Pain Point 8 - Trusted advisors

Number eight in our series exploring dealer pain points is the need for trusted advisors. When time-poor dealership staff require answers to questions and solutions for operational demands, they need to be confident that suppliers have their business’ interests at heart and not their own bottom line.

Trust me, I’m a supplier

For any business, a trusted supplier is key but we don’t mean just that the service or equipment is reliable with back-up if something goes wrong (as important as that is), but that the goals and ethos of supplier and client are aligned.

As such, at Autofinity, we see ourselves as in partnership with our clients where we work in a way that sees our businesses grow side-by-side.

That all sounds very laudable but is it realistic? It’s a fair question and we’re in no doubt that most dealers have heard it all before. Our partners have already experienced our culture where we take the time to really understand a group’s requirements, its structure and its ambitions so we can dovetail our approach and our services accordingly. Not only that, we develop new products and services and enhance our existing suite of applications according to client requests. If you want something and it’s viable, we do it.

Of course, we would say that so, let’s look at some real-life examples.

When we designed our user interface (UI) to boost vehicle speed to market and maximise car sales, we undertook an intensive two-month ‘discovery’ phase when we hosted several workshops with end users in franchised dealerships. Once key themes and requirements had been identified, a six-week development took place with ‘super users’ who tested the UI before a series of training workshops were undertaken across dealerships after which a full roll-out was implemented.

ViHUB’s dashboard is undergoing yet another enhancement whereby our consultant partner Clare Freemantle of Clarity Automotive is working alongside our product manager Linda Clarke and our dealer clients on a new iteration as needs change, new technology is integrated or as different information and features become available.

Likewise, as we perfect our ViSOURCE product, which applies our new and used car inventory management and data collation system to the wholesale market to make buying vehicles for group and dealership stock as straightforward as possible, Linda has applied the same principles. The development team has sought in depth views and worked alongside used car buyers to ensure the tech matches the process accurately.

Linda Clarke: “There’s no point operating in a vacuum and creating what we think is the perfect technology solution to a dealership task or problem if we do not take the time and effort to understand what’s happening in the real world. Often IT specialists will develop an application which is technically clever, incorporates impressive features and has been designed to look appealing. But if the tech, functionality or features don’t reflect the task requirements or the software is cumbersome or the wrong information is highlighted, then end users won’t use it. When we come up with a new development or we want to enhance an existing product, we spend time with the end users before we do anything. Our approach means we’re much more likely to get it right first time rather than take up time revising elements extensively when we reach the testing stage.”