Hello Jim,

Last week, Dealer Software Success sat down with Chris Walsh, President and Acting CEO of The Reynolds and Reynolds Company, for a conversation covering his many-year run at the company, the strategy behind Spark AI and the "It's a Faster Tuesday" tagline, and where Reynolds is headed over the next five years.

Many Years In, and What's Actually Changed
Walsh started at Reynolds on the service side, when the solutions were straightforward: accounting, parts and service. Today, hundreds of solutions target dealers for every part of their operation. The complexity isn't from the dealership business itself changing, Walsh said — it's from the many ways customers now expect to transact. What hasn't moved is Reynolds' commitment to putting people in the field to help dealerships make good decisions.

AI That Scales With the Store
Whether a store sells 50 units a month or 500, Walsh said the goal is to be a trusted advisor at every size. Reynolds' solutions are built to be scalable and customizable, including DMS-agnostic single solutions like Gubagoo that are often a dealership's first step in, so any store can benefit from Spark AI regardless of which stack it runs.

The ROI Timeline
ROI isn't one-size-fits-all. Walsh noted that an existing Reynolds customer adding AI features tends to see results faster than a dealer converting from a competing system — not because of the technology, but because of the goals each starts with. Reynolds works with every customer to define goals and timetables up front, and focus is what determines how fast that ROI shows up.