LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y. — DealerTrack recently announced that it has now reached 730 finance sources on its platform. The company also reported that it has upgraded its compliance solution, added DealerSocket to its OpenTrack program and teamed up with TK Carsites.

Discussing the new finance source milestone, Mark O'Neil, chairman and chief executive officer of DealerTrack, said, "In today's challenging environment, dealers clearly see the benefit of fostering strong relationships with a diversified portfolio of lenders, from national and regional banks to finance companies and credit unions. For dealers focused on expanding those relationships, DealerTrack provides free online access to significantly more financing sources than anyone else in the marketplace."

Rick Von Pusch, senior vice president of sales, marketing and international at DealerTrack, added, "Our ability to continue growing the DealerTrack network in the current environment is a powerful testament to its value proposition. While some lenders have exited the auto market, others are taking their place, and financing sources increasingly perceive joining our network as a competitive advantage in building their automotive business."

DealerTrack Improves Compliance Solution

DealerTrack also recently announced that it has enhanced its compliance solution to make it easier for dealers to automate their adverse action notice communications.

As required by federal law, dealers must send adverse action notices to consumers who seek dealer assisted financing and are denied credit.

All dealers on the DealerTrack platform are now able to take advantage of the new Adverse Action Manager, which automatically identifies which customers may require adverse action communications through its rules engine, officials explained. The program provides a centralized view of these customers, allowing for easy processing of required notices.

In addition, subscribers to the DealerTrack Compliance Solution can take advantage of the following powerful tools:

-New automated mailing services.

-Ability to customize adverse action notices.

-Ability to generate and print notices in batches.

"These enhancements continue to build on our commitment to provide dealers with a complete compliance solution," said Raj Sundaram, senior vice president, solutions and services group at DealerTrack. "The tool also includes the industry's first fully automated mailing service and reporting capability, taking the burden of mailing and tracking off of the dealer."

DealerTrack also enhanced its eMenu F&I product selling solution with the integration of a financial reporting tool that enables dealers to create customized reports.

These reports will allow dealerships to quickly analyze revenue and profit trends, executives pointed out.

In fact, the new functionality allows users to generate reports on revenue and profit performance by deal, product, employee or store, and can create side-by-side user and product comparisons with charts and graphs for trend analysis, they added.

Moreover, the reporting tool also supports reporting management for dealer groups with multiple locations.

"With this enhancement, eMenu becomes an even more powerful platform," said Sundaram. "The new reporting functionality will help dealers gain valuable insights into their sales process that can be leveraged to increase profits and F&I product sales.

"eMenu is a key component of our overall Compliance Solution, enabling dealers to present F&I product options fully and consistently to all customers, and to capture and store their signatures electronically," he continued.

DealerSocket Joins DealerTrack's OpenTrack Program

CRM provider DealerSocket reported at the National Auto Dealers Association that it has joined DealerTrack System's newly launched OpenTrack program.

The program enables DealerSocket to provides seamless, secure integration of its CRM system with the DealerTrack Arkona dealer management system, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity for mutual dealer customers, officials highlighted.

DealerTrack's OpenTrack program can provide vendors such as DealerSocket with all the tools and support they need to quickly integrate with the company's leading DMS solution, according to executives.

As a member, DealerSocket will work closely with DealerTrack to develop a certified interface that integrates the two best-of-breed solutions into a single comprehensive system. The certified integration is designed to increase the speed, security, reliability and integrity of a dealership's overall system and eliminate the time-consuming and often error-ridden process of dealers having to manually transfer data between the two systems.

"We are very excited about the significant benefits to DealerSocket and our mutual dealer customers who will participate in DealerTrack's OpenTrack program," said Brad Perry, president and co-founder of DealerSocket. "OpenTrack will provide us with secure integration and the flexibility to completely meet our customers' needs.

"Dealers will appreciate the straightforward user interface and increased revenues they'll experience using the DealerSocket and DealerTrack DMS combination. We are pleased to work with them to deliver such a powerful solution," he continued.

Meanwhile, Sundaram added, "With OpenTrack, we are truly delivering on our promise to the marketplace that the DealerTrack DMS will be an open and cost-effective platform.

"This is a win-win for all parties — giving dealers the flexibility to use best-in-class solutions, while providing third-party vendors such as DealerSocket with secure, bidirectional integration," he said.

DealerTrack Partners with TK Carsites

In other related news, DealerTrack Accessories Solutions announced that TK Carsites, which designs and hosts Web sites for new and independent dealers nationwide, has selected the company to power a unique new accessories offering for its customized Web sites.

DealerTrack will provide data on a wide range of OEM and aftermarket accessories, as well as the Web services support to seamlessly integrate the new offering with TK Carsites' hosted dealer Web sites.

Unlike other accessories offerings, the DealerTrack solution will be an integral part of the sites' inventory search function, rather than forcing the user to navigate away from the vehicles to search a separate accessories catalogue, officials explained.

As they are browsing vehicle inventory on a dealer's Web site, consumers will be able to view and purchase accessories that match a specific vehicle. In addition, consumers will be able to visualize accessories on select vehicle models through DealerTrack's 3D visualizer functionality.

"We are pleased to partner with TK Carsites to provide dealers with unique new Web-site capabilities that will help them participate in and increase their share of the large and lucrative accessories market," noted Sundaram.

"By effectively displaying and promoting accessories in tandem with inventory searches, dealers can not only differentiate their vehicles and increase their sales closing rates, but also drive high-margin accessories business," he continued.

"With this innovative functionality, DealerTrack's new accessories Web site solution enables us to offer our dealers more value-added for their Web sites," said Richard Valenta, CEO of TK Carsites. "While many dealer sites include links to accessories catalogues, nobody else has so fully integrated accessories"

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