The Autorola Solutions team has had a record year with more companies than ever before engaging it to review and modernise its vehicle asset management processes.
As used cars have become more important to OEMs and their dealers as new car production remains compromised by the global semiconductor shortage, so they are getting more attention and investment from company boards and shareholders.
Digitising the customer journey
This includes dealers investing more time and energy in digitising their business and the overall customer journey when sourcing and buying used cars online. Speeding up the process of pricing a driver’s trade-in is just one part of this process. Once a trade-in arrives with a dealer it is refurbished and for sale in their online marketplace as soon as possible. In the current market time is money and selling more used cars more quickly helps make up for dealers having a restricted number of new cars to sell.
In other cases, dealer groups reach out to simply want to digitise their paper processes. As a value-add Autorola Solutions uses the opportunity to review and re-design those processes to help the company become paperless, while optimising efficiencies as well.
Data transparency and security
Data security, transparency and accuracy are all key priorities for public companies with shareholders and digitising every aspect of the car buying and selling journey will automatically improve auditability.
“When we re-design the process map from when a used car is traded in Fleet Monitor aims to encompass every touch point of the transaction from the pricing to the process of getting the car refurbished and uploaded into the online marketplace complete with images and a retail price,” explained Autorola Solutions’ global business unit director Ib Kimose.
“Our focus is on speed of getting the initial transaction completed and the trade-in car back up for sale. The online marketplace and Fleet Monitor work hand in hand,” he added.
A car’s status in the online marketplace is also vital. Once a car is sold it automatically disappears from all external sales channels including Apps in real time. That prevents the untenable situation of a consumer looking to buy a used car online that has already been sold.
Besides car dealer groups, the Autorola Solutions team has had many customer projects with OEMs, banks and leasing and rental companies throughout 2022.
Increasing stock visibility
“Stock visibility in real time is important so the asset owner can decide which channel to direct the car down next. If it is at the end of a leasing contract is the car being sent directly to auction or is it being sold to the driver or directed to a lease company’s retail premises for sale.
“A car costs roughly 22 Euros for every day it is in stock, so a car’s status and speed of sale is important. We have also been collaborating with our subsidiaries in Australia and Belgium on upstream selling. Twenty-five percent of used cars sold by our Belgium subsidiary are now sold upstream with them finding a new owner even before they have been de-fleeted by the leasing company,” said Kimose.
Upstream selling
Autorola Australia uses Fleet Monitor to support its upstream selling by tracking the life cycle of a customer’s car in real time from the original order with the dealer through to the end of contract dates. That way the Australian team can get in touch directly with the driver three months prior to it being de-fleeted to start the proactive remarketing process. This includes liaising with the dealer on the delivery schedule of the driver’s new car.
It gives Autorola an advantage over its competitors as it provides complete transparency on a vehicle asset from the time it joins a customer’s fleet until its disposal.
