An Interview with Ristken's President, Patrick DeMarco

In this View From the Top, Ristken's President Patrick DeMarco shares with our readers the tools, solutions and platforms offered through Ristken as well as what is on the horizon for F&I.

Tell us about your company and the products that you offer.

Ristken is a leading provider of technology based solutions dedicated to increasing the productivity and profitability of dealership finance departments. Our customers include the Service Providers, OEM’s, and General Agents that serve the dealerships.

Our core offerings include market leading F&I Reporting tools, menu selling solution, as well as a suite of e-Business solutions incorporating e-Rating, e-Contracting, and e-Remittance into the F&I process.

Ristken’s Reporting Platform is a web-based software application providing quick, accurate reporting for virtually any performance metric in the Finance departments of automobile dealerships. Agency and Service Provider personnel and their respective dealerships can essentially track and manage Finance department productivity in real-time. It is easy to use, extremely powerful, and entirely customizable to the dealership. We consistently find that once a dealership is up and running, they make it an everyday part of their operations and quickly realize that the old way of tracking business with handwritten logs and cumbersome Excel spreadsheets is entirely obsolete. With on-demand performance metrics, unlimited reports capabilities, objective setting and tracking, and real-time rankings, it is extremely powerful.

Ristken’s Menu Platform is a web-based menu selling software application enabling the dealership’s Finance personnel to quickly and easily calculate, configure and present multiple payment product options to customers within a consistent and collaborative selling process. Our Menu integrates collaborative sales tools, compliance tools, as well as Electronic Rating and Contracting.

We also offer full e-Business capabilities including e-Rating, e-Contracting and e-Remittance. This is actually the fastest growing segment of our business as more and more dealerships realize the increased speed, accuracy and efficiencies of going paperless.

How does your product offering differ from other providers?

Firstly, I believe that our approach to how we build the products naturally differentiates us; simple to set-up, simple to use, yet powerful, highly customizable and most importantly reliable to the end user.

We are also one of the few companies that have Certification with each of the major DMS providers including ADP, Reynolds & Reynolds, and DealerTrack. This ensures complete security, reliability, and flexibility regarding DMS integration, which is important. We estimate that the DMS companies that Ristken has sanctioned and Certified integration relationships with, allow our products and platforms to be integrated in over 90 percent of the dealerships in the United States. Ristken also integrates with other Tier 2 and Tier 3 DMS and DSP partners and is consistently pursing additional integration relationships.

We believe our menu has one of the most powerful and flexible payment engines in the business. Additionally, because of our decade of experience with our solutions running in thousands of dealerships across all 50 states and Canada, our products and technology have evolved and continue to evolve to easily handle the endless scenarios that arise from dealing with such a broad footprint across every region and state.

Our Reporting software is a dedicated sales and productivity tool integrated directly with the DMS. It is not just pulling metrics from the Menu platform but is in fact a comprehensive stand-alone reporting solution. So many companies claim to have a reporting application yet most are simply a set of reports that are generated from the menu, I don’t consider that a comprehensive reporting application. I believe our reporting application to be unmatched in the industry in its power and flexibility to create the widest range of customized reports to accommodate any dealership’s reporting needs.

Our e-Business platform differentiates itself as simply being one of the few proven, scalable, working solutions processing over 1 Million contracts annually. It is also designed as a stand-alone platform to integrate with any menu, or to be utilized outside of the menu selling process. The key here is that we don’t require you to be logged into the menu to access e-Rating or e-Contracting, which makes it flexible enough to be used outside of the F&I office such as on the Service Drive or selling protection products direct to consumers.

We understand that there will always be another bell or whistle out there to consider, but at the end of the day, what really differentiates Ristken now and into the future is our combination of deep industry experience, robust technology, and our unwavering commitment to excellence in service and support.

How does Ristken work together with agents?

We understand the value and importance of agents to our company but more importantly to the health of the industry as a whole. In fact we have hundreds of general agents who distribute our products to thousands of dealers across the US and Canada. Because of our base of high-profile enterprise-level service provider clients, this fact sometimes gets lost in the marketplace. But I want to be clear on this, general agents are and will continue to be an important segment of our business, and we will continue to provide the highest level of service, support and training to help make them successful with our products. We want our agents to be confident that Ristken’s products offer them a competitive edge when they bring these tools to their respective dealerships.

Tell us about Patrick DeMarco and the path that led him to be the president of Ristken.

I have been fortunate in my career to have a good balance of automotive and technology leadership experience. Early in my career I built a solid foundation of automotive experience holding positions with both Ford Motor Company and Nissan North America. As the Internet boom began I launched my career into the technology sector by co-founding an Internet company and then restructuring another technology company. After we sold those companies, I went back into the auto space and became an Executive Director running a business unit for J.D. Power and Associates. While in that position I met Matt Twyman the founder and CEO of Ristken Software Services and the rest is history.

Looking back over the past five years, how has the industry changed and how do you see it changing in the future?

First and foremost the appetite to adopt technology in the retail automotive sector has greatly increased. We are constantly being challenged by our service providers and dealers to provide more robust solutions. Additionally the downturn in the industry and the overall economic climate has forced everybody to be more competitive and efficient. Technology has played an important role in driving efficiency, productivity and profitability. I don’t see that changing in the next five years. What I do see is technology continuing to drive improvement and institute change in the current dealership operational processes. I believe this industry will look very different five years from now basically due to the fact that the users (our clients) will not accept antiquated solutions. Remember the F&I manager of the future is sitting in a dorm room right now and they will demand cutting edge solutions to do their job!

What products do you believe will drive your future success?

I believe it’s a fairly simple equation. Build innovative products that solve business problems for our clients, continue to provide world class customer service, and act with integrity. I think if we can accomplish those at the highest levels, our future will be very bright.

What technology or services do you believe will drive your future success?

This is a sensitive question and I don’t want to reveal too much, but I will tell you that we are currently developing solutions that we think will change the way both consumers and dealers conduct transactions. Additionally, I believe you will continue to see growth in the e-Business forum and clearly mobile applications will be the norm in the future.