Credit crunch revealing dealer database issues

24 July 2008

 

Many dealers turning to their customer database in an effort to boost sales as the credit crunch bites are finding them full of old and out of date information.

 

Dealer management systems specialist Pinewood says that this problem is growing into something of a hot topic among dealers across the industry on online forums and elsewhere.

 

Managing director Neville Briggs said: "This is something of a pigeons-coming-home-to-roost scenario. When car sales were stronger, dealers could get away with using their database as a top-up rather than a core sales mechanism.

 

"Now that customers are finding funding more difficult to come by and need more encouragement to enter a dealership, those databases are being found wanting in terms of providing quality information that will help dealers generate sales.

 

"A dealership's customer database should be its number one CRM tool - but dealer sales and marketing teams are frequently finding that their database is years out of date and that very often the information it holds is useless."

 

Briggs said that, as a rule of thumb, around a quarter of the information in a dealer database went out of date in a year.

 

"It is the job of every customer facing person in a dealership to ensure that the database is kept current and this means working on it all the time. However the various IT systems used within a dealership in particular the DMS have a major part to play in supporting this process."

 

Briggs said that an integrated IT structure that allowed the use of a single database was the key. It was useless a dealer running different databases in, for example, their showroom system, the after sales diary and their dealer management system if there was no way of pulling all the data together for marketing purposes.

 

He explained: "Good dealer CRM is only possible when every person who deals with the customer is able to review and update the information held on that contact.

 

"An advanced DMS system such as our own Pinnacle product facilitates this process because it uses a single live database structure accessible to every user whatever their department. There is only ever one version of a customer or prospect record and this can be updated by anyone using the system.

 

"As well as being available live across every department, all information can be accesses across a multi-dealership network and even consolidated for whole business database interrogation and marketing."

 

 

For further details please contact Simon Wells at
Paperchase Public Relations on 01283 711311
or e-mail simon@paperchasepr.co.uk