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CDK Global issues crisis management advice to the UK’s automotive retailers

CDK Global has issued crisis management guidance to automotive retailers across the UK, calling on its unrivalled understanding of local and global automotive retail markets.

Having recently activated crisis management plans for retailers across Texas and Florida in relation to severe weather events in the US, the software giant has stepped-up its efforts to ensure the world’s automotive retailers have robust disaster management plans in place.

David Green, UK Region Vice President, CDK Global, said: “We work with retailers all over the world to ensure their businesses are prepared for any crisis and can recover quickly after natural disasters or other business-critical situations. Despite ongoing dialogue regarding the importance of investing in secure and robust systems, many retailers have been caught-out, so now we’re restating the value of preparation as part a strategic crisis management plan.”

The most stable and secure backup and continuity option that businesses can use is a cloud-hosted dealer management system (DMS). This ensures data is automatically backed-up and separates the physical location of a retailer and its data. Depending on the ‘data standard’ of the cloud host, dealers can benefit from guaranteed ‘up-time’, back-up generators, disaster-recovery pairing of hosted services in multiple locations, and the ability to access the DMS remotely.

CDK Global offers support for retailers opting for cloud-based and self-managed preparation and back-up. To guide preparation and management, CDK Global’s experts have summarised key advice:

Automotive retailer crisis management

Assess and rank impact of crises (fire, flood, earthquake, security breach, power outage, etc) considering impact on revenue / productivity / customer relations / etc

Consider speed, and ability, of recovery (including remote access to DMS)

Assess the security and robustness of data back-up processes and hardware

Ensure that server service-level agreements include regular maintenance and disaster recovery response

Invest in off-site servers covered by a back-up generator

Implement a daily data back-up, and test recovery processes regularly

Agree primary contacts and responsibilities for disaster recovery

David Green added: “Our recommended route, for the best security, continuity and ability to react quickly to any crisis is to use a CDK Global’s own cloud hosting. This offers super-robust ‘Tier 3 standard’ data centres, which benefit from the company’s Disaster Recovery service with resilient connectivity and the potential for near-real time data replication – all reinforced by a comprehensive service-level agreement that includes disaster recovery.”

In the past few weeks, CDK Global has activated its crisis management teams in Florida and Texas to help retailers prepare for and respond to the impact of severe weather conditions. Here, retailers with cloud-based servers were able to protect customer data, then react immediately to insurance claim requirements to minimise business downtime.

In addition to these state-wide responses involving hundreds of CDK Global personnel, the same principles were put into practice recently to help a retailer in Finland respond to a hugely-destructive fire. Here, the retailer’s management was able to access the remotely-hosted DMS despite comprehensive damage to the dealership and its IT systems.

CDK Global invests heavily in research and development, identifying the challenges faced by automotive retailers all over the world to help develop new and ever more robust crisis-management technologies. CDK Global’s integrated DMS allows businesses to operate all parts of its business as efficiently and profitably as possible despite severe disruption – accessing data, preparing for crises, and responding to local or widespread situations.

Automotive Industry Digest

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