“Your Data Is Dirty!” How Bad Data is Cannibalizing Your AI Strategy (+ How to Fix It) | Brian Abrams, VP of Data and AI at CDK Global
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
“Your Data Is Dirty!” How Bad Data is Cannibalizing Your AI Strategy (+ How to Fix It) | Brian Abrams, VP of Data and AI at CDK Global
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Car
Rolls-Royce Phantom
The Rolls-Royce Phantom is a very high-end luxury car, built mainly for comfort and a smooth ride. People who own it usually want top-level service and attention when they bring it in for maintenance. It may be mentioned in dealership discussions because it represents a premium customer type.
Term
gross profit
Gross profit is the money left after the direct costs are paid. The hosts are using it to show how much dealerships can lose if they don’t follow up with customers.
Term
warranty pay
Warranty pay refers to the labor and parts reimbursement a dealership receives for repairs covered under a manufacturer warranty. In the service lane example, it’s one of the revenue streams that can be analyzed alongside customer history and repair activity.
Concept
service lane
The service lane is the dealership’s service side—where customers bring cars in for repairs and maintenance. The hosts are saying the data/AI should help there too.
Concept
customer retention
Customer retention means getting customers to come back again and again. Here, they’re saying discounts in service can be justified if they keep people loyal.
Concept
goodwill
Goodwill here means the dealership gives a customer a break, like a discount, to keep them happy. The point is that it can be worth it if it keeps the customer coming back.
Term
CDPs
A CDP is software that brings customer information together in one place. That helps AI and marketing teams target people more accurately.
Concept
data fragmentation
It means your customer info is scattered in different software systems. If AI can’t see the full picture, it can’t make good recommendations.
Concept
data hygiene
Data hygiene is just keeping your customer and service records clean and correct. If the data is messy, AI can’t give useful results.
Term
ROI
ROI means “did it pay off?” It compares the benefit you get to the cost. The point is that bad data can make AI projects not worth the money.
Concept
garbage in, garbage out
If you start with bad information, you’ll get bad results. The point here is that AI can’t fix messy dealership data.
Company
CDK Global
CDK Global is a software company used by dealerships. Here, they’re saying their system is built into dealership workflows, which can help AI and data projects work better.
LIVE
But instead of trying to find all this contextual information they actually have that all right there in front of them, which makes them more efficient, which makes their job more personalized to what they're doing with the customer, helps them get better finance deals, service products, whatever that might be faster in the workflow.
Today, I'm joined by Brian Abrams, VP of data and AI at CDK Global, consumers are using AI agents to shop and negotiate and dealerships are facing a massive hidden profit leak caused by fragmented dirty data.
Brian breaks down how top operators are moving past simple chatbots to build unified data strategies that predict customer lifetime value and stop wasting marketing spend.
If you've wondered why your AI tools aren't delivering results, this episode explains the data hygiene gap you likely have a big thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible.
Podium, Varimatic, and of course, CDK Global.
And now let's get into the show.
Brian Abrams on the CDG podcast, Brian, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
The head of AI at CDK and given all the talk we've had for this to be the first episode feels like it's it's overdue, but I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, I'm glad to be here now.
Brian, you recently led an AI panel during New York Auto Forum.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you spoke about?
Yeah, so I led the AI and auto session.
I was on stage with a few great leaders across the industry and we were talking about the different angles of how consumers, shoppers, their behaviors are changing with all the AI tools that are out there.
LLMs and what that means for the dealer and how they need to evolve and use not only the AI tools that are available to them from various vendors and CDK, but also how they need to build a strategy to build their dealership operations around what's happening in the AI space.
So it's not just about better tools and integrations.
It's how their employees need to adopt and transform the way that they're working based on how shoppers are coming into their cues.
What were the takeaways from this, right?
Were there any actionable takeaways for the dealers like, hey, here are the best next steps from this panel?
We gave a lot of insights.
The panel were talking about different stats that they're seeing, the research that they've done, and we talked about very broad behavioral trends that are happening.
So the action items were really about how dealers can stay informed and once again start transforming how they're thinking about using AI tools, but also developing a strategy for how the BDC now needs to operate.
Because now consumers have agents that are actually shopping for them and calling up dealerships and negotiating pricing.
So how do dealers actually react to that and get those shoppers into their dealership at the right price, time, and through all the different channels that are now available to the shoppers?
On that thread of consumers, do you subscribe to the to the philosophy of just the future and doesn't seem so distant being agents speaking with agents, right?
Like a consumer's agent speaking to the dealership's agent and like agents are just communicating and that is the reality of commerce.
Like, do you subscribe to that or how does that actually look like?
We already have dealers with agents at the service department and sales department and we have consumers who are every single dealer is receiving chat, GPT scripted things.
Whether it be emails, texts, calls every day.
So I mean, are we there yet?
I don't subscribe to it.
I am actually a promoter of it because yes, it is here.
We see it happening in other industries, obviously right now and automotive shouldn't be different because consumers are doing this every day.
Why should it be different in automotive?
So this is one of the big parts that I'm leading here at CDK is with our MCP strategy.
How are we connecting agents to agents?
Whether it's with partners and dealers themselves, they're delving into them.
I talked to a lot of dealers where they're building agents and building solutions on their on their enterprise level, but also for their stores.
So with that, we need to be able to connect their agents to our agents where there's data.
There's operational workflows, intelligence and all of those different pieces of information that need to provide context to the agents outside of our ecosystem.
So when this is ubiquitous, what changes for me as a dealer?
Like, do I just receive a deal at a later stage in the funnel and the consumer, you know, skips also kind of the discovery stage in their shopping process?
Or like, what's the end state?
You mentioned the term MCP, which I think is important to loosely define.
I'll define it from a dealer's perspective and you can correct me.
But to me, MCP is just, hey, there is this thing in the abyss that can connect my information to your information.
So if I am a dealer and my vehicles have pricing or there's certain, you know, state taxes or whatever it may be, there's specific information to my dealership or my vehicle.
Well, with this type of connection, I can transmit that information to the customer so they can get accurate information, not just, you know, Google information.
So with that being lucidified and you can correct me, what does the end state look like?
And when I say end state, like, what does this look like at, you know, at efficiency when your vision or what you just said, you're promoting this.
So what is actual commerce within the dealership feel like?
It provides dealers and the users that are in the workflows, whether it's in sales or service or dealer operations in the accounting department.
It gives them more context faster and it helps eliminate screen clicking, going from application to application, trying to find things which they eventually do.
But all of that takes time, which ultimately costs money and profitability for the dealer.
It takes up time for employees where they could be focusing on more revenue generating opportunities like closing a deal.
But instead of trying to find all this contextual information, they actually have that all right there in front of them, which makes them more efficient,
which makes their job more personalized to what they're doing with the customer, helps them get better finance deals, service products, whatever that might be faster in the workflow,
which is something that is very unique to CDK's platform.
Okay, so by the way, we have a dealer group within circles that's called AI Builders and I will tell you, I am shocked at the level of depth that many dealers across the country are getting into when it comes to AI.
I mean, many are blowing me away with their knowledge and it's clear that the dealers who are leaning in and really experimenting, they are seeing results already with just changing processes in their stores.
From things that are simple as like chrome extensions that overlay their screen when they're performing certain actions to many other things, but it's pretty remarkable what's happening right now amongst the dealer body.
Another question for you, it feels like the last couple of years, I've had a lot of conversations on CDPs on the platform, customer data platforms.
And in a way, it's like, you know, CDPs walk to AI could run, I say that, but what I really mean is many dealers have spent a lot of time cleaning up their data over the last couple of years, many haven't.
Just let's start high level. What is a CDP for those that don't know and most probably do, but what is a CDP? I want to understand from you, like how important is that still in today's day and age?
Let's just start that like what is a CDP and can you explain that to us?
Yeah, sure. It's becoming more and more necessary in the dealership operations. But to take a step back and in very simple terms, a CDP is a customer data platform that collects and unifies data.
It resolves identity. So there's fragmented data across the DMS, across the CRM service, digital retail, other tools that a dealer uses. And that CDP brings it together, creates a unified customer profile and identity of a person with all of that data attached to it.
They'll also enrich it with signals, behavioral, life cycle, economic indicators that gives a really robust 360 degree profile of that customer. So the unified customer profile and whatever segment that that identity belongs to can be activated in either a marketing platform in the CRM
or in CDKs case directly in the workflow.
This episode is brought to you by Podium. If you're like most dealers, you've probably tried some version of AI by now. The real question is it actually doing the work or just answering with generic messages? In our CDG circles groups, I keep seeing Podium come up when dealers are talking about vendors and it's not hype.
It's because they're meeting the needs of dealers right now. One in three dealerships is already using Podium and thousands of their customizable AI agents are actively running sales and service workflows every day. What makes them different is they're not just another AI add on, they consolidate sales, service, messaging, and especially voice into one customizable platform.
So you're not stacking a bunch of disconnected systems and let's be real. The phone is still where a lot of money is won or lost. Podium's voice AI books, appointments, routes calls correctly and escalates when it should based on your dealerships playbooks.
If your AI isn't driving real outcomes, it might be worth a look. Check out podium.com slash CDG or click the link in the show notes below.
Okay. And are more dealers asking you for CDPs, fewer dealers? Where do we stand given the proliferation of AI and data being what feeds it? Is that accelerating? I would have to assume?
Yeah. As I mentioned, CDPs are becoming more necessary than optional now. We know dealers are fighting for profitability. They need to operate leaner and get more out of their systems, less vendors, all of those different things that cut into their profitability and efficiency.
But at the same time, the customer data is still very, very fragmented. And a CDP actually helps solve this problem when you choose the right one, bringing together the digital retail telephony, CRM, DMS as I was talking about.
And it's turning into not just a marketing conversation. I talked about how that unified customer profile is then activated in marketing tools. It's not just about that anymore. It's about how they can use that intelligence for that consumer, their customer, directly in the workflows.
Going back to my earlier comment about how dealers can actually get a return of value from all this data and intelligence and AI that's out there, having it embedded inside of what they're using every day just makes it more efficient for them.
We conducted a bunch of research earlier this year that actually validates those points. Dealers are saying that 48 to 60% of their data is not clean. They're also saying a unified customer profile is actually essential to their business operations.
Whether it's in sales, how they are providing contextual and personalized offers to a customer, how dealership operations are merging and creating a customer profile.
So if you are, let's assume for a second, a two to three store dealer, have you been able to really quantify the dollar impact of using a CDP versus not using a CDP? I like to think about things nowadays. I call it like ROH, return on hassle. There's so much we can do.
I mean, we just recently we set up our Claude team organization. In our case, it's not the cost of the silo data. It's really the profit leakage that is coming from not implementing one. So I'll give you some examples.
Without a CDP or that single view of a customer, sales reps are misguided with their outreach. Sales and BDC reps are chasing phantom leads, working stale records in service.
The vehicle that they think a consumer owns might not be the one that they own, which ultimately leads to expensive time spent reaching out or in your marketing campaigns. In terms of measuring all of that, we're working on creating a lot of robust measurement as all of these things come together and are implemented on our platform.
What we do have right now is predictive lifetime value of a customer. So we're running all of this data through our AI platform predictive models and seeing what an opportunity lost would look like.
So when you're looking at customers and you're looking at who you haven't interacted with and maybe 18 months in the service lane, there is a predictive value for the revenue and gross profit that you might be losing if you do not engage with that customer.
So that's where the actions and the return on hassle comes into play where those insights are actually being surfaced and then made actionable directly in our workflows to retain that revenue or know how much you're missing out on.
That's interesting. So in theory, you have the information to K, Mr. Dealer, you're missing out on $2 million annually by not reaching out to these 2000 customers who would likely spend with you X amount of dollars or just showing you the opportunities out there that makes makes a lot of sense.
Talk to me about your CDP and how it's different. I think another thing I've heard is there's many CDPs out there. I've personally spoken to many players in the space and I'm sure many people listening have spoken with them as well.
So I'm curious, what have you done differently? Are you doing anything differently in the CDP space? And when I say you, of course, I'm mentioning CDK.
Yeah, so CDK is really taking a workflow first approach to this. There's a lot of players out there that are that are doing very well in the CDP space that do all of those things that that I mentioned earlier.
They're aggregating identity resolution and then making that available for activation. That's all part of the CDK dealership experience platform, of course.
But the one thing that we are doing different is taking that intelligence, those predictive insights that I mentioned and embedding them directly in the workflows.
So for any role across the dealership, they get the benefit of it. It's not just about the marketing department or sales reps that are using that information to get a better marketing spend ROI.
That's a big piece of it through the activation in our CRM. But when it comes to how can we help the entire dealership and not only just a store, but also the enterprise, allowing the enterprise group level users see how customers are interacting across all their stores.
They change brands across the life cycle. They have a child that is becoming a 16 year old and want another brand. It's not just store specific. It's also tailored towards the enterprise.
What that really leads to is that this is natively built into the CDK platform at no additional charge to dealers. This is what our built in CDP strategy is all about.
Dealers get the benefit of identity resolution and this embedded intelligence without having any bolt on solutions or any additional costs to it. So that also puts us at a big advantage.
Like I said earlier in the dealer research that we did, 65% of the dealers that we interviewed said that a unified customer profile is absolutely essential for them to be efficient and profitable inside their dealership.
And also additionally, 79% of dealers that are aware of a CDP are thinking about getting one and implementing one in their store or at their group level in the next 12 months.
So it's really important and gives us a significant advantage that dealers are already using our products in our workflows every day and knowing that this just comes natively makes that decision a lot easier for them to make and for them to get the value of it out of the CDK platform.
Well, you just mentioned that at least within your company CDK it's complimentary. So it feels like it's a no brainer. Maybe a silly question. But why would a dealer not implement this.
They don't actually have to implement it. We're doing it for them because it is native. What comes to the when it comes to the implementation side of it. This is really where our enterprise strategy comes in because there will be additional data
enrichment to bring more insights and intelligence for that unified customer profile that takes that takes a little bit of work but we're we're making it very easy and then activating outside of our CRM.
We have found that a large portion of of dealers are OK with activation living in the CRM CDK has a very scaled and robust CRM that that unified customer profile segmentation and intelligence can already be activated in so the implementation level is really low from that standpoint.
Brian how have dealers been tracking their CDPs the actual value they've been getting from it. You're leading a strategy. I'm sure you've seen accounts 30 days implemented 60 days. You know using this technology you talk with that dealer after 60 90 120 days.
You say hey how's it going for you. Oh it's going great. We've got an X amount of like how do they track that exact value. And how do you do that for them.
So the way that they're tracking values and CDPs in general are really through wasted marketing spend. And what that really means is how much am I spending verse how much I'm converting and going all the way through from lead from from click to lead to sale and gross profit.
There is something there that can be measured. We're doing this exact same thing at CDK. There is also the efficiency standpoint and how much does it actually cost to clean my data.
Dealers who are implementing CDPs they're paying a price to clean their data for them. What's unique and position CDK very uniquely in the market is that we have a highly scaled platform which I lead that we that we've been talking about that does all of this heavy lifting for them.
And all of that clean data because data hygiene is one of the key points that dealers need to consider when they're shopping for CDPs. All of that heavy lifting is done on the CDK platform.
We have an enterprise grade identity resolution service that does all of that and make sure that any data that's going in to that data platform and powering all this intelligence powering all of that A.I. is clean.
It's maintained. It's governed. It's secure. All of that is built in to what we're already offering to dealers without them having to shop for a bolt on solution.
Well speaking of other solutions you mentioned this spans across CDK information data. But what about third party data. Do you have the ability to glean insights from third parties and use that as part of the CDP.
Yes. Our CRM today is using a lot of third party data enrichment for for leads and sales in the sales department. And we are leveraging those third party enrichers in our CDP and natively making it better.
What we're doing from an enterprise CDP standpoint is we want to expand what that data enrichment looks like. There's lots of different categories that this can go into when you're talking about behavioral psychographic demographic
garage data economic indicators affordability all of those things which we do have some of them in the CRM today. But when we're expanding to the enterprise CDP portion of our strategy all of that is going to come to light
and be unified with that customer profile and then activated in workflows activated in the CRM and then activated in marketing channels that the dealers want them to be activated in that align with our marketing strategy.
That's digital media social. It's traditional media. All of them have their own strategy that they want to focus on. So we're not making this a one size fits all. We have that profile. intelligence and that segmentation.
Now it's about where do you want to activate it. This episode is brought to you by Varimatic. Dealers assume their financials are mostly accurate or at least close enough. But what if they're not. We recently sat down with Jen Spearbrecher from Varimatic to talk about something most people don't say out loud.
Dealership financials are never fully accurate. And this isn't a people problem. It's a systems problem. Dealership accounting teams are running multi million dollar operations on systems never designed for today's scale.
There's a better way to support your back office reduce manual accounting work improve accuracy and give your team real confidence in monthly financials. If you're thinking about how to modernize your operations this is a conversation worth your time.
Visit Varimatic.io slash CDG to learn more. Brian. But when you think about the insights and everything you just mentioned what's the next frontier. Right. You have access to a very very robust amount of information based on everything you just mentioned.
But what's the next frontier. Right. For those who have already been using this technology and leveraging it. What does that look like. What are like the next step in insights that dealers are going to be able to glean.
The predictive insights that we're generating from a lifetime value standpoint is is very unique. And all the dealers that are using it and we're we're talking to find that to be highly valuable just like the example I gave earlier.
They can see missed opportunities and segmentations that have that gross profitable gross profit number actually attached to it. It is directly on the screen saying if you do not engage with this customer you are going to lose 2000000
dollars of gross profit over the next five years. Brian I used to we used to say there was a guy who we worked with and his line that you know I was trained this way was you know when that phone rings that's money calling at the dealership.
You pick it up right because you'd be shocked at how many sales teams don't pick up the phone. You know because people are busy not out of mall intent but long story short is it's like it's it's like productizing that mindset.
Right like we know that it's money calling but now we can actually quantify how much you're really losing. So I'm sure every single person I mean has you know it's heard that line but you know that the phone is gold so it's I think it's it is cool to be able to actually put dollars behind every interaction
given you know the customer in it or you know many of them because of past history you know exactly how much you're leaving on the table. So yeah that's beyond. I mean it's it's it's necessary to compete in the marketplace.
A really concrete example that is being used in the service lane is when it comes to discounting and goodwill with service advisors service managers service directors. We know there's repairs that are happening.
There's warranty pay. There's all sorts of things that are happening. But when a service manager or advisor can see how long that customer has been at the dealership how many cars they bought from them.
And we're talking about the service line here as well as all the repairs all the gross profit all of those different things that are coming that the customer has has performed at your dealership that helps them make better decisions right
then and there when we're talking about goodwill. If there's something going on. Hey if I knock off 300 dollars off of this I'm going to be able to retain this customer for a lifetime which is worth 5000000 dollars potentially just to give another example of how that's being
used. So as you look out to the rest of the year it's crazy to think that we're almost in May almost halfway not quite you know but almost there. What's the what's your number one piece of advice to dealers who are listening in and just trying to adopt all this change
in AI and CDPs and what's your piece of advice from the person who's promoting it. Think about the data fragmentation and the quality. That's the most important thing without that handled by the right vendor or CDK everything else downstream is going to be impacted.
One of the big things that we talked about at the JD power automotive retail forum was that dirty data makes AI ineffective and going back to the beginning of our conversation with all the acceleration that's happening with AI in the world.
If a dealer's data is not clean and quality any AI tool that they use is going to be impacted and it's not going to provide good ROI or any experience to their shoppers as well as their employees. So so worry about the data hygiene.
Garbage garbage out garbage and garbage out and whoever is the title. That's the title of the podcast right there Brian.
Make sure that you understand how they're doing it. What's that security look like. We talked about agent to agent. How is that data quality and secure in all of those interactions with all of that when you're shopping for CDPs.
Know how the CDP is helping all of the dealer workflows across the dealership. Make sure that the marketing and the sales team is taking care of. But what are they doing for your service department. What are they doing for enterprise group leadership.
What are they doing for the parts department. I think stretching what intelligence and insights can do for a dealership will help them make a better decision on who they want to use for a CDP at the end of the day.
And with ours being native and built in it provides a real advantage and value to our products. Impressive stuff. Brian. Appreciate all the insights. Brian Abrams CDK global Brian. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Thanks for having me you see this was fun.
All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.
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About this episode
Brian Abrams and the hosts dig into why fragmented dealership data can quietly drain profit and undermine AI efforts. The conversation moves from the rise of AI agents in car shopping to practical fixes like customer data platforms, identity resolution, and workflow-embedded predictive insights. CDK’s approach centers on cleaner native data, unified customer profiles, and using service-lane analytics to spot lost revenue, improve marketing efficiency, and guide better decisions across sales and service.
Original notes
Today, I'm joined by Brian Abrams, VP of Data and AI at CDK Global, to discuss the critical shift from viewing AI as a "tool" to an operational strategy that prevents massive profit leakage.
Brian explains why nearly 60% of dealer data is currently "dirty," how consumer AI agents are already calling stores to negotiate deals, and why a unified customer profile is now the only way to protect your margins.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Podium - The AI platform trusted by one in three dealerships. Podium helps dealers consolidate sales, service, messaging, and voice into one connected system that actually runs the work. If your AI isn’t driving real outcomes, it’s time to take a closer look @ here.
2. Veramatic - Meet Veramatic: the accuracy layer your DMS never built. Get clean, consistent, trusted accounting data, normalized before it hits the GL, automatically. Learn more @ here.
3. CDK Global - Dealership challenges are constantly evolving—your technology should too. The CDK Dealership Xperience Platform unifies your operations with AI-driven tools built to grow with you. Visit @ here.
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Topics:
03:52 Why Dealerships Already Talk To AI Every Day
05:50 The Fix For Endless Screen Hopping
12:45 Why 60% Of Dealership Tasks Still Slow Teams Down
13:35 The Profit Leak Bigger Than Vendor Fees
14:05 Why Sales Reps Chase Phantom Leads
16:30 The $2 Million Warning Dealers Miss
18:10 The CDK Upgrade Dealers Already Have
20:40 The Marketing Burn Rate Dealers Ignore
28:40 The Sentence That Makes AI Tools Work
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