LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y. — DealerTrack announced it has added several enhancements to its DealWatch compliance product that are designed to enable dealers to electronically capture, store and manage all of a store's customer-related documents.

These updates include DealWatch's new external document functionality, which is now available nationwide. This feature allows DealWatch subscribers to scan, upload and store external deal documents, such as service contracts, buyer's orders and customer verification documents.

"With these upgrades, dealers using DealWatch now have significantly enhanced tools to facilitate compliance and help protect their dealerships against potential liabilities," explained Mark O'Neil, chairman and chief executive officer of DealerTrack. "Our low-cost scanning solution will make it both easy and economical for dealers to store and retrieve all of their customer documents in a secure electronic vault."

"With the addition of document scanning and storage capabilities as well as the new adverse action notice and privacy policy functionality, DealerTrack now boasts the most comprehensive compliance solution available, supporting a dealership's sales and F&I processes," he added.

The enhancements to DealWatch also include the capability to customize privacy notices, which dealers are required to offer to customers in order to comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. It also offers the ability for dealers to electronically capture customer signatures to acknowledge that they have been presented with the privacy notice.

Officials explained that the notices are securely stored within the customer's electronic deal jacket. The privacy notice will incorporate the Federal Trade Commission's current proposed model privacy notice, which dealers can customize to correspond with their information-sharing practices.

In addition, when users pull credit reports through DealerTrack, they can now automatically create and print adverse action notices pre-filled with necessary information, officials highlighted.

The new DealWatch features enable dealers to securely storing these notices in the customer's electronic deal jacket, which ensures compliance with the law.

Offering a bit of history, DealerTrack said DealWatch was introduced in 2006 and is fully integrated with the DealerTrack network.

Officials describe the program as a robust compliance solution that helps dealers monitor the gathering and handling of sensitive customer information, signature capture, customer identity verification and more.

DealWatch encrypts customer information and stores sensitive data in a secure electronic filing cabinet, helping to avoid the liability that unsecured paperwork can pose.

Customers can sign documents electronically, and auditable records of who accessed the information and when are created and stored automatically. The solution also enables dealers to monitor deal activity to ensure that every employee is following the same steps, which can help prevent mistakes and costly litigation, executives pointed out.

DealerTrack Reaches 400

In other recent news, the company announced that the number of active financing sources connected to its network has reached 400, up 31 percent since the end of 2006.

"The power of the DealerTrack network continues to grow as we connect more financing sources, dealers and other providers," said O'Neil.

"In fact, we are adding lenders at a faster pace than ever before, in part because dealers have communicated so clearly how much they value the network's efficiency and convenience. As a result, lenders increasingly see joining the DealerTrack network as a competitive advantage for building their dealer business," he concluded.