10:11 am, June 9, 2021
There has been a fundamental shift in how dealers can most effectively use technology to sell cars and vans following the pandemic, iVendi believes, with the company detailing the changes in a new White Paper.
Connected Retailing: Addressing the Challenges of Digital Transformation is now available for anyone to download and should provide food for thought for all car and van retailers, explained CEO James Tew.
‘It’s been said that the technology used by dealers has advanced five years in the 15 months since the pandemic started and that is a view with which we very much agree. There have been many kinds of highly interesting developments.’
He added that the main findings from the report could be summarised in four points:
1) Your systems must be able to handle any kind of buyer
The White Paper identifies three different categories of consumer: digital-only, traditional showroom purchasers and a hybrid buyer who uses a combination of both.
Your dealership needs a digital system that can transition between each type and, crucially, offer the same level of service to all.
Think of the seamlessness of a John Lewis-style clicks-and-mortar model. Achieving this degree of flexibility and effectiveness should be your aim.
2) Your physical and digital showroom are one sales floor
If there is one single lesson from the pandemic, it is that the showroom and digital spaces are really one big sales floor, something we are calling ‘connected retail’.
Especially bearing in mind that the majority of vehicle buyers fall into the hybrid category, there can be no artificial separation of the two.
Your system needs to be flexible enough to accommodate everything from finance quotes and applications to part-exchanges and outstanding finance – whether the buyer is online or standing in front of you.
3) Maintain profitability across the whole deal
Whenever pressure on vehicle margins increases – as we are seeing at the moment – it becomes crucial for dealers to maintain profitability in areas such as warranties and other value-added products.
Historically, these have been difficult to integrate successfully into digital processes, but considerable progress has been made in the past year, mainly by including them earlier in the sales process as an integrated part of the deal.
4) Digital Deals are a game-changer
Most of the points in the White Paper are universal across the industry but this point is very much centred on iVendi’s technology specifically.
We believe that our Digital Deal technology, introduced last year, provides dealers with the means to offer the best aspects of showroom and online sales journeys in a wholly digital format.
It allows a complete proposition to be built for a specific customer in less than a minute and has now helped our dealers towards £92m of sales.
Tew said: ‘We’re having a lot of conversations with dealers about their future technology needs at the moment and are finding that these four findings are an excellent starting point for discussions.
‘If anyone reading has any thoughts or questions about how these ideas can be applied to their businesses, we’d be very pleased to hear from them.’
- Connected Retailing: Addressing the Challenges of Digital Transformation is available for download at https://ivendi.com/whitepaper.
About iVendi
With a connected, modular motor retail product range that engages consumers, converts buyers and manages transactions, iVendi technology interacts with around five million consumers every month as well as thousands of motor retailers, manufacturers and finance providers.
Visit www.ivendi.com, e-mail [email protected] or call 0345 226 0503.
