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WSJ’s Jeff Bennett Talks GM’s Shop-Click-Drive Initiative With DrivingSales News | DrivingSales News

WSJ’s Jeff Bennett Talks GM’s Shop-Click-Drive Initiative With DrivingSales News

February 19, 2015 1 Comment

In his story for the WSJ, Jeff Bennett covered how General Motors had gone away from contracting its programming talent and moved from 1,400 programmers to a reported 8,000. GM also shifted their time towards R&D. “Now about 80% of the IT work that’s going on there is in research, development…everything from shop-click-drive to crash testing on cars. So, a complete redo here by bringing the it back in-house.”

Bennett mentioned that one of the reasons for the influx for on-staff programmer talent was for GM’s Shop-Click-Drive initiative.

Bennett said, “One of the big things that we (WSJ) found was the launching of this shop-click-drive. Basically its an automaker designed, produced were people go and shop online for vehicles, however they are connected with participating dealers. They don’t deal at all with GM as a company.”

Shop-click-drive is a voluntary program for dealers, however those that aren’t involved won’t reap the benefits.

Referring to the Shop-Click-Drive program Bennett said, “When the information flows into GM through that shop-click, the information is passed directly to the dealer or route 1, one of its partners. GM doesn’t keep that information; they are required internally to erase any information that is passed to them. So that all goes to the dealer, the dealer then works it up and passes it back to GM for financing and that kind of thing. But again, it’s all based on participating dealerships, but if you’re not in it, you’re not collecting on it. They said in the first year of operation they sold about 15,000 vehicles.”

Bennett further stated that this program and potentially others like it would provide a challenge for dealers.

Talking about customer experience, Bennett noted, “I think that dealers are going to be challenged ahead here to see how they can change that whole dynamic of buying a car and having it delivered. I think that what our example was in the Texas rancher, what he liked most was that he could do almost all of the paperwork almost entirely online.”

Finally, Bennett noted what he sees as the evolving clash in automotive.

Talking about this competition, Bennett explained, “The clash that we are now beginning to see is between Silicon Valley and Detroit. Who is going to win over this? Who is going to have the technologies and the software? Remember for years its been the Delphis, Lears, GMs that have been providing these cars with these technologies. Now you’ve got Apple talking about developing a car, you’ve got all of that software out there. So, it’s going to be an interesting kind of battle between the two to see, again how it all folds together. And (to see) if there’s new entries, new winners that we just don’t know about yet.”

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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    And this benefits dealers exactly how?