How to Automate CDK Global

A dealership keeps sales, service and parts on one record

CDK Global makes dealer management software, and in a car dealership that covers nearly everything. One customer record carries the vehicle they bought, the finance on it, every repair order since, the parts fitted and the money that moved. Sales, service, parts and accounting all write into the same file, which is the whole reason a dealer group buys a DMS instead of four separate systems.

The company has been through some changes worth knowing. It was spun out of ADP's dealer services division in 2014, and its international arm was sold in 2021 and now trades as Keyloop, so CDK today means the North American business. The current line is sold as the Dealership Xperience Platform, with the older CDK Drive still carried on the company's own site.

What has not changed is the shape of the day. The DMS knows what happened inside the building. It knows very little about what is happening outside it.

The morning list is assembled from eleven open tabs

A dealership's real work list is not in the DMS. It gets put together each morning by whoever has the time, one login at a time.

The service advisor works through the manufacturer's portal, VIN by VIN, to see which cars booked in today have an open recall and whether the remedy has actually been released. The parts manager checks the supplier's site for the back order that was promised last Thursday. Somebody goes through last month's repair orders pulling out declined and deferred jobs, then prices each one again before ringing. Somebody checks the listing sites to see whether the car that sold on Saturday is still advertised. Somebody adds up the week's bay hours in a spreadsheet so the manager has a bay-hours figure by Monday.

None of it sits in one place and none of it is optional. It is simply slow, and it is done by people the dealership hired to sell cars and to fix them.

CDK Global

Recalls checked before the car arrives Tomorrow's service schedule run against the manufacturer's own VIN lookup overnight, so the advisor knows which cars have an open recall with a remedy available.

Declined work worth calling back Last month's deferred jobs turned into a call list that already carries this week's price, with anyone who has since had it done taken off.

Parts chased on the supplier's screen The back order that was promised last Thursday checked each morning, and anything that finally shipped moved onto the ready to book list.

The Fixed Operations Suite runs the lane, not the OEM portal

Inside the building, CDK has most of this covered.

The Fixed Operations Suite runs the service drive end to end: Scheduling for the appointment, Check-In at the lane, Inspection for the multi-point, and Enhanced Customer Communications for the texts and the technician video that get a repair approved faster. CDK CRM carries the sales side, with Equity Mining flagging the customers whose position makes them likely to buy today, and Desking for the numbers. The Vehicle Inventory Suite takes a used car from appraisal through to syndication, and the Intelligence Suite reports across the store.

All of that runs on what the dealership already recorded. The DMS knows the car came in, what was quoted and what was declined. The CRM knows the deal.

The wall is everything held by somebody else. The manufacturer's recall and warranty portal, where the remedy status actually lives. The parts supplier's order screen. The listing sites where your inventory is advertised. The lender's portal, the title system, the review pages. Every one is a login, and behind every login is a person opening another tab.

A service drive that reads the manufacturer's page for itself

Give something those logins as well as the DMS, and that list can be waiting when the doors open.

Tomorrow's schedule checked against the manufacturer's own VIN lookup overnight, so the advisor knows before the customer walks in which cars have an open recall with a remedy available and which are still waiting on parts. The back order chased on the supplier's screen each morning, with anything that finally shipped moved onto the ready to book list.

Last month's declined work turned into a call list that already has this week's price on it, with the customers who have since had the job done elsewhere quietly taken off. Sold cars checked against the listing sites, so nothing that left the lot on Saturday is still taking calls on Tuesday. Warranties running out in the next sixty days, set beside what each car is worth today.

The rule holding all of it together is one a good service manager already uses. Gathering can run unattended, because reading a portal changes nothing. A text to a customer, a public reply to a review, a price quoted out loud: those reach a person, so they get drafted and wait for the advisor whose name is on them.

The portal round comes off the service advisor

The manufacturer's portal will not read itself, and the VIN has to be typed in one at a time. That is the job, and it has never been a good use of an advisor standing in a busy lane.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens the OEM portal, the parts supplier, the listing site or the review page, reads what is on the screen, and brings the answer back to the record it belongs to.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it. Nothing reaches a customer without a person approving it first.

Each workflow below lists the systems it opens before you turn it on.