ERP and CRM software has come a long way in recent years, not least because of the continued dominance of Cloud computing.
Despite this, there are still plenty of dealership networks and automotive businesses that still use legacy or on-premise systems. This isn’t unusual – and it certainly doesn’t make you an antiquated operation – but it will fast become a real issue if you delay switching to modern software to effectively address today’s digital transformation imperative.
Here’s seven reasons why we believe the OneDealer Cloud Automotive Suite is one of the most attractive investments for your business.
1. Customer centricity
OneDealer is far easier to install, requires no on-site servers and can be accessed at any time, from any location or device. However, it offers something far more exciting for ambitious car dealers.
OneDealer has been developed around the needs of today’s digital car buyer and will place you in total control of the customer journey. It’ll help you exceed your sales goals by offering the right deals to the right audiences at the right time and providing relevant, timely communication during every stage of the sales and after-sales process.
There’s no better way to build long-lasting, profitable customer relationships.
2. Competitive advantage
The CRM, alongside your automotive DMS, plays a huge role in providing a competitive advantage.
Can your competition rely on flexible online automotive retail workflows, sales team collaboration and tight OEM integrations to provide and addictive, fully digital customer experience? With OneDealer all the above are in the palm of your hand.
What’s more, the ease with which such systems can be implemented and mastered by staff helps reduce the total cost of ownership, enabling you to invest in other elements of your business that have a direct impact on the customer experience.
3. AI-enabled direct DMS integrations
Dealership Management Systems (DMSs) and CRMs have historically operated in silos, but with OneDealer’s SAP-powered approach, you’ll benefit from full and direct integration between the two.
Customer data, such as critical automotive maintenance dates, purchasing preferences, competition insight and similar informs both marketing and sales / aftersales subsystems in your business’s DMS/ERP digital core; this enables you to provide a stellar digital customer experience and dramatically raise profitability of both sales and service departments. And with soon to be added in the mix, you get a truly unmatched package!
4. Always secure and compliant
It’s taken a while for people to fully trust Cloud-based applications, but they offer one significant security benefit over their on-premise counterparts.
When you rely on a Cloud DMS, you benefit from the provider’s focus on maintaining a platform that is kept up-to-date with the latest security features, firewalls and cybercrime deterrents.
People are more concerned about their data privacy than ever before, and, following the introduction of the GDPR in 2018, it’s vital that you operate Cloud dealership software which has your customers’ best interests in mind.
5. Omnichannel marketing
A bit like the disconnect that once existed between DMS and CRM, sales and marketing activities were often siloed in automotive businesses, too.
OneDealer is here to radically change this.
Imagine creating your ideal target audience leveraging demographic data such as age, zip code, vehicle data (including model, age and key automotive dates such as last service date, current mileage or lease expiry) and, from one central dashboard, planning, delivering and measuring effective and personalized omnichannel automotive campaigns, on virtually any device! Then, feeding the resulting leads to your automotive sales automation toolkit, with auto-created actionable tasks for sales people, maximizing your lead-to-sale ratio.
The benefits of integrated marketing include increased profitability, reduced agency fees, a more engaged, satisfied audience and increased total customer lifetime value.
6. Innovation arrives – seamlessly
If you’ve ever operated a legacy CRM, you’ll know what happens when new features or versions arrive. Staff usually have to wait for patches and updates to be applied. The result is lost productivity and, usually, compatibility issues with existing systems or data.
With OneDealer, the latest innovations, updates and patches are applied invisibly behind the scenes. Thus, you can wake up to a brand new system with zero downtime.
What’s more, these platforms rely on server-side hardware, therefore the latest, greatest features won’t put any additional strain on your own terminals and devices, or require costly upgrades.
7. The digital customer journey – contained!
The best sales team in the world will only deliver a fraction of its potential if it doesn’t have the right management tools and organization to keep it productive and efficient.
The OneDealer Automotive Cloud CRM will maximize efficiency by removing communication leaks, and providing staff with a tight but customizable workflow-based process for all sales and aftersales operations. It’s also proven to boost staff and customer engagement.
On the sales operation side, we all know what it’s like to work with tools that are frustrating, slow and constantly crashing. But, equally, we know how satisfying it is to work with the most efficient tools available in the .
On the customer side, efficient car sales in 2019 means a close, 100% digital ever-present connection between dealer and customer, assisted by digital messaging, online test-drive and service booking and workflows which keep everyone (customer, sales and dealer management) in the loop.
Another aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked is event-based intelligence. With OneDealer, sales activities are recorded in real time, facilitating the correlation between what is actually happening along the sales process with its results. Sales teams are thus empowered with an unmatched information advantage for optimizing sales operations.
Wrapping up
If you’re still using an older CRM or automotive DMS, time is ticking. We hope the reasons above will help convince you that it really is time to start looking towards OneDealer and the Cloud to empower your business’s digital core.
