Honda Financial Services (HFS) is extending the reach of its iDeal electronic contracting system by developing a process for select smaller dealer management system (DMS) providers to integrate with iDeal to expedite transactions. The latest DMS to integrate is Tekion.
“The advantages of e-contracting are better accuracy—meaning fewer errors—and faster funding overall, because dealers aren’t putting contracts in envelopes and shipping them to us,” says Tom Cote, assistant manager, Business Operations Services–Originations & Dealer Services, American Honda Finance Corporation. Integration with DMS providers further expedites the contracting process by eliminating repetitive data entry into iDeal.
With integration, both customer information and product information flow seamlessly, automatically and accurately into iDeal, improving productivity and speeding transactions for customers and F&I managers.
When HFS introduced e-contracting in 2018, integration with DMS providers was a major goal. HFS initially focused on the four largest DMS providers—CDK Global, Reynolds and Reynolds, Dealertrack and Advent Resources—which account for roughly 80% of Honda dealerships. With the recent addition of smaller, growing DMS providers like Tekion, that figure is inching toward 90%. “Tekion is growing in market share, and enough of our dealers are using it that it makes sense to integrate them with iDeal,” Cote says.
The result addresses two major concerns that all dealers have—customer service and productivity. “We know the efficiency of the F&I process is important to customers. They tell us in their customer satisfaction surveys,” Cote explains. “Any time we can trim off of the process is going to improve a dealership’s customer satisfaction index.”