Vroom, Vroom, Vroom. The jarring sound of a throaty V8 coming to life roared out of Sal’s iPhone alarm to wake him up at 5:45AM. His most favorite noise ever not only wakes him up, but motivates him and gets him in the zone to sell more cars today. He sprinted to the coffee pot, poured a 22 ouncer of straight black jet fuel and began his morning routine. As he stood in front of the mirror, he recited his mantra 22 times. 22 is how many cars he wants to sell at the dealership this month. It’s ambitious, but he cleared 20 last month, so it’s doable. “I am a high performance selling machine, I am a high performance selling machine…” Sal was pumped. “Today is going to be a great day,” he said to himself. “I’m going to crush it.”
During the drive to the dealership, Sal jammed out to his pump up soundtrack which included some ear candy from Survivor, Queen, Motley Crue, Megadeath, Barry Manilow, and Cher. He was READY for this! Being a Saturday, the dealership was popping. The scent of freshly popped and buttered popcorn wafted through the air, inflatables bobbed and waved in the breeze, energetic music was blasting on the lot, it was alive.
Customers were pouring into the dealership looking to score a great deal during the Summer Madness campaign the dealership was running and Sal was there to help make those deals happen. He greeted the first family who were looking to get into a sweet, sweet minivan to haul the kids back and forth to soccer practice. Sal greeted them, built his rapport, took them on a test drive, and brought them inside the AC to seal the deal. He brought the kiddos some coloring books and popcorn, brought mom and dad an Ice Cold bottled water and sat down to work the deal. After a bit of back and forth, Sal was confident they had a deal. He walked it back to his sales manager Cheryl and asked her to expedite the deal as the kids were getting restless and antsy.
Sal returned to the family, checked in on them, and was getting a bit antsy himself, he wanted to get this deal closed and move on to the next, afterall, he’s got 22 deals to close this month! After about 30 minutes of chit-chatting with the family to kill time, Sal decided to go check in with Cheryl to see what was taking so long. Sal walked into the Sales office and instantly witnessed chaos. Deals were stacking up and NOT getting done. There was a look of panic in not only Cheryl’s eyes, but in all of the finance people, the big bosses, and even one of the owners. “What’s going on?” Sal asked. “The F&^#*&@ system is down!” Sheryl exclaimed. The dealership came to a screeching halt. They had at least 34 deals in the works and couldn’t process any of them. Sal had to walk back to the family and let them know that it could be hours until they were able to work their deal and process their transaction. The family, who had been quite patient, had to walk. The kiddos had places to be, and frustrated, they left the dealership.
Sal had never been so frustrated. He had his sights set on closing at least three deals today and now that hours had passed, it wasn’t going to happen. He was crushed, but he wasn’t alone.
CDK, a software platform that thousands of auto dealerships around the US use, was hit by a crippling cyberattack recently. This attack rendered the software useless to dealerships who rely on it to bind and calculate transactions. This attack forced the software giant to shut down the majority of its systems while they worked to mitigate the attack behind the scenes. And, just when they thought they had it under control, they suffered another attack, forcing them to once again shut down even more of its platform. Auto dealerships were forced to find alternative methods to process the transactions that were piling up, impacting sales, reputation, and customers. Many dealerships had to go back to using pen and paper to get the deals done. And just when it wasn’t bad enough, scamming scumbags jumped in to cash in on an already terrible situation. Scammers started to call dealerships AND customers asking them for credentials to access the CDK software.
This recent reality shows us the volatility of SaaS solutions and how all industries, who are reliant on these systems, need to have a plan B. This time it was the automotive industry, next time, it could be banking software, or CRMs, or tax preparation software. The bottom line, every software that we rely on is susceptible to an attack, the key to keeping your business afloat is planning. That’s where we come in. The team at Advanced Systems Solutions has helped car dealerships, municipalities, and small businesses plan for the worst, and the time to talk about it is today, not when you’re under fire. Give us a call today at (407) 414-6626. Relax. We’re on IT.
