GNYADA June 2019 Newsletter

Turn Your Roof or Lot into a Solar Profit Center

15

Solar offers the unique ability to move the traditionally fixed cost of energy to a variable expense, giving dealer principals a way to reduce overhead, enhance their marketing strategy and gain a new competitive edge. According to SunPower, dealerships use on average 18% more electricity than typical office buildings. These untapped energy savings can improve a dealership’s bottom line. Due to technological advances and declining equipment prices, the cost to install solar systems has fallen 53% over the last five years. Depending on design, the energy produced on a rooftop or parking lot system can offset up to 100% of electricity costs. Regardless of the size of your group, from a major multi-store environment to a single store, you can benefit from outsourcing the scanning of your dealership’s documents while addressing compliance with federal, state & manufacturer regulations, rules and requirements. The checklist below lists the key reasons for dealers to pay careful attention. 1. Compliance & Required Records Retention: Retaining files too long or not long enough creates cost liabilities and security risks. Federal, State, and manufacturer fines, penalties, and charge-backs are often the result of lacking best practices. 2. Security: Qualified document scanning services provide secure hosting with encryption. Storage of A Compelling Case for NY Solar Consider the cost of energy in New 16

York: approximately 16 cents per kilowatt hour, which is 20-50% higher than most states in the U.S. This makes an investment in solar attractive to NY auto dealers, since the system will pay for itself more rapidly than in other states. New York is one of the fastest growing markets for solar, as the state sets its sights on a more sustainable future. The state’s goal to produce 22.5% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 has led to local utilities creating solar incentives for businesses and homeowners alike. New York has also established an aggressive rebate program for solar of $1,750 per installed kilowatt hour up to $12,500 or 40% of the installed cost of your solar project. And business owners who purchase solar may qualify for the Federal Investment Tax Credit valued at 30% customers’ personal information on- site at your dealership is high risk for breach. Documents should be stored securely in a SAS 70 certified environment offered by qualified document scanning services. 3. Cost: On-site storage is extremely expensive. Having documents picked up and scanned by an off-site document scanning service provider represents a cost effective alternative. 4. Access: Easily retrieve your documents from encrypted environments. A qualified service bureau will offer secured user access controls. Eliminate the rummaging through boxes and paper to satisfy requests. Scanning software allows for finding documents by many different indexes based on your needs and requirements.

of the total cost of the installed solar project through 2019. (Check with your dealership accountant.) Get the Facts If you’re interested in exploring solar, the first step is to take a look at your energy use, local utility rate structure, and energy rebates to determine how quickly solar could produce a return on investment for your dealership. A reputable solar company in your area can help with this, and will prepare a solar proposal that should include a feasibility analysis, complete with information on how your facility consumes energy, the savings that solar could yield, as well as local, state and federal incentives. This article was contributed by SunPower, a GNYADA Allied Member. For more info, contact Ryan Ferrero at 970.214.4433. 5. Verification: Are all of the doc- uments you have scanned in-house or with a service bureau indexed correctly and capable of being retrieved? Best practices ensuring validity and accuracy of processes should be in place with outsourced document scanning. Software-based verification processes along with exception reporting are essentials to seeing to it that all your documents are present and accounted for. This article has been provided by GNYADA DDC vendor AutoTrieve. AutoTrieve specializes in secure Private Cloud-based Document Scanning as a Service (DSaaS) for the Automotive Industry. For more information about AutoTrieve visit www.AutoTrieve.com

Key Reasons for Outsourcing Document Scanning

9

Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association • www.gnyada.com

The Newsletter • June 2019