally, if there are team members who do not rely on the platform due to their specific duties, consider removing licenses for these employees to avoid unnecessary expenditures.
The importance of customer support and software partner responsiveness
While dealership employees are individually responsible for using the platform effectively, their software partner plays a central role in ensuring ongoing success, providing reliable support, and maintaining an ongoing relationship with dealership champions. This support is crucial for troubleshooting issues quickly, minimizing disruptions, and helping dealership teams use the software to keep their operations running smoothly.
Key metrics for evaluating the quality of your partner’s support include how promptly they respond to inquiries, their ability to resolve technical challenges, and the availability of ongoing training to help teams optimize the platform’s capabilities. Excellent support not only empowers dealerships to optimize the platform’s performance but also fosters confidence in its value, ensuring it remains a powerful tool for achieving business goals. Read our article on
evaluating dealership sales and operations software for more tips on what to look for in a great software partner.
Anvil Pro helps ensure your platform grows with your dealership
The
Anvil Pro dealer intelligence platform is designed to meet and exceed the needs of your dealership when it comes to customer relationship and operations management. By integrating your various dealership systems into one unified workspace, Anvil Pro gives your teams a 360-degree view of your customers and inventory, allowing them to track all interactions, tie stock units to quotes, and anticipate your customers’ needs so you can meet them where they are, increasing conversions and fostering loyalty.
With Anvil Pro, you get more than just another vendor – you get a true software partner dedicated to helping you thrive. Tractor Zoom's Success Team supports you throughout the onboarding process and beyond, ensuring you get the maximum value out of your dealer intelligence software. This partnership empowers your dealership to streamline workflows, adapt to market changes, and achieve sustained growth well into the future.