Premier Companies Testimonial

Joe Laham is the president of Premier Companies.

“When we decided to grow our platform of dealerships, we went out and acquired several dealerships all at one time. The difficulty was trying to get the culture of all of these stores together. Some had ADP. Some had Reynolds and Reynolds.

“We had Dealertrack at our Cadillac store. We had ADP at our Chrysler store. Then when we acquired BMW and Volvo, we had Reynolds and Reynolds. And so it kept going on and on and on. And we had to make a decision to have one platform for all of them.

“When we looked at all these systems — Reynolds, ADP, and Dealertrack. We heard a lot about the road map. And I kept telling them, ‘I’m not hoping for a strategy, I need a strategy.’ Because hope is not a business strategy.

“Reynolds was the only one that made us look twice. We already know what Reynolds is. There’s no hope necessary.

“When we investigated the Reynolds product, we found that it really was built from the ground up, retail-centric, which is what our business is. We want to be retail-centric. We don’t want to be, ‘Oh, by the way, we got this new product. Let’s plug it into our system.’ If it has the ability to communicate really, really well, it works, great. If it doesn’t, we’re in trouble. Reynolds — it’s built to grow. And it’s built for both breadth and depth.

“Other providers use the terminology: ‘We don’t have that solution, but you can go acquire a service edge product from somebody else.’ So now I have to have four or five different products to accomplish the same task I do with Reynolds.

“When I talk about retail-centric, I truly mean the ability for us to know the consumer — to know our customer — to know where they are, who they are, and how much they have spent with us. If you bought a Toyota from me and now you want a BMW, we’re going to be able to know that in all the stores. Those are things you just can’t buy.

“I spent a lot of time doing a lot of homework, and if I didn’t think Reynolds was the best, I wouldn’t have done it. I partnered with them because I really believe there’s been a transformation in a company that has decided to become a retail partner. Reynolds is going to be the foundation for us to grow our business in the future.”