The automotive industry is changing at a rapid rate, which means it’s more important than ever for retailers to stay abreast of new trends and evolving customer expectations. Being able to respond to these changes in the right way is not only vital for short-term success, but also as part of longer-term strategies.

The key to identifying and responding to these changes is data, and this blog takes a look at why it’s so significant. We’ll explore how to drive value from its collection, analysis and utilisation, and how to gain insights from it to improve processes and optimise performance.

Maximise data quality

At a time when competition between retailers is high, good customer service is critical for standing out from the crowd. Data is instrumental in helping you understand what customers want and expect, as well as informing your business decision-making.

To attain this enriched data, an initial starting point could be to deploy a dedicated lead collection and response tool like Dealerweb React, seamlessly integrated with Dealerweb Showroom. As a simple yet powerful tool, Dealerweb React captures 100% of web leads from nearly any online source, so that you can collate data on all engagement with your digital footprint.

It’s also important that data collection is automated as much as possible. When data is collected manually, errors can easily creep in, such as incorrect data input, incomplete records, and data duplication where the same information is entered twice and unfortunately for stakeholders, some data is not entered at all by operators, creating leakage of opportunity and visibility gaps. All these issues can distort the data and therefore insights available to you, and potentially mislead your decision-making. Dealerweb Showroom can cut out the risk of those errors, acting as the centralised hub for all sales operations and related data, ensuring that information is consolidated, securely stored, and accessible to every employee that needs it, a USP being that a salesperson cannot change the original source of a digitally delivered lead.

Valuable insights based on facts

Being able to make decisions based on hard facts rather than guesswork or intuition can make a big difference to how your retailer operates. Analysing sales data and patterns means you can right-size your inventory to match customer demand, and hone sales journeys and communications to individual customer preferences. It can also help you strike the right balance with your pricing, ensuring competitiveness and profitability.

Dealerweb Showroom is the platform for accessing that data, thanks to its management reporting suite. The wealth of information within it enables a thorough evaluation of sales and marketing department performance, encompassing key metrics such as enquiry levels, test drives, profit per unit, and finance penetration. Similarly, Dealerweb React can provide more focused insights such as the leads received by each team member and how quickly they responded to them.

This data can also be used for forecasting future performance, including likely sales volumes and revenue, based on historical details and prevailing market trends. Dealerweb Showroom’s Dealbooks module automatically extracts figures from every order and offer process, so that this information can be accessed whenever it’s needed to optimise inventory, production, sales and marketing efforts.

Boost productivity with integrations

There are countless different solutions available to you for collecting and utilising data, and they perform best when they work with each other. Integrating your systems means you can streamline data flow, get updates in real time, automate workflows, and get the most valuable and detailed insights possible.

A great example of the potential of integration is REALinsights, a business intelligence platform that brings together data from all your core business systems and integrations into one place. That way, you can easily monitor all your key metrics, and get tailored forecasts, analytics and reports thanks to its unique algorithms. That way, it can be easier and quicker than ever to model different commercial scenarios and make the right changes to optimise sales and improve efficiency.

In summary

Retailers are exploring the potential for data to drive operational efficiency, optimise their processes and perfect their customers’ experiences. This makes Dealerweb and REALinsights essential tools for success, both in the short-term and the long-term, helping you remove the guesswork from your decisions. And by bringing all your data and insights together through integration, making the most of the information available can be quick and easy for everyone within your workforce.

Learn more about harnessing the full potential of your data with Dealerweb.