HISTORY

In 1998 Robert Quirion (Bob) started working with Lorne Brett at Lorne Brett Chev with aspirations of helping maximize the profitability of every department in the dealership. Bob had previously been a programmer analyst working in the auto industry for Reynolds and Reynolds and was introduced into the automotive industry from the manufacturing side, working with the quality engineering department at the CAMI Automotive plant in Ingersoll Ontario.

Bob started working in the various departments within the dealership in October of 1998. The goal was to uncover opportunities for more business within each department. The Business Office was first, then the Body Shop and shortly after the Service Department. It was in the Service department that Bob discovered the largest most under utilized opportunity and where DealerMine was born. It was the advisors obvious lack of time to focus on the customer, coupled with the lack of tools and processes to properly manage the outreach and customer relationships.

This forced Lorne and Bob to look for a solution. Bob researched several products but there was nothing that came close to satisfying the needs they were trying to fulfil. Therefore, being a developer, Bob proceeded to build his own solution with the plan of establishing a way to remove the calls from the advisors and maximize the contact with the customer through people that were NOT trained in the auto industry.

They wanted to be able to build a process and tools to support this interaction, allowing them to hire and groom someone from outside the industry and have them be confident and professional over the phone. At the same time Bob and Lorne wanted to ensure that the user was able to build trust with the customer by having all the information quickly available on one screen therefore solidifying the most important thing – the relationship between dealership and customer.

By November of 1999, the first version of the DealerMine software was ready and started to be utilized in Brett Chevrolet by one user. An interesting fact is that this first user is now employed by DealerMine as a product knowledge expert . Her name is Angela Fitzgerald.

Bob worked with Lorne and Angela and together came up with a nearly perfect process and product by November of 2000. From May 1999 to November of 2000 Lorne Brett doubled his gross profit and knew something special had been accomplished. A local Dealer was curious about Lorne’s success and having been shown the new process asked if he could purchase it.

Lorne and Bob realized their was an enormous opportunity and proceeded to modify the product to work with more than one store. In January of 2001 they had their first customer and in February of 2001 the company DealerMine Inc. was Incorporated. From 2001 until today the company has completely been transformed with Bob now as President and currently 150 employees working from three locations. Dealermine has become a respected leader in the automotive industry, specialists in helping dealers increase service and showroom revenues through the proven processes and state of the art technology.

The Company has never stopped growing and continues to learn, from dealers and staff, on ways to improve and innovate. Through a long term partnership with International Automotive Solutions, owned by Cheryl Loughlean, the service has strengthened with the provision of unique processes to help Dealers generate profit. The future is continued growth by helping dealers that really want to be a part of something bigger than the present.