Pinewood signs first major overseas deal with Reeds

27 April 2007

 

Dealer management system specialist Pinewood has signed its first major overseas deal – with South African franchise dealer, Reeds Motor Group.

 

Reeds operates four motor dealerships in Cape Town at Culemborg, N1 City, Tygervalley and Isuzu Truck Centre.

They are all General Motor franchises handling Opel, Isuzu, Chevrolet, and Saab vehicles. The Isuzu Truck Centre is a specialist Isuzu truck and light commercial vehicle dealership.

 

The total annual turnover of Reeds Motor Group is expected to be about R850,000,000 (£68,000,000) this year, and the company will retail around 3,800 new and 1,600 used vehicles.

 

Craig Mylne, Group Services Director, said: “We decided to change our DMS as we felt that we wanted to start a call centre to streamline customer enquiries and make better use of our customer database.

 

“We make extensive use of our current database, but felt that it was very clumsy to work with. It seems to be written around the accounting part of the business, and we felt that we wanted something that was more customer-centric.

 

“After looking at all the DMS systems that were available to us, we settled on Pinnacle because it best met our criteria. Our new call centre will be opening soon and we have already invested a large amount of capital in a Voip PBX system which is currently running from the Head Office in Culemborg.”

 

Pinnacle is also enabling Reeds to centralise its service bookings and enquiries as well as control vehicle sales leads that come into the company.

 

Finally, the Motor Group is the largest GM parts wholesaler in the Western Cape and it has a fleet of 13 parts delivery vehicles. Pinnacle will bring with it a delivery van control mechanism that should result in greater efficiencies.

 

Pinewood managing director, Neville Briggs, said: "This is a very exciting development for us. We have resisted overseas expansion in the past because we wanted to concentrate our efforts on the UK market first. However, the time is now right, we believe, to start looking at international sales, and we are pleased that Reeds is our first.

 

"Our experience of Reeds is that they are a very professional company who are wholeheartedly focussed on investment in their people and business processes.

 

"There was a high expectation on the part of Reeds in what Pinewood could deliver and our job was to meet these high expectations, help Reeds develop their service offering and grow from our association with them in South Africa. We're pleased with the results achieved so far."

 

 

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