As the VP of Operations for New Century Autos, overseeing three stores in California, I am often tasked with evaluating and deploying technology solutions that keep our dealerships competitive and efficient. Our journey back to Reynolds is a story of lessons learned, diligent research, and the pursuit of true partnership.
The Pain Points: Stagnant Tools and Systemic Vulnerabilities
Over the last several years, we have grown frustrated working with outdated interfaces. We wanted something modern and user-friendly. Accessibility was another issue: With three locations, we needed remote, intuitive access, not just one fixed terminal per store. Reporting was clunky, and visibility across stores was inadequate. Ultimately, we needed a platform that was both flexible and advanced enough for our growing, multi-location operation.
During this time, we were also caught in the middle of the CDK cyberattack, which essentially shut down our stores for weeks, forcing us to use paper records, deal with payroll issues, and endure significant financial pain. The breach alone cost us tens of thousands of dollars, and it took months to fully recover.
“We realized that, in today’s environment, security and stability are as critical as functionality.”
Trial and Error: What Didn’t Work
After our frustrations with CDK bubbled up, we started to look at other vendors and decided to give Tekion a try in one of our stores. While Tekion’s “openness” was attractive on the surface, it wasn’t business-ready for us for several key reasons:
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Lack of OEM Approvals: Some of Tekion’s modules — like service scheduling and CRM — weren’t OEM-approved (Mazda in particular), forcing us to use multiple third-party solutions.
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Poor Real-World Integration: Despite being open, integrating other best-in-class vendors was frustrating and often resulted in double work for our teams.
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Support Experience: Initial implementation was strong, but post-launch support was slow and impersonal. We’d submit ticket after ticket, but talking to a live expert and solving unique issues was extremely challenging. More complex problems could take weeks to resolve.
The result? We created double work, missed some critical OEM targets, and drove our advisors and managers crazy.
Choosing Reynolds: What Won Us Over
In 2017, we acquired a store using Reynolds and switched it to CDK to match our other locations. Since then, we’d hear the same question time and again: “Can we switch back to Reynolds?” When we finally decided to look at Reynolds, we came to realize that several things had changed:
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Products Designed with the User in Mind: Reynolds really got its foot in the door again with ReverseRisk®. It’s, hands down, the most user-friendly dashboard we’ve used. This experience piqued our interest in what else Reynolds had to offer.
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Reynolds’ Innovation Center: Our leadership visited the Innovation Center, where we saw an energized team, passionate employees, a focus on AI and modern advancements, and a welcoming, family-like atmosphere. It inspired confidence that today’s Reynolds is the leader in automotive retail technology.
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Unparalleled Focus on Security: After experiencing the CDK cyberattack, seeing Reynolds’ partitioned server setup and robust security protocols was reassuring. We realized the likelihood of a system-wide breach was drastically lower.
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Product Integration and Support: The move to Reynolds was heavily influenced by better integration across CRM, F&I, service scheduling, and chat. Instead of juggling 10 different vendors and a million logins per user, we’re streamlining under one roof with smooth internal handoffs between departments.
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Dealer Relationship and Support: Reynolds has always been known for having great products. But today, they’re known for their great products and their great support. It’s clear Reynolds places dealers’ success side-by-side with their own. I know it’s small, but our Reynolds conversion team fills out as much tedious paperwork as possible before sending it to us, even doing research on our website to find the details. It’s these little things that make my life (and my team’s lives) easier and have the biggest impact.
“Reynolds has set the bar high for support. Compared to other providers we’ve tried, the difference is night and day.”
