DMS providers open digital channels for stores and lenders

CDK also is seeing lender buy-in for its e-contracting option.

“I think a lot of lenders are seeing this as the way to go,” Swiech said in March.

They recognize dealerships don’t want to switch between systems to complete a transaction and see building the process into a DMS as a positive.

“We’re getting a lot of help from the lenders,” he said.

Swiech said CDK had been conducting “pre-work” on the project for two to three years. It began to accelerate its work integrating lenders into the system in 2022.

He said it was easier to start the process by adding noncaptive lenders to the system because many of them use a standard contracting format.

“That’s why our main focus this calendar year is to really knock out as many of the captives as possible,” Swiech said.

The technology also looks for mistakes in the deals sent to lenders, such as a mismatched name or an unapproved interest rate, according to Swiech. The idea is to catch the errors in advance and prevent the need for a consumer to return and re-sign a deal, he said.

Swiech said dealers new to the system originally demonstrate a significant error rate when checked through the validation, but he attributed this to retailers being unfamiliar with the new process.

“We see a huge drop-off within a month of the workflow,” he said, with the error rate falling to less than 5 percent.

The system relies on CDK’s digital deal jacketing and e-filing software and allows retailers to submit deals, Swiech said. It also allows for a centralized document management system, eliminating the inefficiency of errors that arise when documents from a different piece of software must be transferred, he said.