At Amplify 2026, Greg Uland, vice president of marketing at Reynolds and Reynolds, shared Reynolds’ vision for a CRM that will define the future of automotive retail.
In part one of this series, we’ll recap the answer to the first question.
The question isn’t if the data exists.
“It’s not about giving you more software to manage. It’s about giving you your time back and freeing you from busy work, so you can focus on the things only a human can do – build trust, create confidence, and make a meaningful connection with the customer in front of you.”
Having the perfect processes isn’t about adding another bolt-on, another database, or another login. Those just create another silo. It’s actually the exact opposite.
We all know the data is there. The question isn’t if it exists; it’s if the right person can act on it at the right time inside the workflow they’re already in.
With one connected platform, anchored by one unified dataset, there is no disconnect. There’s only one living customer record to power your entire business. Every application, every screen, every department, and every person in the dealership is powered by that one living customer record, which updates in real time.
That’s our vision.
“The future of CRM isn’t about giving sales longer lists; it’s about putting the right customers in front of them at the right time with all the right context.”
The road to the sale has changed. Rather than a straight line, it’s a scattered path across websites, emails, chats, phone calls, texts, service visits, digital retailing activity, showroom conversation, and so many other touchpoints.
The future of CRMs is about bringing the data together, clean and enriched, and giving you the audience intelligence, then having that intelligence turned into action.
A traditional CRM might know your customer is a lead. A marketing platform might know they opened an email. A website analytics tool might know they viewed the vehicle. A DMS might know they bought from you years ago. But a unified customer data platform brings these pieces together, so you understand your customer as a customer, not as a row in your various systems.
The vision becomes real because you’re not just seeing that the customer clicked an email — you’re bringing their story together in one unified customer profile.
Knowing the difference.
“The most important part is having it all happen inside the CRM, connecting every signal to the unique customer profiles.”
This is the difference between knowing something happened and knowing what something means. The value of a unified customer profile isn’t just having a better record. The value comes from what your team can do because everything is unified.
A unified customer profile only matters if it changes the next conversation, improves the next decision, and helps you move faster with more relevance and less friction.
“Reynolds isn’t building another tool that sits beside the CRM. We’re building it as part of the CRM.”
