Dealership Management System

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since October 2006.

A Dealership Management System (DMS) is a software application which provides management tools to a car dealerships.

There is a distinction between software which offers partial management and total management. Total management must include all aspects of running a dealership such as:

Tracking vehicle inventory
Tracking sales
Finance and insurance calculations
Tracking customers (and customer follow up)
Accounting
Managing dealer website
Calculating employee commissions

If the dealer has a service department then the total DMS should also include:

Purchase order tracking
Parts inventory
Work order management
Appointment scheduling

Typically a total DMS includes a central server computer which stores all data allowing multi-user access with as many as 50 or more client computers. Some installations may include thin clients. Other DMS providers, such as Arkona, use a centrally-hosted, or application service provider model.

Some new car dealerships used to be forced to use a certain DMS by the manufacturer. This, however, is no longer the case due to the Block Exemption Regulation.

According to a 2003 survey conducted by NADA, ADP and Reynolds & Reynolds are the two leading DMS providers in North America.