CDK Global is the dealer management system that runs the back office at nearly 15,000 North American dealerships. It got hit with ransomware and went dark for two weeks. Sales, service history, credit applications, and parts orders were all offline at once, because it all lived on someone else's servers. A system on your own premises means a vendor's bad week doesn't become yours.
Dealers who arrange financing are legally treated as "financial institutions" under federal law and must maintain a written information security program. Fines run up to $100,000 per violation for the business and $10,000 personally for officers. Processing that data on a machine that never touches the public internet is the most direct way to clear that bar.
Iowa's privacy law, in effect since January 2025, requires "reasonable technical and organizational measures" to protect consumer data. A system that's locked down and kept on your premises meets that standard by design. There are no vendor data sharing agreements to audit and no cloud subprocessor list to track down.
Regional companies backed by private equity are buying up HVAC, plumbing, and electrical shops across the metro and backing them with call centers and marketing budgets independents can't match. Most home service customers hire whoever answers the phone first when they're comparison shopping. Not having someone available to pick up the phone because a tech's on a ladder, the front desk is slammed, or it's after hours is money left on the table for a private equity call center to pick up instead. For a shop running five trucks, recovering even half of those missed calls after hours is worth $5,000 to $15,000 a month in jobs that would've otherwise gone to a competitor.
Discovery is affordable, usually around $400, and tells us exactly what you need before anyone commits to a build.
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