ROSEVILLE, Minn. — There are few things that computers haven't made easier. When they go down, it's an issue, and an annoying one at that.
For many car dealerships across the state, that's what's happening right now, as a cyberattack affects the systems they use for nearly all aspects of their jobs.
"I've never seen this before," Amber Zimmerman, business manager at Midway Ford in Roseville, said.
"This is way different," Mark Bjornnes, who works in service, echoed.
That software from CDK Global handles much of their day to day operations. Now, things take much longer than before.
"About a half hour from the time I get all the paperwork ready, and then the person's leaving my office," Zimmerman said. "Right now, that's taking more like an hour and a half, because we have to handwrite all of the contracts."
With the software down, car dealers are back to doing things old school, by hand.
"You're buying a 2024 Ford Bronco, and here we are doing things like, you know, back in the 60s and 70s," Zimmerman said, laughing.
According to Scott Lambert with the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association, there are more than 130 dealerships across the state who are seeing issues thanks to the hack. Nationally, CDK Global has software in more than 15,000 locations.
As the issue continues – now lasting over a week – there are concerns about how long this could last.
"They have to remember to write down their hours of how much it took, what time they got paid on a vehicle, so we can pay them," Bjornnes said.
It's unclear how long this system outage could be. When the system does eventually return, there will be more work as documents done by hand will have to be entered into their system.
"Frustrating because when this does come back online, we'll have to take the stack of paperwork, enter it all in manually into the system, then go into our other system to collect the money," Bjornnes said. "It's just a long process, it's gonna be a lot of extra hours working."
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