Staying Ahead of Automotive Trends: Digitalizing Vehicle Experiences with SAP
Personalization is a trend impacting most areas of life and business. Customers are looking for personalized interactions, including in their vehicles. As cars are becoming more sophisticated, connected, and cloud-integrated, there is an opportunity to provide a digital personalized experience. However, there are challenges to be carefully navigated to achieve sophisticated and connected data utilization and so the successful digitalization of vehicles.
Auto dealerships and brands are not only struggling to cope with the myriad of new strategies and digital tools available to help them achieve their business objectives, but they also have difficulties envisioning how all these innovations are going to blend in with their ongoing processes, operations, and systems. One of the main drivers of success for dealers and distributors who want to innovate and capitalize on these opportunities is to choose the right digital tools and techniques for the creation of personalized experiences.
The Profitability of Vehicle Digitalization
There has been an explosion in the kind of technology automotive enterprises can include as part of their products, services and operations. Firstly, technology impacts how dealers and distributors connect with leads and customers. They can use online channels, digital marketing tools and mobile apps to build relationships with customers, new and existing. For example, social media listening has a lot of benefits to the improvement of customer service and consequently customer satisfaction and loyalty. It can be taken even further with an investment in loyalty management. This can help enterprises stabilize their income and customer base as they provide the incentives and services to maintain long-term relationships with customers and collect the data needed to create personalized experiences.
The overall experience of interacting with a business affects the business' bottom line. E-commerce continues to grow so dealerships need to meet the needs of online browsers as well as in-store visitors. This could be through introducing a digital sales workplace with mobile service advisors, replicating the in-person dealership experience online. There are benefits of digitalization for the internal team too in terms of the management of services, inventory and ordering which in turn improves the customer experience of the business as the team can be responsive and even proactive in delivering an excellent service. As a result, digitalization leads to profitability.
The Future of Vehicle Digitalization
Bringing together all the capabilities of personalization and connectivity technology, the relationship between car users and dealers will be more closely intertwined which will be a win for both sides. Customers have their needs met by dealers and dealers will exceed their targets for sales, profit, and satisfaction.
A reliable flow of customers
The transformation will begin at the first touchpoint between customer and dealer. The sales funnel can be streamlined, maximizing efforts on customer sales channels and keeping potential customers on the right track to finding the automotive solution for them. By personalizing marketing campaigns throughout the sales funnel, there is a chance to raise brand awareness, convert anonymous website visitors into high-quality leads, and boost lead conversion ratios. Tracking and doubling down on what's working drives an enterprise towards more sales and revenue.
Efficiency across all processes
Beyond the benefit of the increase in the return on marketing investments due to more targeted and accurate campaigns, dealers and distributors will see the impact of digitalization in their own teams. Systems boost staff productivity through the ease and efficiency of processes, helping them to better meet individual customer needs. Using digital tools to dynamically collect customer information from prospects enables sales teams to maintain communication with warm leads and base interactions on the collected history of the individual.
The all-important follow-up management is more accessible and usable, assisting in the transformation from curious lead to committed customer. A comprehensive system also reduces training efforts and better supports the needs of multiple roles. All sales processes are workflow-driven, self-documenting, and omni-channel aware allowing the most advanced digital and live interaction between the salesperson and the customer.
The convenience effect
There is pronounced customer convenience with a mobile on-the-spot reception process directly at their vehicle. Necessary services can be identified, explained, and signed off in a fraction of the time of non-digitalized vehicle reception. This level of convenience increases upsell opportunities because of how easy it is to inquire, schedule appointments online and liaise with team members about additional services.
There is a systemized process for everything from resource planning to workshop planning to ensure enterprises can meet demand responsively. There is even a system for optimizing parts stock by reducing slow-moving high-value parts in stock. When we make life easy for customers and staff, everyone benefits.
With the greater utilization of data comes greater concern for quality control and security. After implementing the right tools, all the data driving these systems is available on one screen and transparent across the organization for robust monitoring and analysis.
The Collaborative Software Driving Vehicle Digitalization
The future of vehicle digitalization is bright. However, it can only be fully realized with the right technological systems driving it. As a thought leader in the Automotive & Heavy Equipment Dealer Management space, proaxia realized the need to bridge the gap between the potential of smart vehicles and the rollout of such technologies. So they partnered with SAP to create the solution proaxia VSS (Vehicle Sales & Service) which is part of the automotive retail module on SAP S/4HANA.
Proaxia VSS is the leading automotive solution because it combines a number of advanced capabilities to meet the needs of vehicle digitalization for large enterprises. With the foundation of S/4HANA, it can also extend into SAP Experience Management solutions such as Customer Experience Solutions to create unique and personalized automotive workshops, parts, and sales functionality. As a result, enterprises have the understanding needed to create an experience that is full of empathy to increase trust in customers, employees, and all parties in between. Considering the technical side, specific industry functionality selected from multiple pre-configured industries can be retrofitted with full integration on the SAP Cloud Platform.
Since then, proaxia has also partnered with NTT DATA Business Solutions to drive the development of the automotive market in Asia, Europe, and North America by easing access and implementation of proaxia VSS. The Automotive Center of Excellence in Malaysia has played a key role in building NTT DATA's knowledge and experience in the automotive industry for 20 years and will continue to do so with this new opportunity to bring an intelligent solution to enterprises eager to innovate.
NTT DATA is perfectly positioned to support its implementation because we are a leading provider of digital solutions for the automotive retail industry and have in-depth experience in providing automotive retail solutions in the region. NTT DATA improves the personalized customer experience and capitalizes on digital sales and marketing channels to boost branding, sales, after-sales revenue, customer loyalty, and dealership profitability. For the strategy, expertise, and resources needed to keep up with trends in the automotive industry, talk to NTT DATA.
Head of Business Unit - Automotive