Skyline Capital

Used-car dealership floor planning is a complex financial operation involving dealership onboarding, vehicle inventory, financing, interest calculations, payments, reconciliation, compliance, and, when necessary, repossession. When I encountered Skyline Capital, all of that complexity was being managed by just four employees using Excel, Dropbox, and an enormous amount of paper—more than an inch of paperwork for every financed vehicle, with multiple duplicates of many forms. The team was working seven days a week, often 10–12 hours a day, while dealerships were actively asking Skyline to finance more vehicles.

The problem wasn't simply that the company needed better technology; technology had become essential to the company's ability to survive and grow. I spent a full day embedded with the team, observing their work and asking questions as they performed their daily tasks. That firsthand understanding became the foundation for designing a complete web and mobile solution that could fundamentally change how Skyline operated.

The resulting platform transformed Skyline from a paper-heavy, labor-intensive operation into a highly automated financial management business. The web application streamlined dealership onboarding and floor-plan management, automatically calculated interest, generated client billing, and reconciled payments with the bank every afternoon—eliminating a manual process that had previously consumed more than 2 hours each day. The mobile application enabled salespeople to onboard dealerships remotely, review financed inventory in the field, scan VINs, and automatically identify discrepancies between vehicles on the lot and the expected floor plan. It also provided the tools needed to manage repossessions when clients failed to meet their obligations.

Most importantly, the impact was immediate and measurable: the business became so efficient that the fourth employee was able to retire again, while the remaining office staff could routinely decide at 2 p.m. which person would go home early. What began as a business on the verge of being overwhelmed became a scalable operation capable of serving the dealerships that had been waiting for Skyline to grow. This was technology as a force multiplier—not simply making people work faster, but giving a small team back their time and giving the business room to grow.