Category: Editor’s note

Nice guys can finish first

December 27, 2023

Every year since 2006, the national association representing car dealers, the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, has awarded three CADA Laureate Awards to dealers in three distinct categories: ambassadorship, retail operations and innovation. By my simple math that means there are …

Canada Night Eh’ is back!

November 2, 2023

As of press time, it was full steam ahead for the return of Canada Night at NADA. This event, initially sparked a few years ago by Alan Bird and his colleagues over at SCI Marketview, now taq Automotive Intelligence, was …

Demystifying AI

October 3, 2023

I encourage you to read the column on artificial intelligence on page 34 by Dee Murphy-Brown in this issue. As I was editing her column, I was struck by the line: “Over the next half-decade, early adopters will likely start …

Treating guests like, well, guests

April 25, 2023

We write a lot about the future of the automotive retail experience, and at times it seems like it’s a lot of theoretical discussions that don’t necessarily make it to the sales floor and service bays of our dealerships. Being …

Emerging and connecting

October 31, 2022

As we, as a society, emerge from the pandemic, and we, as an industry, see glimmers of the end of historic supply shortages, I’m doing a bit of a slow emergence myself, from behind the scenes to being a more …

Do you trust your gut?

September 30, 2022

When it comes to making key decisions, it’s always an interesting question: does someone with years (or decades) of industry experience rely on their “gut” instinct or numbers in a spreadsheet to make a decision?  Dealers have to make key …

How’s your tech stack?

July 29, 2022

Every so often, you hear a term or phrase used often enough that it penetrates your consciousness.  Like, “tech stack.”  At Universus, we were doing an analysis of our own tech stack, to see if our tools were suitable for …