What to know about the massive car dealership outage

CDK Global is still down heading into the brisk car-selling Fourth of July holiday next week. Auto dealerships use its software to manage everything from scheduling to records, and the mass outage since last week has paralyzed nearly 15,000 dealerships across North America.

CDK Global is still down heading into the brisk car-selling Fourth of July holiday next week. Auto dealerships use its software to manage everything from scheduling to records, and the mass outage since last week has paralyzed nearly 15,000 dealerships across North America. CDK said last Saturday that it has begun restoring its software, but both car buyers and dealers are currently at a standstill. It has suggested several times that a fix is in order, only to say then that its systems would remain out of commission for a while longer. Here’s what you need to know about the massive software outage. CDK Global provides data and technology to different automotive dealerships. Its systems are used by roughly 15,000 car dealerships across the United States and Canada. CDK operates different software products car dealers use to handle workflow such as keeping records of negotiated deals, to scheduling and communicating about service. Not every dealer uses CDK’s products, and those that do may not use CDK for every dealership task, but the system shutdown has been a problem for many. To protect customer privacy, customers’ details aren’t written out on a piece of paper that’s just sitting on a desk anymore. Instead, information about deals and customer appointments is kept in a server that’s now impossible for salespeople affected by the outage to access.