This article is how you should be preparing your Dealership in the event of a Power or IT infrastructure failure

Why should your Dealership be prepared


Recent events in the world have reminded us of how reliant we are on Information Technology to operate our businesses, and how disruptive it is when a system fails

Reasons include:

  • Power Grid outage

  • Wildfire damage to infrastructure

  • Weather events such as storms and extreme cold

  • Internet Provider failure

  • Cyber Attacks



As we do not know when these types of failures are going to occur (unless you have access to a crystal ball), Dealerships would be prudent to have a Data Emergency Plan documented and ready to go


Your Data Emergency Plan is just like an Insurance Policy - you hope you never have to use it, but are very grateful that should you need it, you have it 


IT Failure 


Questions you need to ask:


What are the essential activities that must continue in event of an IT failure?

How can we manage temporarily with a manual system? 

  •  Remember that businesses operated just fine on paper systems decades ago - just a lot slower

  • However, it is difficult to be efficient without information technology in our modern economy. If challenged by an IT failure, how do we continue to function until the situation is rectified? 

  • A manual backup system is less efficient, but better than not being able to trade


Activity

Alternative

Service Invoice

Have a carbon copy Invoice book available to produce manual invoices

Once you are back online simply load the information into Blackpurl

Service Worksheet

Have a Carbon copy book available

Service Writer manually record vehicle details and instructions. Original goes to technician, they record hours worked and parts used for return to Service Writer once completed

Once you are back online simply load the information into Blackpurl

Parts Counter Sales

A manually written invoice in a carbon copy book will suffice

Customers have a record, and the copy pages can be used to load transactions into Blackpurl once system is back online

Parts Pricing

Are all your parts labelled and priced?

If not, then a good practice is to download your inventory once a month and store in a paper form, or on a local hard drive such as a notebook computer (detail on how to download listed below)

Parts Ordering
Do you have your major Vendor email and phone details manually recorded in a safe place?



Parts Inventory Price and Availability


  • At a regular interval run the Part Inventory Valuation report

    This is the link to the relevant article on how to run this report - Reporting - Part Valuation 

  • Change the search parameter, to report on Quantity Available greater than zero

  • Then export to CSV file or print a hard copy


Our suggestion would be to export to CSV and save to a laptop computer then you would have the ability to search the price and location of any part you keep in stock

Naturally it may not be as accurate as real time data due to stock movements, but it will be very close


Power Outages 


Blackpurl is cloud based BUT you still need to have access to the internet ie hot spot off your cell/mobile


Our suggestion would be to always have a tablet full charged and be able to connect to the internet without the need of the Dealership's Internet so that you can still perform sales etc