RUNNING THE BUSINESS
Digital Retailing or Just Digitized?
How to eliminate F&I process inefficiencies.
By Chet Heughan
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Like many RV dealers, you’ve likely checked several boxes on the digital retailing checklist. You submit credit applications online, give buyers the option to sign electronically and communicate with lenders faster than before. It’s easy to look at this progress and say, “We’re e-contracting.”
But what is e-contracting, really, and is your dealership checking all the right boxes?
What your dealership calls e-contracting may actually be a collection of disconnected digital tools. The process might be digital in places but still carry many of the inefficiencies digital retailing should eliminate.
True digital retailing, or e-contracting, connects the entire deal life cycle within a seamless workflow.
The Illusion of “Going Digital”
In pursuit of digitization, you may have modernized your process piece by piece. Maybe you replaced paper credit applications with online forms, then added e-signatures so you could reduce printing, wet signatures and overnighting deal jackets. Each upgrade promised to save time and reduce errors. It’s possible each new tool accomplished those goals. Yet you might still face contract-validation delays, need to rekey information that doesn’t transfer correctly or wait for the lender to review and fund the deal.
The reality is a piecemeal digital progress that still requires your team to bounce between various systems and screens to complete a deal — a situation summarized by the term “swivel chair.”
Here’s what that looks like in your dealership: Picture a team member clicking between tabs, repeatedly logging into platforms and stitching the deal together one page at a time. Even in a fully digital environment, this constant switching introduces friction, increases the risk of errors and slows everything down.
In other words, your dealership could be using digital tools, but the experience is far from streamlined.
A Simple Analogy: Streaming Without Integration
Think about searching for a movie across several streaming services. You open one app, search and then repeat the process until you find it.
That’s the swivel chair experience in your daily life.
A unified search feature removes that friction by showing you every platform where the movie is available. The complexity still exists behind the scenes, but you no longer have to manage it.
That’s what true digital retailing should feel like in your dealership.
The goal isn’t to eliminate every system involved in a deal but to eliminate the need for people to manually connect them.
Breaking Down the Deal Life Cycle
To understand whether your dealership is truly operating in a digital retailing environment, it helps to walk through the key stages of a deal and ask a few questions.
1. Credit Applications
If you’ve adopted online credit applications, what does the process look like? Do customers fill out paper forms at any point? Does your team manually rekey information into another system after submission?
A fully integrated approach captures customer information once and carries it through the deal, eliminating duplicate entry and reducing transcription errors.
2. Structuring the Deal
Deal structuring is where the process gets more complex. A complete deal requires buyer information, vehicle details, trade-ins, taxes, fees, rates and incentives.
Can your team build and adjust the entire deal in one system? Or do they have to toggle between multiple platforms to gather information and complete the transaction? Are changes to the deal reflected automatically, or does your team have to manually rekey information?
In a fragmented environment, this information lives across different systems, forcing your team to rebuild or reconcile the deal as it moves forward. In an integrated workflow, your sales and F&I teams can compile and adjust deal information in one place. Changes update automatically throughout the deal, and every datapoint remains consistent from start to finish.
3. Validating the Buyer
Identity verification and credit review are critical steps, especially as transactions become more remote. Can you authenticate the buyer’s identity digitally? Can your team access credit and loan details without jumping between platforms?
The more disconnected these processes are, the more time they take and the greater the risk of delays or compliance issues.
4. The Signing Process
Electronic signatures are often the most visible sign of a digital transformation. But they don’t necessarily indicate a fully digital process.
Can your team generate, sign and submit documents within the same workflow? Or do they create documents in one system, export them to another for signing and then manually send them to the lender?
In some cases, your team may still print documents after signing, only to mail or scan them afterward. That’s not digital retailing; it’s an inefficient hybrid process.
5. Funding & Status Tracking
The final stage of the deal is where delays can have the greatest financial impact.
Can you track the status of each deal in real time? Do you know whether a lender has received, reviewed or approved the contract? How long does it take to move from submission to funding?
Without centralized tracking, you likely have to chase updates through phone calls, emails and separate lender portals. This lack of transparency makes it harder to forecast cash flow and manage outstanding contracts, especially at higher deal volumes.
The Cost of Fragmentation
Switching between systems seems like a minor inconvenience, but its effects accumulate over time.
Every manual step introduces potential errors: incorrect data, missing documents or mismatched information. These issues can lead to delays, rework and even lost opportunities.
Time is another factor. When your finance and insurance (F&I) managers spend more time navigating systems, they have less time to focus on customer interactions, product presentations and closing deals.
Fragmentation also affects the customer experience. RV buyers expect a smooth, transparent process that emulates the buying experiences they have with most businesses. Delays, redundant requests for information or inconsistent communication can lead them to spend their money elsewhere.
What True Digital Retailing Looks Like
True e-contracting is about continuity: Customer information flows from credit application through structuring, validation, signing and funding without requiring your team to reenter data or switch between disconnected systems. Each step builds on the last, without requiring the user to start over or switch between platforms.
This continuity also extends beyond your dealership. A truly digital workflow depends on lenders being connected to the same ecosystem. When lender integrations are in place, deal information, contract documents, validation results and funding updates can move electronically between systems rather than through manual reviews, emails or status inquiries.
The benefits are most visible during contract validation and funding. Validation can occur when the deal is submitted, helping surface issues while the customer is still in the dealership rather than days later. Funding updates become easier to track, reducing delays and helping contracts move more efficiently from approval to funding.
For your team, the experience should feel unified. Instead of managing multiple disconnected tools, your team works within a single, consistent interface that brings everything together.
From the customer’s perspective, the process should feel simple. They provide information once, review their options clearly and complete the transaction without unnecessary friction.
Rethinking the Question
So, are you e-contracting? The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. If your team still rekeys information, toggles between platforms, prints and scans documents, or chases funding updates, your process still has gaps.
While e-contracting won’t eliminate the complexity of an RV deal, it should shoulder more of the administrative workload so your team can focus on selling RVs and serving customers. The goal is progress, not perfection. Identify the points where information stops flowing, employees must repeat work or customers encounter unnecessary friction. Bridging those gaps is what turns a collection of digital steps into a true digital retail process.
Chet Heughan is the president of AppOne and has over 30 years of experience in automotive and recreational lending, as well as software product management. Since joining AppOne in 2010, he has held various leadership roles spanning indirect lending, consumer lending and dealer service positions. In his current role, he works diligently to bridge gaps between dealers and lenders in the RV, marine and powersports markets.
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