Ingham Motor Group is one of New Zealand’s largest multi-franchise automotive dealership groups. From grass roots farming needs to prestige motoring, Ingham Motor Group provides a huge range of locations, brands and options, all underpinned by consistently excellent service.
“This has led to considerable savings in Group administration and happier trade customers”
CEO, John Ingham
Background
One of the most proactive automotive industry users of CRM functionality, CEO John Ingham is driven to lead the market in customer experience and had a plan of creating a visibility of choice for all customers no matter whether they responded to advertising or simply walked into a showroom.
“We wanted to create a situation where customers could see across the entire groups’s offerings and would enjoy a consistent level of service and care no matter what the initial contact point was” says John.
“With fast growing customer and prospecting databases we also needed to do something about centralising these and then cleansing our information. We are in an expansion phase and as we add locations some of the client information we inherit from other systems isn’t always in great shape.”
What was the solutions?
As Ingham Motor Group exclusively uses Autoline as its business system of choice, Systime Automotive Solutions was able to commission a central CRM hub for the entire group, with all locations both feeding the hub and drawing information from it.
With the CRM hub in place, extensive data analysis and business intelligence improvements became available and Systime consultants worked closely with Ingham Group staff to implement these.
Additionally, with all customer information in one place, Systime staff also recommended the implementation of Autoline’s Master Debtors functionality.
What have been the benefits?
An early example of a direct benefit was highlighted by the analysis system. Many vehicles in the database had been imported (from other systems) without valid or current Warrant of Fitness expiry dates. An exercise was immediately undertaken using Systime’s integrated Transport Agency links to the Motor Vehicle Register to update current WOF expiry dates for these vehicles.
This resulted in greatly increased return rates in all Ingham Group service departments.
Systime General Manager, Tracey Atkins, says Ingham Group is also benefiting from the central CRM hub in other ways. “With Autoline’s master debtor feature, debtors and trade customers who have multiple points of contact with the Group can receive a single, consolidated account each month.”
“Naturally, this has led to considerable savings in Group administration and happier trade customers.”
Another benefit of Autoline’s master debtors reported by Ingham administrators is centralised credit control which is updated on a live basis ensuring every point of sale at each location has up to date information at all times.”
With Systime staff helping where necessary, Ingham Group continues to analyse and improve data quality constantly. “We are here to make the motoring experience memorable for all the right reasons,” says John Ingham, “And Autoline is a key part of our delivery of this promise.”
