November 2020 Dealer Digitalisation Webinar

As the retail model moves towards omni-channel to meet customer expectations, and in some cases towards agency rather than franchise systems, this puts pressure on the traditional dealer IT environment.  Under omni-channel, customer and vehicle data needs to be widely visible in a controlled way across a dealer network, but in a group holding multiple franchises, the data from multiple franchises needs to be consolidated across the group for group management purposes.  In parallel, dealers are improving their digital presence in areas that are more under their control such as used cars and aftersales, and some are venturing into new areas such as mobility services.  Dealers have already added standalone and interfaced third party applications around the core DMS to satisfy new requirements.  Together, these changes mean that the traditional DMS needs to adapt to include or link to new functionality, or its role might diminish as some other retail system takes on more of the functionality.

In this webinar, based on our own research and interviews with dealers from a number of European markets, we examined the complexity of the current environment, and the expectations that dealers have for change over the next few years.  We also outlined some options for how the dealer IT environment will change to meet the broader needs of an omni-channel network.

We were pleased to be joined by Steffen Reinhard, Chief Commercial Officer EMEA from Advectus, a recent entrant into the DMS market, who shared their vision of future developments.

The presentations shown can be downloaded below, plus the live recording of the webinar.