The expense of inefficient title management quickly multiplies into significant financial losses. What’s the sum of it? Paper titling is not just slow but expensive and inefficient; digital titles are the solution.
Republished from AutoSucess Magazine, November issue
As an auto dealer, time is money, but when title processing is slow, it is a whole different equation. Each day a car waits for its title, your costs add up — depreciation, storage and floor plan fees, and lost sales opportunities. If you do the math, the expense of inefficient title management quickly multiplies into significant financial losses.
What’s the sum of it? Paper titling is not just slow but expensive and inefficient; digital titles are the solution.
Digitizing title management slashes processing times from weeks to days or even hours. This accelerates sales, minimizes holding costs and improves your cash flow, all while eliminating the costly variables that paper titles introduce. It’s basic math — shorter processing times plus fewer costs equals more profit.
Paper titles are the equivalent of solving a long division problem by hand — slow, error-prone and time-consuming. Digital titles, on the other hand, are like using a calculator: easy to use, accurate and delivering faster results.
There are three key benefits of going digital:
• Reduced Holding Costs: Shorter title processing times mean less time a vehicle sits on your lot, reducing losses from depreciation, storage fees and floor plan interest. Faster turn means more sales.
• Accelerated Cash Flow: Quicker titles lead to quicker sales, allowing you to reinvest in inventory faster. This improves cash flow and boosts overall profitability.
• Ensured Multi-State Compliance: Manual paperwork invites mistakes — missed signatures, incorrect data entries and more. Digital titles automate compliance and reduce human errors, saving time and money on costly rework.
The National Digital Titling Clearinghouse (NDTC) is the industry’s solution to paper titling inefficiencies. It provides a centralized platform for managing digital titles, cutting down the time and costs traditionally associated with paper transfers. By moving the process online, the NDTC allows dealerships, lenders and state agencies to exchange title information quickly and securely, all within one unified system. Whether your dealership processes 500 titles per month or 5,000, whether you operate in one state or 50, NDTC standardizes and simplifies your operations.
Traditional title processing can take weeks, leading to escalating expenses. For each vehicle, your dealership is incurring an average operational cost of $135 per day, including $85 in holding costs plus mailing expenses, depreciation and storage fees. Now, consider how quickly these expenses add up during a typical three-week title processing window.
If your dealership processes 500 cars a month, switching to digital could save you approximately $1.4 million every month by reducing title processing times from three weeks to six hours. Over the course of a year, that amounts to an incredible $16.7 million in savings — before you even factor in the additional revenue from faster vehicle turnover.
When you run the numbers, the math is simple: faster processing cuts holding costs, speeds up cash flow and eliminates the inefficiencies that chip away at your profits. By digitizing, you streamline operations and maximize revenue — a winning formula for dealers.
To sum it up, in today’s competitive market, every dollar counts, and time is of the essence. Why let outdated title processing methods subtract from your bottom line when the math clearly shows digital is the way to go? Want to see the numbers for yourself? Check out the NDTC Cost Savings Calculator on our website. This handy tool lets you input the number of out-of-state or online vehicles you process and your average processing time and estimates exactly how much you stand to gain by going digital. Think of it as your ultimate cheat sheet for boosting your dealership’s efficiency. Run the numbers, and you will see that the equation is clear: digital titles equal faster transactions, lower costs and higher profits. Now, that’s math every dealership can get behind.
