Dealerships are not short on technology.
Most dealer groups already have a DMS, CRM, website platform, digital retailing tools, call tracking, service schedulers, chat, email systems, reporting dashboards and now a growing list of AI solutions promising to improve performance.
The bigger issue is not whether dealerships have data. The issue is whether they can organize it, trust it and use it to make better decisions.
That was the central theme of this V20 Voices conversation with Mike Morgan of Launch Labs, Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group and Jeremy Nowling of Rohrman Auto Group. The conversation was not about chasing another tool. It was about what happens when dealership leaders start treating data as an operational asset.
As Mike Morgan of Launch Labs said early in the episode:
“This isn’t a product pitch. This is a dealer to dealer conversation.”
That distinction matters. CDPs, data lakes, customer identity and AI can sound technical, but the real conversation is operational. It is about how dealerships communicate with customers, spend marketing dollars, hold vendors accountable, improve retention and prepare for the next wave of AI driven customer engagement.
For years, dealership data has lived in separate systems.
Sales activity sits in the CRM. Ownership and service history sit in the DMS. Website behavior sits with the website provider. Phone activity sits in call tracking. Marketing engagement sits in email platforms or agency reports.
Each system may be useful on its own, but none of them tells the full customer story.
That creates a major management problem. If leadership cannot see the complete customer journey, it becomes harder to know who is shopping, who is servicing, who is defecting, who is ready for the next vehicle and which marketing efforts are actually working.
A strong data strategy connects those signals into a cleaner, more usable customer profile. That profile becomes the foundation for better marketing, better service retention, better sales follow up and better AI performance.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group connected that directly to where the industry is going:
“We’re capturing every web activity, every call activity, CRM activity, DMS activity, all of that information can be rolled up into a customer profile.”
That is the shift. Data is not just a reporting function anymore. It is the operating layer that supports how the dealership understands and acts on customer opportunity.
Every dealership leader has seen the symptoms of bad data.
Emails bounce. Phone numbers are wrong. Customer records are duplicated. Sales and service histories are incomplete. Vendors report activity, but managers cannot clearly connect that activity to outcomes.
When the data is weak, the dealership starts making decisions from an incomplete picture.
Jeremy Nowling of Rohrman Auto Group shared one of the most important takeaways from their own journey:
“The biggest eye opener for us was finding out that 48% of our data that we had in our DMS was incorrect.”
That is not a small issue. If nearly half the customer data is wrong, then marketing campaigns are less effective, service retention efforts miss opportunities and AI tools are being fed unreliable information.
For dealership management, this is where the conversation becomes practical. Before launching the next campaign or investing in the next AI platform, stores need to ask whether the underlying customer data can be trusted.
Clean data is not exciting work, but it is foundational work.
A major operational benefit of better data is the ability to move away from broad, generic marketing.
Many dealerships still rely on the same basic model: pull a list from the DMS, send one message to everyone and hope the offer connects with enough people to justify the spend.
That approach is becoming less effective because customers are not all in the same stage of the journey.
A recent buyer is different from a long term service customer. A customer who abandoned the service scheduler is different from someone browsing SUVs. A customer nearing the end of warranty is different from someone who just submitted a lead.
Better data allows the store to build smarter audiences and communicate based on real customer behavior.
Jeremy Nowling of Rohrman Auto Group described the old approach clearly:
“Traditionally in automotive, what we tend to do is we do an email blast to everybody in our DMS, and everybody gets that same message.”
That is exactly the model dealers need to evolve from.
The future is micro audience marketing. Not because it sounds more sophisticated, but because it matches the message to the customer’s actual situation.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group summed up the shift well:
“The old spray and pray method is going away. We’re shooting with a laser gun now.”
That is the mindset dealership marketing needs. Less waste. More precision. Better timing. More relevant communication.
One of the biggest strategic points from the conversation was ownership.
Dealerships often assume they own their data because the customer originated with the dealership. But in practice, many of the audiences, reports, targeting rules and attribution models live inside vendor platforms.
That creates risk.
If the dealership changes vendors, does it keep the audience? Does it keep the customer intelligence? Does it keep the history? Can it move the data into another system without starting over?
Jeremy Nowling of Rohrman Auto Group explained the risk plainly:
“If we cancel that vendor, the vendor takes all of the data, everything that we put into it, and now we have to start all over.”
That should be a serious concern for any dealer group.
A better data strategy puts the dealership in control. Vendors can still play a critical role, but they should plug into the dealership’s structure rather than control it.
This changes vendor management. The question is no longer just, “What does your platform do?” The better questions are:
Who owns the audience data?
Can we export it?
Can it connect to our data warehouse or CDP?
Will it support our customer identity strategy?
What happens if we leave?
Can your tool work with the dealership’s broader data strategy?
When the dealership owns and structures its data properly, it gains leverage. It can hold vendors more accountable, reduce duplication and avoid being trapped inside any single platform.
A CDP or data platform can be extremely valuable, but only if the dealership has a clear plan.
This was an important point in the episode. Buying the platform is not the same thing as creating the outcome. The work requires data extraction, cleansing, appending, identity resolution, consent management, internal alignment and ongoing process ownership.
Mike Morgan of Launch Labs made that distinction clear:
“There’s a big difference between buying technology and making it work inside a dealership group.”
That is where some dealerships get frustrated. They buy a tool expecting an instant transformation, but the real value depends on how well the dealership prepares the data and builds the process around it.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group explained that the value became clearer as they built the structure:
“As you’re building it, your eyes start opening up.”
That is an important leadership lesson. A data strategy is not a one time installation. It is a capability the dealership builds over time. As more signals connect, more opportunities become visible.
Most dealership website visitors never submit a lead.
They browse inventory, research service, compare vehicles, start tools, abandon tools and come back on different devices. But if the dealership can only act on the small percentage of people who raise their hand, most customer intent remains invisible.
That is why identity resolution matters.
Mike Morgan of Launch Labs put it simply:
“As a dealership, you can only act on customers or interested shoppers that you can actually identify.”
For dealership operators, this has massive implications.
A better identity layer helps the store understand who is engaging, what they are interested in and where they are in the journey. It also allows the dealership to communicate more appropriately across email, direct mail, text, phone follow up, paid media and website engagement.
This is not just about selling more cars. It is also about improving the customer experience.
When the store understands the customer better, communication becomes more relevant. A service customer gets service related messaging. An SUV shopper gets SUV messaging. A customer with a specific ownership history gets communication that reflects that history.
That is a better experience for the customer and a better use of dealership resources.
AI is dominating the conversation in automotive retail right now. Dealers are being presented with AI for chat, BDC, marketing, service scheduling, sales follow up, reporting and customer engagement.
But the episode made one point very clear: AI will not save a messy data strategy.
If the customer profile is wrong, duplicated, outdated or incomplete, AI will make mistakes faster and at scale. It may personalize the wrong message, reference the wrong customer, recommend the wrong audience or create a poor experience.
Mike Morgan of Launch Labs delivered one of the most important lines of the conversation:
“AI is only as good as the data that feeds it.”
That should be written into every dealership AI strategy.
Before a dealership asks what AI can do, it should ask what data AI will be using. If the data foundation is strong, AI can become a powerful layer for personalization, automation and decision support. If the foundation is weak, AI becomes another tool sitting on top of disconnected information.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group gave a strong example around website chat. Most chat tools today do not understand the customer’s full history. They do not know when the customer bought, when they serviced, what they looked at, what they called about or whether they already made an appointment.
With a better data structure, that changes.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group said:
“Having that same capability on a website chat, that knows all this context about you, that’s going to be a game changer.”
That is the future dealers should be preparing for: AI with context, chat with history, marketing with identity, service outreach with timing and sales follow up with relevance.
A data strategy should not be treated as a theoretical technology project. It should connect to measurable dealership outcomes.
That means leadership should be looking at revenue created, wasted spend reduced, vendors consolidated, service opportunities recovered and sales opportunities identified that would not have existed otherwise.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group shared a powerful example:
“We sold over 100 cars just from those data ups.”
The reason that matters is because those opportunities were tied to customer activity that would not have existed as traditional leads. By connecting signals across web, phone, CRM and other activity, the group was able to identify and act on opportunity differently.
Jeremy Nowling of Rohrman Auto Group also pointed to measurable impact in service:
“We are now able to measure the revenue that we pick up off of abandoned audiences.”
That is a major operational opportunity. If a customer starts a service scheduler and does not complete it, that abandoned action can become an audience. The dealership can follow up, bring the customer back and measure whether the activity turns into a completed service visit.
That is how data becomes operational. It moves from reporting what happened to helping the dealership act while opportunity still exists.
One of the biggest leadership takeaways from the episode was that this cannot be managed casually.
A real data strategy needs an internal owner. Not a committee. Not just a vendor. Not someone who only looks at reports once a month.
The dealership needs someone who understands automotive operations and can work with data partners, website providers, CRM teams, DMS sources and leadership to turn information into action.
Jim Kosobucki of Morgan Auto Group explained the need clearly:
“You have to have somebody in the store or in the group that kind of knows data. They have to know automotive data.”
That last part matters.
Automotive data is different. A generic data analyst may understand structure, but they may not understand dealership process. They may not know the difference between a sold customer, service customer, equity opportunity, orphan owner, lease maturity, warranty expiration, declined service opportunity or abandoned scheduler.
The right person needs both data curiosity and dealership fluency.
For larger groups, this may become a dedicated position. For smaller groups or single rooftops, it may start with a marketing director, operations leader or forward thinking manager who is given clear ownership.
Either way, someone has to be accountable.
For a dealership that knows data matters but does not know where to begin, the first step is not buying another tool. The first step is getting clear on the current state.
Start with a simple internal audit.
Where does customer data live today?
How clean is the DMS data?
How much duplication exists in the CRM?
Which vendors are creating or storing audience data?
Can customer activity from the website, phone, CRM and DMS be connected?
What data can the dealership export?
Which systems would create the biggest disruption if the vendor relationship ended?
Where is marketing spend being wasted because audiences are too broad or inaccurate?
From there, leadership can define the business outcomes that matter most. For some groups, the first priority may be reducing wasted ad spend. For others, it may be service retention, lease maturity, AI readiness, abandoned scheduler recovery or better identity resolution.
The important thing is to tie the strategy to dealership outcomes, not technology buzzwords.
Jeremy Nowling of Rohrman Auto Group gave strong advice for dealers evaluating this space:
“Don’t wait much longer, because if not, the industry is going to continue to pass you by.”
That is the urgency. This does not mean dealers should rush into the wrong platform. It means they should start the process now, ask better questions and build the foundation before the gap gets wider.
The dealerships that win the next phase of automotive retail will not simply be the ones that buy the most technology.
They will be the ones that own their data, clean their data, understand their customers and make every vendor fit into a larger operational strategy.
A CDP alone is not the answer. AI alone is not the answer. A new marketing vendor alone is not the answer.
The answer is leadership.
Dealerships need to move from disconnected tools to connected customer intelligence. They need to move from broad campaigns to precise communication. They need to move from vendor dependency to data ownership. They need to move from AI curiosity to AI readiness.
Most importantly, they need to stop treating data as a technical side project and start treating it as a core operating advantage.
Better data creates better decisions.
Better decisions create better operations.
And better operations create a better dealership.
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P.O. Box 10066
Raleigh, NC 27605
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