Auto Dealer Group Deploys Custom DMS Across 6 Branches in 60 Days

Rolling out a single dealer management system across six branches in sixty days sounds aggressive on paper, and it was. But for a fast-growing auto dealer group juggling six sets of disconnected spreadsheets, three legacy tools, and zero visibility into cross-branch inventory, the alternative, staying on the patchwork they had, was costing more every month than the project itself. This is exactly the kind of auto dealer group custom DMS multi branch deployment other dealer groups ask about once they hear the 60-day timeline.

The Client

The client is a multi-brand automobile dealer group operating six showrooms across two states, each handling new vehicle sales, used car inventory, service bookings, and spare parts. Individual branches had grown somewhat independently over the years, each adopting whatever combination of spreadsheets, a basic accounting tool, and in one branch's case, an old desktop DMS nobody else in the group used, made sense to that branch manager at the time.

By the time Sunray Datalinks was brought in, the group had grown to a size where that independence had turned into a genuine operational problem, particularly for group-level reporting and inventory visibility across branches.

The Challenge

The core issue wasn't any single branch's system, it was the total absence of a shared one. A customer inquiring about a specific vehicle model at one branch had no visibility into whether a sister branch forty minutes away had the exact unit in stock. Group-level sales reporting meant someone manually consolidating six separate spreadsheets every month, a process that took days and was outdated the moment it was finished.

Lead handling was inconsistent branch to branch too. Some branches logged inquiries in a shared spreadsheet, others tracked them in notebooks or WhatsApp chat threads that lived on individual salespeople's phones and left with them if they changed jobs. There was no group-wide way to see which leads were being followed up on and which were quietly going cold.

The Solution: One Custom DMS Built for Multi-Branch Reality

Working with Sunray Datalinks, the group moved to a single custom Dealer Management System, built on Odoo, configured specifically around multi-branch operations rather than adapted from a single-location dealer tool. Every branch operates within the same system, with branch-level data segmented appropriately but rolling up into group-wide visibility for management.

Cross-branch inventory visibility was one of the first things configured, since it addressed the most immediate pain point: any salesperson at any branch can now check real-time stock across all six locations and arrange an inter-branch transfer directly inside the system rather than making phone calls to check availability manually. Lead capture was unified as well, with every inquiry, regardless of which branch or channel it came through, logging into a shared CRM pipeline visible to branch managers and group leadership alike.

Cross-Branch Inventory Visibility

Sales teams can check real-time vehicle availability across all six locations from a single system. Instead of calling another branch and waiting for confirmation, staff can identify available stock and initiate inter-branch transfers directly through the DMS.

Unified Lead Management

Every inquiry is captured in a shared CRM pipeline, regardless of which branch or channel generated it. Branch managers and group leadership can see lead status, follow-up activity, and outstanding opportunities without relying on individual spreadsheets, notebooks, or personal messaging threads.

Group-Level Reporting

Sales and operational data from every branch rolls into centralized dashboards, giving management real-time visibility into branch performance without waiting for monthly spreadsheet consolidation.

Connected Service Operations

Service bookings, job cards, parts requirements, and customer information are connected within the same system, allowing service operations to work from the same customer and vehicle data used by sales and other departments.

Planning a Rollout Across Six Locations in 60 Days

A rollout this size, across six physical locations with different staff, different existing habits, and different levels of comfort with new software, needed a sequenced plan rather than a single go-live date. The approach split branches into two waves of three, staggered two weeks apart, so lessons learned and configuration adjustments from the first wave could be applied before the second wave went live.

Each branch received a dedicated two-day on-site training session covering the modules relevant to their staff: sales team training on lead handling and inventory search, service department training on booking and job card management, and back-office training on the group-level reporting that management would now have access to for the first time.

Results

Within the first month after full rollout, cross-branch inventory checks that used to require a phone call and a wait dropped to something salespeople could confirm in seconds, directly inside the CRM. Group-level sales reporting, which previously took several days each month to consolidate manually, became available in real time through the DMS dashboard, giving leadership visibility they'd never had before into which branches were converting leads well and which needed support.

Lead response consistency improved noticeably across branches too, since every inquiry now landed in a system with visible follow-up tracking rather than living in whatever tool or notebook an individual salesperson preferred. Branches that had previously struggled with lead follow-up saw the most dramatic improvement, largely because the accountability that comes with a shared, visible pipeline changed behaviour on its own, independent of any specific feature.

What the Group's Operations Director Said

Why This Matters for Other Multi-Branch Dealer Groups

Dealer groups that grow branch by branch, rather than opening several locations simultaneously under one system from day one, almost always end up with this same fragmentation problem eventually. Each branch solves its own immediate needs reasonably well in isolation, and the cracks only become visible once leadership needs to see across the group, or once a customer's experience depends on information that lives in a system a different branch can't access.

The fix isn't necessarily complicated, but it does require treating multi-branch operation as a design requirement from the start of the project rather than something bolted on afterward.

Where This Fits Into a Broader Dealer Group ERP Setup

A unified DMS works best as the center of a wider connected system rather than a standalone sales tool. In this rollout, inventory, CRM, and service booking were configured to share data automatically, so a service appointment booked at one branch, a part ordered from group stock, and a follow-up sales lead from that same customer all connect back to a single customer record rather than existing as three disconnected transactions across different tools.

Lessons From the Rollout

Staggering the rollout in two waves rather than going live at all six branches simultaneously was, in hindsight, the single decision that made the tightest part of the 60-day timeline achievable. It meant configuration issues discovered in the first three branches, mostly around how inter-branch transfers should be approved, got resolved before the second wave went live, rather than surfacing as six simultaneous fires.

Getting branch managers involved in configuration decisions early, rather than presenting them with a finished system, also mattered more than expected. A couple of workflow adjustments came directly from branch manager feedback during the first wave and made the system noticeably more usable for the second wave's staff.

Timeline and Investment

The full rollout, covering data migration from six sets of existing records, configuration of cross-branch inventory and CRM, and on-site training at every location, ran the full 60 days from kickoff to all six branches live. Data migration and cleanup for the branches still using spreadsheets took longer than for the one branch already on a basic desktop DMS, which is typical; the less structured the starting data, the more of the timeline goes into cleaning it up before it can go into the new system.

Why the Group Chose a Custom Build Over an Off-the-Shelf Package

The group looked at a couple of ready-made DMS products before deciding to build on Odoo instead, and the deciding factor came down to how each branch actually operated day to day. Off-the-shelf dealer management packages are typically built around a single-location model, with multi-branch features bolted on afterward as an add-on tier. That showed up in the demos, cross-branch transfers were clunky, group reporting required exporting data into a separate tool, and customizing workflows for the group's specific service booking process would have meant paying for expensive change requests down the line.

Building on Odoo instead meant the multi-branch structure, shared inventory, and unified CRM pipeline could be designed as the foundation of the system rather than retrofitted onto something built for a single showroom. It also meant the group wasn't locked into a vendor's release schedule if they wanted to add a module or adjust a workflow eighteen months down the line.

Change Management: Getting Branch Staff to Actually Use It

Rolling out new software across six branches with different staff, habits, and comfort levels is as much a change management exercise as a technical one, and the group treated it that way from the start. Branch managers were looped into configuration decisions during the first wave rather than being handed a finished system to adopt, which meant the people who'd actually use the system daily had a say in how lead handling and inventory search worked before it went live everywhere.

The two-day on-site training sessions were also deliberately role-specific rather than a single generic walkthrough, sales staff spent their time on lead handling and inventory search, service staff focused on booking and job cards, and back-office staff trained on the group-level reporting they'd now have access to. That specificity mattered: staff who only saw the parts of the system relevant to their job picked it up faster and had fewer questions once they were using it independently, compared to a one-size-fits-all training session covering everything at once.

Looking Ahead

With unified data now flowing across all six branches, the group is exploring extending group-level reporting into predictive inventory planning, using sales velocity data across branches to guide which vehicles get stocked where, rather than each branch manager ordering independently based on local intuition alone.

Key Takeaways

For any dealer group operating more than one branch without a shared system, the core lesson from this rollout is that the fragmentation cost compounds quietly. It doesn't show up as one dramatic failure, it shows up as slightly slower lead response, slightly less accurate reporting, and slightly more missed cross-branch inventory opportunities, month after month, until it adds up to a real competitive disadvantage against dealer groups that solved this earlier.

A multi-branch DMS should therefore be designed around shared visibility from the beginning. Branch-level workflows can remain appropriately separated while inventory, customers, leads, service information, and management reporting remain connected at the group level.