Buying a car, my gosh, the price of cars, it's literally more than the first house I bought. So my car is worth more than my first house I bought. And I lived in a small town and it didn't, you know, it didn't cost a lot, but still, it's a huge purchase.
What's up, everyone? This is Car Dealership Guy. You're listening to the Car Dealership Guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market. Let's get into today's episode. Barb Edson is the Chief Marketing Officer at CDK Global, a technology company focused on building automotive and dealerships software solutions. In this conversation, we discussed the biggest challenges in dealership technology. Barb's take on the future of the dealership and if it will actually go away, how car buying is transforming, acquiring an evolving roadster, a digital retailing platform, her biggest areas of focus and investment within CDK, and something a bit more personal, coming into the auto industry from the outside of vulnerability and her personal learnings. But before we dive in, if you enjoy the show, please do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button if you're on Apple podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. I see the notifications and it really helps the show grow. Don't forget to share your thoughts on this episode and every episode in the comments section as well on Twitter or YouTube and LinkedIn. All right, let's get into it.
One thing I wanted to mention was, I had, I used to have a mentor, but like an exec coach and I remember they told me something very interesting. They told me, they said, hey, CDG, they didn't call me CDG, but you know, we'll keep it at that. They said, CDG, you know, whenever someone comes into the industry from the outside, they're typically the most important person for the first six months at least. I was like, what do you mean by that? They're like, well, you know, that person is going to see all the dumb stuff that we do and all the inefficiencies and point it out. And so I bring that up because one of the things I noticed about you was that you came from outside of the industry. And I have a ton of questions to ask you about that transition. So I would say along all that, just give us your background, how you got to this point in your career to the industry and then we'll build on top of that.
Great. Well, I actually have spent, I'll share, it'll lead to my age a little bit too much here, but I spent 30 plus years in the high tech industry. Sort of you alluded to coming from outside automotive, but I've been very deeply seated in the tech industry. So started right out of college at new midsize startups, tech companies, but always in business applications, right?
So, you know, CDK is at its core business applications, but specifically in the vertical market of automotive retail, but I've had quite a journey. I actually even, you know, before the tech industry did a short stint in the military, for example. So I credit that to some of my, my toughness and resiliency in all of the different tech companies. I didn't see that part, but I respect it. Yeah.
So yeah, it was at Microsoft oracle, you know, I did a, I did a stint at PeopleSoft. So I feel like I'm very deeply grounded in business applications and what really business to business, like what organizations need to run their companies. I'm fascinated by that. I know lots of people with the marketing title, right? They, they're really like advertising and lead gen. I have to do all of that, but I'm like fascinated by meeting the needs of customers. So that customer obsession really, really drives me and automotive.
I spent time in automotive at Microsoft as a vertical in the Internet of Things. This, before the IOT was buzzword, we were doing IOT and, you know, we called it machine to machine back then. So automotive was actually one of the first industries from an OEM, you know, manufacturer perspective that jumped into the IOT space. So when I talk about IOT today or predictive service, I can't.
Yeah. So what does that actually mean? What does that actually mean for like explain it to me like I'm a third grader? Yeah. So it's pretty state-of-board. So the Internet of Things is basically just two devices talking to each other, right? That, you know, that are, you know, not connected via sort of, you know, wires, right? And so, you know, we used to, the elevator you get into. This was a company I worked with, which I've got to tell you, I get into an elevator and I kind of have a fear of elevators now because I worked with an elevator company and I saw. You know too much. You know too much. Yes. Like 5,000 sensors in that elevator. So, you know, there are sensors, the sensors are talking to each other or something like that. I'll have them on. Yeah.
So yeah, just the basic connection of devices talking to each other, IOT uses AI, etc. All those fancy buzzwords, but the world running, you know, with connected devices.
So, what actually brought you, like what attracted you to this opportunity with CDK, you know, and at J something pretty much you're in the car business, you're in tech business, but you know, you're serving the car business in a big way here. Well, why is that? I mean, we're such an unsexy industry. You know, you're coming Microsoft, all these, you know, really hot names. And so, what did you, like what opportunity did you see that where you can make an impact there?
So, the automotive industry is just right for disruption. I actually went for Microsoft that into healthcare. So, I did another vertical before coming to automotive, but as I noted, spent a lot of time on automotive at Microsoft, but this is going to sound hopefully not rude, but automotive is about 10, 15 years behind every other industry. And so, it was actually a great opportunity to use my experience in tech to apply it. We kind of joke sometimes inside the company, for those of us that came from other industries in this no disrespectment in this, but it's like, the things I did 15 years ago for, let's say, healthcare are very relevant here today.
So, you know, think about Teladoc and all those types of things, right? We're starting to do similar things here in automotive, right? Where we're much more online, but the, you know, sort of the in the dealerships not going away, just sort of like, you know, retail or healthcare, etc. We'll talk about that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about it.
So, and actually, on that note, you mentioned that dealership is not going away. I get asked this all the time from like investors, you know, dealers, consumers. I mean, everyone asking me this question, why do you believe that, especially someone having come from such, you know, so several different verticals in tech, why do you believe that the dealership is not going away? Well, let me start with, I appreciate that you have a similar point of view. I know you were just, I listened to a recent podcast you did, and you were debunking that myth with an industry influencer. So, appreciate your perspective on that. It's one that we're very aligned to.
Look, I'll start with data. So, we've done a lot of research. We invest as a team and a lot of first parties, sort of primary research not to further, if others are product and getting insight, but it just also, we share those insights, you know, with our customers. But listen, like you would think like millennials would not be going in to the automotive dealership. They are in droves. They actually want to go into the dealership more than people of my age that have bought so many cars, right? We kind of know what we want. Our data says that the consumer wants the dealership to exist. They trust them. They want to go in. They want to have those conversations. So, we actually believe it's going to be consumer driven.
And then I know you've noted this prior. You know, there's the regulation as well, but, you know, I believe it's because that's what the consumer will demand. They absolutely want to go in, touch it, feel it. Look, buying a car, my gosh, the price of cars, it's literally more than the first house I bought. So, my car is worth more than my first house I bought. And I lived in a small town and it didn't, you know, it didn't cost a lot, but still it's a huge purchase. Where did you live? Where was that?
So, I actually went to college in Fargo, North Dakota. So, had bought my first condo there out of college and I worked for a tech company that, you know, then one public. So, it was a fortunate start. Yeah, I haven't been there, but I have to visit. Probably will never happen, but, you know, we can. Don't go on January.
Yeah, I bet. No, look, I think my opinion there is, and I've had a lot of very, you know, great conversations with, again, big dealers, small dealers, industry leaders, investors. I think that the dealership is going to continue changing a ton. And I think that certain aspects, yeah, certain aspects will go away. You know, there will be more new vehicles kind of presold from the manufacturer and stuff like that. But I think that the dealership model will excel in other ways, especially when it comes to like, you know, servicing, you know, servicing vehicles, post sale and whatnot, which is huge. You know, of course, there's the use car business.
And then one thing that I love, that Brett Morgan, a previous guest on the podcast, had said, there, you know, Morgan autogroup, eighth largest dealer in the country. He said something that I love. And he said, whenever you see a dealership, you know, a business that's outperforming in their market relative to their peers, there's a very good reason why that's happening. Meaning, like, maybe they are better at that, you know, customer retention and relationship building, whatever it may be, they're, they're excelling at something. There's some secret sauce that's allowing them to outperform in that market. And so I love that because that's when you know, like, okay, this is actually a business that's bringing value to the market. Whereas, you know, there's other players that may not be bringing value and their sales are declining or whatnot.
Right. Right. Yeah. And you did on a really good job. There. Well, it was great. It was, it was worth more than two cents. It was worth, it was worth at least a nickel if not a quarter. But you know, you hit on the really important part, sort of that the service, right? And sort of that fixed ops area, no profitability for the dealerships is unfortunately, you know, the Hague report has noted that it's, it's down a little bit right now in Q2 2023 over 2022. The good news is since 2019 profits are up 10 times, but the service department are seeing increased profits. And there's so much more opportunity there with increasing that consumer experience. There's a lot of dealers, frankly, that, you know, digital transformation has to come to the service department. And that is where those dealers where you we kind of call them trendsetters, they're hitting it out of the ball, you know, the ballpark, they're hitting home runs and that whole only experience, it's not just buying a car, right? That's great. But the all that profitability and servicing, there's a lot of dealers missing out on that.
So before we talk about what you're working on and just opportunities, you're capitalizing on them. Really curious to hear about that. I want to know first, what are the biggest like challenges or inefficiencies you observed, right back to that first question, like you came in and you mentioned like, you know, at 10, 15 years behind in certain aspects. Well, what are the biggest things that kind of, you know, struck out of you, you're like, all right, this is where we need to focus. Yeah.
So, you know, I actually think Brian McDonald, our CEO, he actually did a blog on LinkedIn and I think he really hit it sort of the things that I would know would be very similar to his and really looking at sort of the the inefficiency of point solutions, right? And even CDK, we have a lot of different applications and develop those applications to solve a specific problem. But it's a little bit like whack-a-mole, right? You ever play that whack-a-mole game at, you know, when you go to a Dave and Busters, right? There's a problem pops up, particularly with that consumer experience, we're seeing a lot of lot of software vendors, it's super crowded. And what dealers are doing is they're picking and choosing individual applications. And so they're bolting on all these solutions to the traditional sort of what we call in this industry dealer management software, which is just basically your back office solution, right? To run the business. And then they've got a bit of Frankenstein bolt-on. And so that's a huge challenge because what's happening is the sort of the workflow. It's breaking inside the dealership. And so here I like to kind of show the swivel chair, right? So you've got this, you were in a deal, you know, you're obviously come from the dealership world, right? In the automotive retail world. So like think about being an employee in a dealership and you're swiveling from chair to chair. So, you know, it's inefficient. It's not productive. So broken workflows is the biggest challenge.
Yeah, well, a couple of things there. And I totally agree, this, you know, have literally lived this. First of all, I think that our industry is like experiencing serious, like, you know, SaaS fatigue, like software as a service. And there's just so many applications. And, you know, especially, you know, changing applications, you know, retraining the team. It's the biggest headache in the world. And in many circumstances, you rather just like live with what you have or pay more for an application that's fully integrated because it saves you so much headache and time and store. So I totally agree with that. I think also from the consumer experience, it just sucks because it prolongs entire experience. And that's why, you know, you see these people say, Oh, you know, we want direct to consumer or we want this because it's, you know, consumers typically don't have the best solutions, but they typically do point out the right problems. And so I do agree with that that it's a very clunky process. And so I think that like, I mean, I'm just saying like, I agree that that is an issue at a dealership, curious if there's anything else you're focusing on, or if that's the main problem that you're right now, focus on solving.
We've been on a listening tour and, you know, from the CEO, myself, we've got several new, you know, players at CDK, but we also have a lot of great existing talent. So we're blending that and we're listening to customers. So something you're going to sort of give this group a sneak peek. So one of the things, you know, that we've got a lot of feedback on is the user interface, the intuitiveness of our CRM application. You're going to see an amazing refresh of that coming out in the next couple of weeks. So in that literally sat our chief product officer the last couple months, it's been sitting inside of the dealership and watching users use the product and making sure we're truly listening. So companies like Amazon, you know, they're, you know, they're not perfect by any means, but that's one of the things just they've got that customer obsession. And that's where CDK is really leaning in. So being like as vulnerable as possible, right? What do you think were the areas where you were behind the eight ball the most, right? Like, I know, what have you done about it specifically? You just mentioned one thing, but I'm curious, like, what, what, go ahead?
No, I was actually going to say absolutely one of the sort of that, you know, intuitive user interface you're going to see coming out not only in CRM, but in the accounting workflows.
And then frankly, again, I said the biggest challenge was unbroken workflows. You know, we were causing some of those, right? Because we have a CRM application, we have a digital retailing application. So we have these different applications, some of them were required assets, right? And so we need needed to integrate them and create a cohesive, you know, seamless workflow. And that's what's occurred with what I've been in the market talking about, which is the new dealership experience platform.
And one of the really critical things and you hit on it really well, it's not just about the employee productivity, which in the dealership, we know people are leaving in droves. It's hard to keep employees because they're so frustrated with that swivel chair. But it's also the consumer experience being the same as the dealership employee experience in that car buying and servicing experience, right? So we're really focused on creating that from the consumer journey into the dealership employee journey, that seamless workflow.
Now, a great example is you do all this work online, I pick out what I want, I do like I'm online, I go into the dealership and you've lost all my information. There's not that connected tissue, nothing more frustrating than that as a consumer.
Yeah, you mentioned something you mentioned dealership experience, like, can you tell us what that is, what like specifically, go ahead.
是的,你提到了你在经销商的经验,那么,你能告诉我们具体是什么,继续说吧。
Yeah, so the CDK dealership experience platform is a new offering from CDK. Now it is based on our proven solutions of the, you know, the proven accounting from the dealer management solution and a lot of other core capabilities that our customers are known in love with that depth of functionality. But it does what we just talked about, which is creates that seamless workflow. So it's a open integrated platform. So literally in sort of more simplistic words, but marketing buzz, it literally takes away the unbroken workflows. So we want to make sure that from the consumer all the way through to contracting and through the servicing that owning experience, there's no school of old chair. It's a seamless process for consumer and the employee. So I know lots of people talk about digital online, but that service are really critical as well.
How do you, how do you actually do this? Like, I'm, so there's so many different elements of the car sale. And I actually tweeted about this when CDK announced it, I thought it was interesting, because, you know, there's several other, like right out, you know, the industry in you know, your competitors better than I do, right? There's, there's Reynolds, there's Tekkian, I mean, there's a couple other competitors in the market. Everyone is sort of kind of, you know, doing their own thing. I thought it was interesting when CDK announced it, like, hey, we're going through this like connected, through disconnected experience. So how, how do you actually achieve this? Right? There's, there's a reason why all these, these services are disconnected, to begin with, or historically, I've been right, because there's, you know, from the sale, from merchandising of the car, from the FNI, I mean, all the, you know, can let me go speak to the manager, there's all these different steps. So how are you able to suddenly take all these different steps and connect them? Like, is it technology? What are you actually doing behind the scenes?
So it's a combination of technology, but also of the innovative thought process. So we actually, as everyone knows, purchased a company called Roadster, which is on a very modern technology stack. And we actually have taken that technology and it's gone far beyond digital retailing. So it's really our modern retail, you know, experience.
This is unique. It's very different than purchasing a separate, which you still can from a CDK purchase a separate digital retailing tool or CRM tool, or a separate desking tool. Right? There's all these point solutions. But within the dealership experience platform, it is very unique that we're actually offering this workflow that seamless. And we've rethought we've actually sat down, watched the customer go through the process. And that is deeply embedded inside of the dealership experience platform.
So it's that seamless workflow. And we've used the technology. But again, we've had our engineers, our products managers, we've brought a lot of talent to CDK that really know the space. And they've watched the customers, you know, we had before we went to general availability, we had over 400 customers to use it before then we launched into general availability. So I'm used to doing business that way, right? You do, you know, you go into pilot and you get all kinds of customer feedback. And then you go into launch, I'll be honest, in this industry, we kind of have a spectrum.
Some folks in the industry are building the product with their dealers. And that's a bit tough on the dealer, right? Because they got to run a business. And then there was the other side of the spectrum of just pushing things out. I think we've really hit a really great sweet spot. We got to get feedback. But you also want its mission critical, you got to get your financial statements out, right? That stuff's not anything to be messed with. So making sure you're, you know, still have all the mission critical, run the business up and running on a daily basis.
So how do you think how do you think this supports the just continued digital transformation in the industry? Overall, like, you know, we've had this that we've had this decade of, you know, kind of online car buying the biggest, the biggest thing since sliced bread and then COVID hit and boom, it explodes. And then, you know, sort of pandemic ends things kind of go a bit revert to the mean, as they say, you know, people want to come back to the store.
Again, I just had another dealer on the podcast, Rick Reichhardt. He mentioned how his stores like people were like, you're just begging to come to the store. Right. Not because they wanted to see his pretty face, shout out Rick, but because they wanted, they just had cabin fever. They're like, I want to get out of the house and I want to go, you know, do something in person. So anyways, how do you think this supports just the continued digital transformation? And what does that look like? Like, what does that car buying experience evolve into with what you're building?
So it's really having both. So simplistically, like, sort of both having the online experience and it has to be more than just a lead generator, which I think a lot of dealers, when they talk about digital transformation, they sort of put it into a very small box of, you know, online digital retailing and they're using it like a, like a lead generator. And it's so much more than that, right?
But some of the tools out there, that's all that they're really doing. You need what we say in the industry is the omni channel, sort of retail experience, but, you know, for those listeners that, you know, that's again, another sort of big buzz where it's, I'm online and I'm in the store and that information is being shared and it's a unified experience for the consumer and for the employee. And that's how we're going to digitally transform in that sort of variable offset front office area. Again, each of these individual tools are actually trading more headache for the dealer employee than having one seamless, connective, you know, workflow.
So that to me is, you know, very important and digital transformation, as much as I would love for us technology vendors to take all the credit for, you know, our customers digitally transforming all these other industries. And I've gone through this in other industries. It's about people. It's about process. It's about technology. And I do think, and Brian Pash actually had some great comments on this in one of his conferences, we're all focused on too much of the tech and buying all these point solutions.
And we got to go back to like looking at a unified platform. You noted it in the beginning. It's like, we get really excited about, you know, that sexy widget, you know, that bright shiny object. But it's, it's again, it's that point, it's solving an individual problem, but the problem's bigger than one thing. You need a broader solution and approach to it.
Again, people process technology yet. We can't solve all these. We've made that mistake. I mean, we definitely chased some sexy tech, especially when it was early, and it didn't, didn't really bear too much fruit. So, you know, you kind of went back, changed it up, you know, made some processes manual again. It's it's tough. It's tough. I mean, especially when you're dealing, you know, there's no, there's no stopping. You got to kind of do it on the fly.
I think with that note, this kind of ties back with the initial conversation we had in the beginning or the one of the questions I asked you, but how do you future proof this, right? Like, there's all this like these murmurs like OEMs, let's try some, you know, sell some new cars direct to consumer. Will that ever happen? You know, the agency model quote unquote, you know, like how Tesla does and whatnot. Do you think it's all nonsense and but specifically and in addition, like how do you future proof for your building to fit into like the future of what the car buying experience is going to look like?
Yeah. So we work really closely with OEMs. We, of course, think that dealer and the dealer model. I mean, that is absolutely where I mean, we as CDK, I mean, Brookfield, who, you know, purchased CDK bet eight point five billion dollars on the dealer model. That's that's a pretty big testament to the confidence in the dealer model. We work with OEMs, like Hyundai, Canada, for example, we power their digital retailing experience. We, there's many other OEMs. I won't, I can't mention publicly that you'd be surprised that the number of OEMs where we're powering that, you know, online experience. And we think it's really important to make that connection between the OEM experience and the dealer experience. And so we're absolutely working in those environments. Now, who conducts and transacts the business? We believe that's going to stay with the dealers and work. But you know, the technology, you know, we have the technology and the technology works no matter who's going to transact the business.
Now, of course, now, that's on the car buying experience on the car servicing experience and that ownership experience. We're investing a lot in online scheduling. I mean, it's amazing. I can go schedule my hair appointment, right online and see the open spaces, you know, my stylists available. But I can't do that with a lot of dealerships. And that's technology that's just built into the core of what we call the foundation speed in the dealership experience platform. Because we thought that was so critical.
Because here's what's also happening, unfortunately, for a lot of dealers, they signed long term contracts, right, with, you know, technology vendors. And then they're not up to speed on the latest innovation. So they're not even getting all the great innovations. So that's why we're like literally granting when they come up for renewal. And even if they want to do an early renewal, the dealership experience platform, and then we're going to implement it for our dealers for free, the foundation suite, which has service scheduling, has digital retailing. Because honestly, we're kind of frustrated that our dealers are using all the great innovation that our engineering team is delivering. So we got to get our dealers using this. So and that's a pretty big testament to say, look, take it, it's yours. And we're going to implement it for you for free.
Putting my like business, I'm a, you know, I'm such a geek when it comes to, you know, doing these things and running a business, but putting my, so being the geek I am and for any of the business nerds listening in, what is your process? Like when you came into this company, right, you're brought in your, you're like a doctor, right, you've clearly done a lot of thought, there's, you've been your shipping stuff here, you're doing stuff, you're making changes. What is your process like? Like from day one to, or even day zero to like, till now, what has this been like for you to come in to a company that's been around, that's had a product that, you know, is used by hundreds, thousands of dealers. And then to kind of bring these changes upon, like, can you just kind of give us a, you know, a sneak peek into how you do that?
Yeah, I'll actually, I'll start with sort of what my process isn't, which I learned from making a mistake of going into a prior company. So a lot of times people come into companies and frankly they go, oh my gosh, they look at all the problems. And they think everybody around them are idiots, like how can this be happening, right?
And so, you know, you can't, you have to ask a lot of questions. And the reality is there's good reasons for things that are occurring not just at the company, but within the industry. And the automotive industry has uniquenesses. There's, you know, the way in which the dealerships want to run their business, the way the relationship with the OEM, with the dealers.
So I think it's like, it's part sort of asking questions, but also assuming that there's a reason why things are happening the way they're happening. And so if you could first understand the reason, before you make the change, that's really important because I think a lot of people come in to new industries from the outside and they try to take everything, oh, this is simple. You just need to do X, Y or Z. Why, why don't you guys get this? And you're talking at people. And the reality is, look, they're pretty smart. They've made a lot of, you know, there's been a lot of success, a lot of happy dealers. What can we change? But also understanding where the customers at.
I think a lot of change in our industry is dealers are leaning in. 76% of them said increasing the consumer experience is their number one business strategy over inventory, which that's huge. They get it. And so it's just leaning and listening to your customers. And again, assuming you got to listen to people, you got to ask the right questions. I made that mistake once at a company and I wasn't very popular. So you want to be much more popular by listening to smart people. What was that mistake? Like what happened?
Yeah, you just came in basically telling people what the plan should be because I had a formula, right? But that formula didn't work there. That formula didn't create the right operating model. Now, I've ticked a lot of learning that I've had from other companies into CDK. But just like the dealership experience platform, the engineering team, myself on the commercial side, on the whole sort of go-to market, it's a partnership, right? And we've all been at the table. And really, again, listening to each other. So that's the key. Nobody knows everything. It's unfortunate a lot of senior executives feel like they do because they've been really successful at one company or another. But that's why you see so many people play out as they move industries.
So if you look out like five years, right, what is automotive retail? What's changed? And I say that specifically from the purview of a dealer and a consumer. If I'm listening to this right now, I'm a consumer. I'm like, all right, cool. You're building all this stuff. I don't care. When my daughter buys a car in five, whatever, what's actually going to be different for me? Am I spending less time at the dealership? Is it actually an enjoyable process? Like, what's the deal?
Well, I think you hit on the sort of, it will be an enjoyable process. It'll be the process you want it to be. It'll be completely customized or personalized. So the personalization will exist. And I do believe that those automotive retailers that take the almost the, you know, when you go into the store, it's an experience. They're going to create an experience. And it's going to, you are going to want to go in. It's like retailers are having to do right now, or even when you go into an Apple store, it's a bit more of an experience, right? So, but again, if you just want to do most of the work online, that's going to be possible. But it's really going to be, it's going to be fit to the way you want to purchase your car. And then again, I just can't say enough about the importance of the service area.
The service area is going to actually work like other industries. I will say, we could all sort of take a lesson from DoorDash. You know, I'm forcing DoorDash too much. And so, I know where my food's at, right? I know it's in the kitchen. I know the driver just picked it up. But low overall point being, if I know where my food is at, why don't I know where my car is in the servicing process? I'm a single mom trying to go, you know, or it's a dad picking up his kids. I was going to know where it's at. Is it in the service bay? Can I come get it? Can I check out? So, they want that mobile progress bar. I want text. I want video of what you're doing. So, this is a way dealers can increase that incredible important service revenue.
So, yeah, that's a really good, that's a really good comparison, by the way. Like, if you think about imagine for a second, like, you know, having that just as a consumer, having that app where you see everything happening, step by step, but not like, not like in a fake way, like truly knowing, like, what is happening.
You know, I think, I think Domino's actually pioneered this with their pizza tracker. So, we actually built the app. It's called Vehicle Tracker. It's built into the dealership experience platform, but it's, we literally internally code named it the pizza tracker, right? But, I happen to do DoorDash more than Domino. So, I kind of like the DoorDash analogy.
Yeah, well, and by the way, like, what a case study Domino's, right? I think it was like, oh, nine or something or 2011 when they came out with that commercial. They're like, our pizza sucks. And by the way, here's what we're doing about it. Give us a shot. Since then, like, on, on, on a, just on a tear, the stock has like, you know, a thousand extra something. So, yeah, incredible, just incredible, you know, what they've done with the company. And yeah, the pizza tracker, like, they definitely know we're one of the earliest. Wow.
All right. So, I think, you know, before we wrap up, I do have one other question here with respect to just, you know, doing all these things you're mentioning. What do you think are like this? Do you think, do you think there's going to be a challenge with having adoption for all this with the dealers? I just go back to like, even when, you know, like, there's been so many tools tried in the industry and, you know, truth is, a lot from companies that maybe don't have great reputations, maybe some do, but it's so, it's such a tough thing to, you know, integrate something new into the sales process. So, what do you think are just like the biggest challenges when it comes to getting adoption for kind of new workflows, new processes, even, even if you build like the most incredible thing in the world, right? How do you get that the dealer to actually use it ultimately and to make everything better?
Yeah. No, that's, that's a great question. So that's really why our approach, you know, I would call this an evolution versus a revolution because again, a lot of the core capabilities are, you know, tried and tested and proven in a lot of our dealers are using all of those. But now, there's that layer on top of the seamless workflows. And that's also why, you know, quite, you know, transparently why we're saying, look, we also know that it's a cost. And so, we're going to be implementing that foundation's fee for free for our dealers when they renew their contracts, because it's so important. We don't want them to get left behind.
And, you know, when we implement things, we're really focused on increasing our service excellence as well, meaning like don't just, there's some, there's a difference between installing software and truly driving adoption and getting the value out of it. So, you know, it would be great to maybe invite our chief customer officer back sometime as she could talk about some of the things she's looking at and customer success managers, for example, so that there's somebody in the dealer that knows what you're going through because it digital transformation as we touched on goes back to people and processes and the technologies there to support the dealership.
So we're really focused on that human element also from CDK in areas like evolving our customer success organization and aligning them by the different workflows, whether it be the modern retail workflow, fixed ops, so that we have specialists so that they're in there talking to you. We have a lot of this already. These people already exist. They're out there doing great work. And we're going to be amplifying that and making even more investments and having that person that's more of a consultative individual that's assigned to your dealership.
So again, already invested there making even heavier investments to do more of that handholding. Barbettes and thank you so much. This was a, you know, very, very exciting and interesting, you know, just the changes happening right now. There's a lot of moving pieces and it's exciting to see where you're building.
If people want to learn more about you, the dealership experience, CDK, where can they go? Well, they can go to, so CDKglobal.com and then of course, we're on all the platforms linked in, X, Facebook, so they can absolutely go out there. And I do want to just give you a shout out and thank you for what you're doing for the industry. It's really great. I love that you take a unique point of view. You're pushing people to think differently about different industry trends. So just thank you. Please keep it up. We really enjoy, you know, being, you know, following you and enjoy being part of a part of your journey here.
I super appreciate that. Well, what's your favorite episode? So actually you did one recently with Steve Greenfield and I thought that was great. And again, you took a counterpoint view with him on, you know, he was really pushing on the dealership model, right? And you know, you kind of came right back at him with, and he's great, by the way, he's a phenomenal influencer in the industry. So no disrespect, but I really thought your point of view about, look, the dealership, we're not immediately going to an agency model. The dealership is here, it's healthy, it's here to stay. And that's obviously a CDK's perspective as well.
Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I try to, I try to think practical. Like, I think one thing I've learned is that progress is just so much slower than we expect, right? Like people were saying we're going to have all autonomous cars in like five years, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, whatever. And the truth is, it's like, it's 20 years out. I mean, there's things just take a long time. And so I try to really think like, practically, and sometimes I'm wrong, but either way, it's awesome.
And you just reminded me, I think we got to bring Steve back onto the podcast sometimes soon. So that's a good reminder right there.
你刚刚提醒了我,我觉得我们应该很快把史蒂夫请回播客节目。所以这是个很好的提醒。
Also, Barb, thanks so much. I really enjoyed it.
还有,巴伯,非常谢谢你。我真的非常喜欢这个。
Great. Thank you. Great to be here.
太好了。谢谢。很高兴来到这里。
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