The talk on the move to the Agency model has been mainly about the brands selling cars directly to consumers and the dealer simply being a handover outlet.
But, are there similar implications in Aftersales?
I'm a tech guy and for nearly 35 years I've been attending meetings with OEMs as a Dealer Management System supplier representative.
What I've always found has been that when the OEMs have plans, these are first seen in changes and updates in their technology - specifically in the interface with the dealer.
30 years ago this started with the ability to send in stock orders electronically. This saved time and OEM resources...
In recent years though there has been an increase in the data supply from dealers with the OEM. This has clearly been part of the "fight" with the dealer about who owns the customer.
Now though the future requirements from the OEMs have changed direction slightly. The requirement for supplying information on all customer interaction - both sales and Aftersales - as well as real-time information on workshop jobs.
In addition there has been a move towards brands having online service booking and transferring these into dealers DMS systems automatically.
More recently, there have been additional discussions about authorisation of work and invoicing of customer work to the OEM (as they have done with fleet central billing for years).
Taking all this together, it would be easy to see that this enables the OEMs to "own" the full customer journey...
So service reminders could be in-app (most OEMs have them) with the ability to book in for a service. This would be taken on the oem system and delivered to the dealer.
When the car is in the workshop - real-time communication between the dealer and the OEM would then allow them to deliver communication to the customer..
And also invoice and take payment from the customer - with the dealer invoicing the OEM instead of the customer.
This would turn the dealer into simply a workshop with very little ability to sell or take any income directly from the consumer....
I guess 10 years ago, the move to the Agency model for sales would perhaps have looked far fetched.. But it's a reality for many brands.
So is this this too far fetched?
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