Dealership technology spent years moving toward specialized point solutions: one vendor for phones, another for scheduling, another for video MPIs, another for dispatch, another for recon and another for customer communication.

Now the pendulum may be swinging back.

Numa’s acquisition of SocketTime combines AI-driven customer communication with scheduling, shop capacity, technician dispatch, inspections, recon and other fixed-ops workflows.

That raises a larger question than whether this particular acquisition works.

Are dealers eventually going to want one operating platform controlling most of fixed operations—or does that simply recreate the vendor lock-in dealerships have complained about with DMS providers for decades?

Integration has enormous value. So does having the ability to replace an underperforming vendor without disrupting the entire dealership.

At what point does convenience become dependency?