LAS VEGAS — With competition in the sector intensifying, technological advances are critical for maintaining — and growing — marketshare. That was the message presented by Shaun Coyne, a managing director at The Black Rock Group and former chief information officer of Toyota Financial Services, during a session at the recent Auto Finance Summit.
In these difficult financial times, auto finance companies must refine their IT strategies to maximize success, he said. To that end, Coyne laid out a three-pronged approach for reaching those goals. Here are the salient points:
Reduce operating costs. Outsource tactical activities like maintenance, enhancements, and helpdesk functions. Also, develop an IT roadmap that aligns with your business strategy. By honing your company’s technology vision, you will achieve more accurate cost forecasting and become focused on higher value activities.
Position for growth and change. Improve your IT foundation by designing and implementing new data centers and installing foundational service-oriented architecture components. Also, institute a detailed framework to manage IT projects. These two strategies should reduce duplicate in-house technologies and disparate project directions, and result in tighter control over service-level agreements. They will also create a strong platform for growth.
Implement strategic initiatives. Eliminate legacy applications that fail to support evolving business needs, like 24/7 customer service, electronic dealer contracting, improved processing automation, and enhanced risk pricing. The results: integrated servicing and origination platforms and risk engines, better workflow capabilities, and a data warehouse for reporting and analytics.
Companies that implement the aforementioned “high performance roadmap” should realize a 40% reduction in overall operational costs, Coyne predicted. They will also simplify the number of interfaces in their IT architecture, reducing them to 300 from more than 1,000. Finally, and most importantly, the roadmap will enable businesses to go after new marketshare, not just protect their existing stake, he said.
—Victoria Fierson
