When the CDK Global outage crippled dealerships nationwide in September 2024, McDonald Automotive did something remarkable: they ran a radio ad boasting they were unaffected. Their decision to adopt Tekion's cloud- and AI-native Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC)—rather than rely on legacy systems—gave them the operational resilience their competitors lacked. But the real story isn't just about surviving a crisis. Since going live, McDonald Automotive has raised CSI scores from 93–94% to 98–99%, cut payment processing from 24 hours to 30 seconds, and transformed the staff experience with a unified platform that works the way modern dealerships need it to.

“You may have heard about the CDK outage and how it's affecting dealers across the country. But not at McDonald Automotive. We made the switch to a trusted, secure, customer-centric software called Tekion. That's right! We don't use CDK.”

—Steve Powers, Vice President of Operations at McDonald Automotive

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The Challenge—When Legacy Systems Hold You Back

Before Tekion, McDonald Automotive faced the operational friction that is characteristic of legacy dealership software. Here's what held them back:

F&I & Payments

• Financing vendors took 24 hours to respond, then another 24 hours for funds to hit their account

• Slow approval cycles hurt both customer experience and revenue velocity

• Customers waited days for decisions that should take minutes

Operations & Integration

• Fragmented systems required multiple logins and constant workarounds

• Third-party integrations moved at a glacial pace, creating bottlenecks everywhere

• Data lived in silos with no real-time visibility across departments

• System outages in the broader industry left dealerships running older architectures completely frozen

Marketing & Customer Experience

• Marketing relied on expensive outside agencies instead of built-in tools

• Customer checkout at service required staff to juggle payments manually

• Peak-hour bottlenecks during vehicle pickups as multiple guests settled balances simultaneously

Staff & Operations

• Clunky interfaces consumed as much staff time as actually serving customers

• Employees spent energy navigating workarounds instead of focusing on customer needs

The technological debt wasn't just slowing them down—it was fragmenting the entire customer journey. McDonald Automotive knew this wasn't sustainable in a market where speed, transparency, and customer experience increasingly define competitive advantage.

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The Solution—Why Unified Operations Matter

McDonald Automotive's leadership recognized that modern dealership operations require a fundamentally different architecture: a unified, cloud-native platform where CRM, inventory, financial reporting, sales tools, and service management live in a single secure system—not bolted together via APIs and third-party add-ons.

Tekion's approach eliminated the integration delays and maintenance headaches that plague legacy stacks. Instead of building custom connections among multiple vendors, McDonald Automotive could enable features such as F&I financing, payment processing, and marketing automation as native capabilities within a single database. This unified model enabled real-time data flow, simpler troubleshooting, and the operational resilience that kept them running when others went dark.

The Results—Faster Approvals, Better Experiences, Higher CSI

Payment Methods: Flexibility That Customers Expect

Tekion Pay gave McDonald Automotive's customers a modern checkout experience. Instead of forcing guests through a single legacy payment method, they could now send a pay link via text, accept tap-to-pay, Apple Pay, PayPal—and every method worked the same way on the back end.

"Unlike our previous systems, the way we collect the deposit is very customer-friendly. We can send the customer a pay link through concierge; we can take tap to pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal. And all of those are functionally the same for us."

—Scott Shevlin, Platform Finance Director at McDonald Automotive  

This flexibility eliminated friction in the customer journey, especially during peak pickup times when multiple guests were settling payments simultaneously.

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Marketing Without the Agency Cost

With the ARC Customer Relationship Management (CRM), McDonald Automotive no longer needed to pay external agencies for customer segmentation and campaign building. ARC allowed them to run sophisticated targeting at zero incremental cost.

"It's all information that a normal marketing company would give you without the cost of paying that marketing company to do it. We can build these campaigns as broad or as narrow as we would like, and it's up to each department manager to choose what they want to promote at that set time."

—David Paraday, Platform Manager for Fixed Operations at McDonald Automotive

The precision targeting took this even further. Service managers could build campaigns targeting only customers who'd been recommended for brake service in the last three weeks—and execute them instantly via email and text, tracking results live.

"Tekion has a campaign function where we can narrow it down to if we just want to target the people that were recommended brake service over the last three weeks, we can build a campaign specific to those people at no cost to us, and do an email and text campaign and track results live through the program."

—David Paraday, Platform Manager for Fixed Operations at McDonald Automotive

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Customer Experience & CSI: The 5-Point Jump

These operational improvements converged to dramatically improve the customer experience. CSI scores climbed from 93–94% to 98–99%—a meaningful jump driven by faster approvals, simpler payments, and staff who weren't drowning in system complexity.

Service customers noticed the difference immediately. Pickup was no longer a negotiation—guests could settle their balance online and notify the team they were ready to collect their keys.

"It's a lot easier for them just to go in and out. We give them the keys, and they're done. Compared to waiting in line, because most of the time we get really busy, especially at the end of the day, when people are all planning on picking up their vehicles all at the same time, all they need to do is basically just tell us, hey, I already paid online."

—Blaise Florez-Burley, Service Advisor at McDonald Automotive

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Measurable Impact

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Why This Matters—Unified Platforms Aren't Optional Anymore

If your dealership still runs on a patchwork of legacy systems, integrations, and workarounds, you're competing with one hand tied behind your back. You're paying for third-party vendors to do what modern platforms do natively. You wait hours for approvals that could be closed in minutes. Your marketing is reactive instead of precision-targeted.

Unified platforms aren't a future option anymore. They're the baseline for dealerships that want to compete on speed, customer experience, and operational resilience. McDonald Automotive adopted Tekion’s ARC because the math was unavoidable: one system, real-time data, seamless integrations, and the confidence that your business won't grind to a halt when the industry faces disruption.

If you're ready to eliminate integration delays, accelerate approvals, reclaim marketing costs, and give your team software that actually works, it's time to explore what a modern platform can do.

Request a demo with Tekion today.

FAQs

Does our dealership need a separate marketing tool or agency?
Tekion ARC CRM includes built-in campaign management with sophisticated segmentation—all at no additional cost. You can target specific customer groups (e.g., those recently recommended for brake service) and email and text campaigns while tracking results in real time.

How does Tekion improve customer service times?
Unified data and real-time visibility eliminate delays in approvals, payment processing, and service handoff. Customers can pay online and notify staff they're ready—streamlining pickup and reducing wait times during peak hours.

Can our service and sales teams access the same customer data?
Yes. One unified platform means both departments work from the same real-time customer record, improving communication and enabling smarter follow-up.

What's the ROI on switching from multiple vendors to Tekion?
McDonald Automotive saw measurable gains: CSI improved from 93–94% to 98–99%, F&I approvals got faster and eliminated agency marketing costs, and staff friction decreased—the math compounds across higher close rates, higher CSI, and lower operational overhead.

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