A RECENT survey carried out by CAP HPI, focusing on technology used by motor dealers, revealed that more than one in ten dealership staff are logging into more than 11 systems daily – with a massive 93 per cent saying they spend more than two hours a day in front of a screen using dealership systems.
The survey also found that 36 per cent of respondents felt they did not have sufficient training in the use of these different systems, used by many dealers to meet a range of business needs such as CRM, email marketing, websites, lead management and vehicle health checks.
According to Dragon2000, what invariably happens is that staff end up not having the time to do the jobs they were actually employed to do, because they become bogged down with maintaining separate systems and re-keying information.
Mark Kelland, commercial manager at Dragon2000, said: ‘Dealers are at risk of lost and inaccurate information from duplicate entry across multiple systems, leading to potential errors with vehicle pricing and descriptions, as well as data protection compliance issues for the customer data.
‘With new data protection regulations being forced upon businesses next year, having customer data spread across multiple systems will cause another headache for dealers. They will need to ensure that they are following the rules within multiple systems. It would be far easier for them to manage all the data and compliance in one place.
‘There is also the financial impact of multiple systems. Dealers with multiple systems will also be receiving multiple invoices each month from those system providers, and possibly initial up-front set-up costs (and hardware costs too in some cases).
‘It makes sense for dealers to look for one supplier who understands the motor trade inside out and can take care of their requirements, as they grow their businesses in the digital age. The benefits of a single point of data entry with one supplier will be vast – not least in the time and cost savings.’
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