Seven thirty, three logins and a spreadsheet
The sales meeting is at half eight. Before it, the sales administrator or one of the managers logs into the DMS for yesterday's orders and deliveries, the CRM for new enquiries and appointments, the diary for test drives, and the advertising platform for stock numbers. They copy the figures into the same spreadsheet as yesterday and print it.
When they are on holiday, the meeting happens without figures, or with figures that someone else built slightly differently. When a number looks wrong, ten minutes of the meeting goes on working out where it came from.
Every figure lives in a different system
Dealerships use several systems that each do their job well, and none of them produces the one-page view the sales meeting needs.
- Orders, deliveries and gross are in the DMS.
- Enquiries, appointments and follow-ups are in the CRM.
- Test drives may be in a diary or a separate tool.
- Stock counts and advert status are on the advertising platform.
- Targets are in a spreadsheet from the manufacturer or group.
Joining them each morning is manual work, and every manual join is a chance for a small error that undermines trust in the whole sheet.
What the morning spreadsheet costs
A manager's or administrator's first hour, every working day. Figures that depend on one person. Meetings that argue about numbers rather than acting on them.
There is also what the spreadsheet cannot show. It is a snapshot, so trends are lost unless someone keeps the history. It rarely shows figures by salesperson or source, because that would take even longer to build.
In a group, the problem multiplies. Each site builds its own sheet in its own way, and the group meeting compares numbers that were not counted the same. Hours go on reconciling figures that should have matched from the start.
How we build the daily dashboard
- We connect to each system through its API or scheduled export: your DMS, CRM, diary tool and advertising platforms, where your accounts allow.
- Figures are collected overnight and early morning into a small database, so history is kept automatically.
- Definitions are agreed once and written on the dashboard, such as what counts as an order or a delivery.
- The dashboard shows yesterday, month to date and target, by site, brand and salesperson as your data allows.
- It is available on screens in the sales office, on phones and as a PDF emailed to managers before the meeting.
- Where a figure cannot be collected automatically, the dashboard says so rather than showing a guess.
| Figure | Comes from | Shown by |
|---|---|---|
| Orders and deliveries | DMS | Site, brand, salesperson |
| New enquiries | CRM or lead queue | Source, salesperson |
| Test drives | Diary or booking tool | Salesperson |
| Stock and advert status | DMS and ad platform | Site, age band |
We do not change how your manufacturer or group counts anything for their own purposes. The dashboard uses your agreed definitions and says what they are.
Meetings that start with the numbers already there
The dashboard is ready before anyone arrives. The meeting starts with yesterday and month to date on the screen, and nobody has spent their first hour copying. When someone questions a figure, the definition and the source are one click away. Trends that used to be invisible, such as enquiries by source over the last quarter, are simply there.
Does this sound like your morning?
- Someone builds the sales figures by hand each morning.
- Figures are late or missing when that person is off.
- Meetings argue about where numbers came from.
- You cannot see trends without digging through old spreadsheets.