Online registration: 'The most important policy' by Ontario 'in a generation’

To say Shahin Alizadeh welcomes Ontario’s Digital Dealership Registration (DDR) system is an understatement.

“When I heard the announcement, it was music to my ears,” said Alizadeh, dealer principal of the 10-store Downtown Auto Group in Toronto.

Up to now, the system of regisering sold vehicles had been fundamentally unchanged from when he began in the car business 40 years ago, Alizadeh said.

The new system, expected to roll out gradually to full implementation by the end of the year, allows customers’ newly purchased vehicles to be registered online from the dealership, which can then issue licence plates.

Dealers such as Alizadeh, who lobbied the provincial government for years to introduce such a system, could realize significant cost savings and reduce employees’ time-wasting trips to the nearest ServiceOntario office.

For Alizadeh, whose stores conduct about 10,000 newand used-vehicle transactions a year, eliminating ServiceOntario visits will cut up to two hours of travel time per transaction, plus any time spent in lines with people registering cars, getting fishing licences or waiting for one of the other many services the centres offer.

“Eliminating that and giving it back to us to manage and administer I think would be huge,” Alizadeh said.

Downtown Auto Group is one of 40 initial users, he said.

TIME, MONEY SAVED

Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation said that once fully implemented, DDR will allow more than 7,000 Ontario dealerships online access to registration. It’s expected to move up to 4.8 million registration transactions online annually.

Other provinces allow dealers to issue temporary permits so owners can register their new purchases and obtain plates. And agents for the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, which handles insurance and registration, go to dealerships.

DDR should greatly benefit smaller dealerships that have fewer employees to spare for trips to ServiceOntario, said Michael Carmichael, president of UpAuto Group, which owns four stores in the Stratford area.

“We’re a small, rural dealership group,” he said. “When it’s time to go do licensing, it’s a 35-minute drive each direction, just on travel.

“And then you’re going to wait, or you’re dropping off and picking up. So, we lose somebody for two hours a day, five days a week, times four stores.”

The employee tapped to make these trips is also responsible for detailing vehicles, conducting checks on new inventory ahead of delivery to customers, said Carmichael.

“When it’s busy, you find yourself saying, ‘Do we need to hire another person, or do we need part-time support?’”

A DIGITAL DELIGHT

The Trillium Automobile Dealers Association (TADA), which represents more than 1,000 franchised new-vehicle dealerships in Ontario, called the program “the most important policy announcement made by the Ontario government in a generation.”

“Allowing new-car dealers to electronically register the vehicles they sell or lease brings the vehicle sales process into the digital age,” the organization said in a statement.

The transactions include the registration of owned vehicles, vehicle transfers and permit replacements, all of which must currently be conducted in person.

TADA said the online system will allow dealers to register vehicles online and hand over the keys to the customer minutes after they’ve completed the purchase, rather than hours or days later.

“You’re prevented from a customer coming in and saying, ‘I want the car right now,’ ” said Carmichael. “We can now do spot deliveries or move toward that.”

CUSTOMER CONVENIENCE

The change offers a major benefit to customer service, Alizadeh said. ServiceOntario centres are open weekday business hours only, while dealerships operate into the evening and on weekends.

“As you can imagine, there’s a huge inconvenience for those who want to transact in the evening,” he said.

Delays are particularly problematic with used cars, which normally don’t require pre-delivery prep and with customer financing generally approved quickly. Buyers then must wait for licensing, Alizadeh said.

It will take time to quantify the impact on a dealer’s operation, but Carmichael compared it to UpAuto’s decision to install gas pumps at its stores, a $25,000 investment that freed employees from endless trips to refuel vehicles.

“It was a full-time job for somebody to be gassing all the cars,” he said. “This is the same thing. It’s probably close to a $25,000-a-year savings per store. It’s huge.”

Greg Layson of Auomotive News Canada contributed to this report.