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DealerSocket Acquires Another DMS Company, CEO Jonathan Ord Weighs In | DrivingSales News

DealerSocket Acquires Another DMS Company, CEO Jonathan Ord Weighs In

May 5, 2015 1 Comment

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DealerSocket has made another acquisition. DealerSocket announced today they have acquired AutoStar Solutions. AutoStar provides DMS support to dealers specializing in Buy Here Pay Here (BHPH) dealerships. Their system streamlines the variable operation processes for finance, wholesale and leasing. This move is the latest in a string of acquisitions DealerSocket has made during the past seven month as they recently purchased DealerFire and FEX DMS.

In a phone interview, DealerSocket CEO Jonathan Ord spoke with DrivingSales News about the latest developments in his company. With the Finance Express (FEX DMS) acquisition this past February DealerSocket now has two DMS companies. It appears that both companies will stay intact and operate under their own branding out of Texas while joining the DealerSocket family. Speaking on this subject, Ord said, “FEX (Finance Express) has an office in Dallas and so does AutoStar. We’re going to stay in Dallas and make Dallas one of our centers of excellence. So now we have centers of excellence in Dallas, Wisconsin, Utah and in southern California.”

According to Ord the acquisition of FEX and AutoStar was part of a larger strategy. Speaking about the reasoning behind buying two DMS providers, Ord said, “We bought Finance Express (FEX DMS) earlier this year and we believe they were the number one technology platform for the DMS side of the independent automotive world and their key competitor from a market share and marketing and branding perspective was AutoStar.”

Ord went on to explain the two companies both compete for many of the same customers in the BHPH space and this move meant an instant purchase of market share. He also noted FEX didn’t have the sales and marketing infrastructure AutoStar has, but they did have a powerful technology platform. Essentially, DealerSocket wanted both strengths, thus they acquired both organizations. DealerSocket reportedly wants to simply offer more to their clients thus they’ve added useful parts to the puzzle. Speaking on this note, Ord said, “If you look at what we did earlier in the year in buying DealerFire, now we have website solutions, digital marketing solutions, CRM solutions and DMS solutions for the independent space, so we can basically encompass the entire gamut of the platform.”

If it sounds like DealerSocket is growing, they are and it’s by design. Talking about further growth that will happen this year Ord said, “We’re going to stay on the acquisition path and we’re trying to do one to two acquisitions a quarter and driving towards our strategy. We know it’s a timing game and we’re trying to do everything we can to innovate internally and hire as many people as we possibly can. We have 65 people in new hire training this week and that’s kind of a weekly occurrence for us. Then we’re trying to acquire one to two companies (per quarter) to add to and proliferate our platform that we’ve built.”

Through acquisitions, DealerSocket is attempting to service a group that Ord feels has been underserved, independent auto dealers. It’s a market where both Finance Express (FEX DMS) and AutoStar reside and where DealerSocket apparently wants to grow. “We believe there’s a huge market there that has been vastly underserved, so we’re going to serve in a way in which we think it is deserved,” Ord explained.

When asked what impact this acquisition will have on dealers, Ord said, “First it’s going to be interoperability between website, digital marketing, CRM and DMS for the independent space, so that’s going to be the game plan for us to get all of that to work really, really well together and integrated. The next thing is their dealing with one vendor that they can trust and we will be leveraging and investing more into this platform for the independent auto dealers than any once else has ever for independent auto dealers. We believe there’s a huge market there that has been vastly underserved, so we’re going to serve in a way in which we think it is deserved.”

Finally, looking ahead, certainly there will be more acquisitions and changes at DealerSocket. The end goal is reportedly to eventually become the platform for everything automotive and according to Ord, “…to innovate and revolutionize the way auto dealers sell cars and service their customers.” Ord added all of this growth will help his organization understand the customer, the transactional side, what inventory is being sold and where it’s selling. Certainly as they continue to grow and acquire in the coming months there will be a lot of changes and innovations at DealerSocket.

About the Author:

The DrivingSales News team is dedicated to breaking the relevant and the tough stories affecting car dealers. Have questions for DrivingSales News? Reach the team at news@drivingsales.com.

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    DealerSocket ( as now a growing integrated Group ), continues to expand their offerings and solutions-strategy in service to franchise and independent automotive retail dealers – as an active client partner we congratulate the entire team! – clearly this is just the beginning for this Group…with more exciting developments yet to come…Well done!