Automate car dealer software in loan agreements

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people who are trying to buy a car right now are really struggling a Cyber attack shut down dealerships across the country hackers have targeted cdk Global it's a software provider that 15,000 car dealerships rely on to run their business the company says the Cyber attack likely is to last a couple days as a result auto dealership stocks including carvana CarMax and AutoNation they got hit hard today even shares of investment firm Brookfield business business partners got clobbered cdk Global is one of its biggest Holdings for more on this let's bring in Celebrity Motorcar CEO Tom mayol Le who's been affected by the Cyber attack and car dealership guy commentator on the industry uh and CEO Yos Levy good to see you guys Tom let me start with you give me a sense of How It's disrupting business oh it's a it's a disaster I have to tell you customers are coming in consumers are coming in you know we're selling cars but we can't book the deals we can't Finance the deals we can't get them to the banks which means can't fund the cars and we can't pay off the cars the manufacturers are shut down because it's affecting their supply chain and it's affecting service people come in you can't process the orders for service you can't move the parts to the service departments um and clearly you know listen you know you talked about 15,000 dealers that are affected there's 17,500 new car dealers in the US that is 95% of the car dealerships across the country this is clearly a Cyber attack this is this was manifested by um some organization that that wants to shut down our transportation system and that's what the Biden Administration needs to understand when they start talking about electric cars and and and selling our soul to China and having them come in and and control our transportation system this is really the effect of what's I know it can be it can be very disruptive uh let me let me just ask you and back up a little bit do you have Tom cyber Insurance you know we have cyber insurance but you know that's a that's a headache in itself there's deductibles you have to process all those claims you have to figure out what your law are and that's great you know ultimately you'll get some money back but it's really the disruption in the in the process and and the uh you know the Daily Business activity that goes on the money flow you know the money flow in the US is what keeps this country going and it's shut down right now in the Auto industry okay Yosi way in here what I mean I know that a lot of dealership owners are are connected with you on social media and are paying close attention to what you have to say tell me about the Cyber attack and the way it's disrupting the business yeah so look like Tom said it's uh it's disrupting the entire dealership right this is you have to understand that a DMS right this is the heart and brains of a dealership this is the tool that cdk provides to over 50% of the US Auto Dealerships the average dealership employees 71 employees right you're talking about hundreds and thousands of employees who are impacted the ones who are impacted the most of course are the hourly employees but I think that what's going to be the biggest question for auto retail is going to be will the industry continue centralizing and consolidating Technology this has been the biggest Trend in Auto retail consumers want better experience a more seamless uh car buying process and so the industry has flocked towards let's put all of our tools okay but are there other options well there are other options it's the way we've been operating but this is now the question that deal I mean it's this fog of War everyone's asking themselves you know do we want to continue going in this direction because look when you have lots of in one basket you know per se this is what happens I will add one more thing that many dealers do have you know multiple pieces of software and as Tom just mentioned dealers are resorting to you know old old school ways of you know doing things pen and paper but the industry you're talking about the brain and heart of a dealership and it's really really you know crippling the day-to-day operation right now for many dealers across country what's your best advice right now for the dealers who are are looking to you sort of to set the tone and give them some perspective because I mean I'm looking here New York state has actually sent out a dealer alert um and it's and says it doesn't appear that cdk knows for certain how long their systems will continue to be down which means dealerships don't know when they'll really be back up and running so look right this this feels like the covid-19 moment for the car industry right dealers are it's extremely disruptive as Tom mentioned again and different departments are being impacted differently right service is a department that's being impacted very heavily right because unlike sales where you can maybe spot a car right put it on the road and maybe contract it a couple days later service is a much different beast and it's a lot more difficult uh to fix what I'll tell you is that right now deal dealers are extremely resilient it's an entrepreneurial business right dealers know how to find Solutions know how to get up and continue pushing forward and really I've seen a lot of great camaraderie among dealers helping each other out and you know sharing right now best practices anything they can do in order to help continue the business moving forward to help keep people who are employed keep working and to serve the customers and I think that right now we all have to just really let cdk fix the issue they're putting out updates a minute before we hopped on this call they shared another update that several services are back up right before we hopped on this call the DMS is not back up to be very clear right so the heart and brain is not but several services are back up which is a positive signal yeah and we just have to be patient and and let them fix the issue Tom are you losing sales you know we're losing sales we're losing service but you know the big thing is you got billions of dollars and soon to be trillions that are tied up that can't be funded uh that are frozen and it's going to start affecting manufacturers the finance companies and that's the big that's the big downfall here because if you can't fund these contracts and pay off these cars that are sitting on a FL plan you got you got an issue and the dealers have to get them paid off and that's that that's part of the way the business works and you're you know as as the days tick on you know cdk fixed the issue last night but the day before but they got hit again last night so yes they came up with some fixes tonight but who knows what's going to happen tonight you know there's clearly out somebody out there that while we're sleeping they're they're creating cyber attacks