Diary of a DMS Guy

I had a discussion with a dealer this week.

He had identified seven systems that were essential in his sales process - none of which were linked together. This meant that staff throughout the dealership were flipping between systems, re-entering data to sell or get information. A basic vehicle sale went through at least a minimum of 4 systems - with customer and vehicle information being manually typed between each. This included online sales enquiries being manually picked up and copy-typed into the CRM and going from there.

If a sales exec was at the end of a sales process and wanted to check if the vehicle was prepped and ready to retail, he would need to flip into another system, find the vehicle and then look there.....  even then it wouldn't have the full position (ie he could see that the vehicle wasn't ready but couldn't see if that was because they were waiting parts etc".

This is the massive challenge we are looking to address at Navigator - it's an ongoing battle to smooth the customer journey, both digital and physical, whilst creating systems and processes which enable dealer staff to be able to deliver on the customer expectation simply!

I identified with this dealer, that  Navigator could replace all of his systems with a single solution, from Web site, to CRM, Sales Enquiry Management, Sales Order processing, invoicing, vehicle preparation as well as vehicle advertising.  Accounting and Management Reporting also replace additional systems!    

This week, we also launched our integration with the Autotrader Connect platform, which removes another headache for dealers.  This gives the ability to publish and manage Autotrader adverts within Navigator - in a few clicks and ensures the vehicle is advertised fully and correctly and just as importantly is removed when the vehicle is sold!

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