Driving Transformation in Fleet Software

The professional used-car market in the UAE, KSA and Gulf region is currently on an upsurge from a demand perspective, however the legacy challenges and pain-points experienced by regional automotive companies can cause a real blocker for the exploration of these opportunities.

This article first delves into these challenges and secondly explains how these can be addressed by applying smart solutions to the core pains.

Let us first investigate the most imminent challenges:

1. Existing processes are manual and characterized by excel-based workflows in shared folders or circulated on e-mail.
2. Communication and e-mail threads on major events related to individual vehicles or contracts make for decentral and inefficient data gathering and history with no central logging.
3. Decentralized business landscapes made up of fragmented systems with no integration – and no interoperability between the systems.
4. Manual workflows and lack of centrality result in inconsistent pricing (e.g. for Trade-In requests) which compromises the customer experience.
5. Lack of centrality means no overview and end-to-end measurements on key metrics.
6. Manual online auction flows relying on in-person auctions or mismanaged processes negatively impacts the resale price and overall customer experience.
7. Poor quality of vehicle inspections, if any, and manual paper-based process to accompany the sales transaction negatively impacts the trust.
8. De-centralized remarketing processes with unnecessarily long and costly lead times.
9. Poor governance, compliance and risk management in the de-fleet and remarketing phase.
10. Lack of transparency across the organization results in siloed decision making about Trade-In leads and limits the potential synergy between New Car and Used-Car business.

What can we do to help you alleviate these challenges?

Autorola leverages three decades of innovation and knowhow within the Automotive Software Industry. Since 1996 Autorola has been a leading and preferred partner within software solutions for major companies all over the world and our core competencies lie within digitalization and transformation for fleet owners in all segments of the automotive industry.

Autorola’s One Platform approach is an efficient way to tie your digital landscape together and allows you to reach a high level of operational excellence. The Fleet Monitor from Autorola is a workflow and process management system, which is configurable to meet your business requirements. Whether these are monitoring your running fleet, getting an overview of your supplier ordering and repairs, return bookings of vehicles, and appraisals, and everything in-between. In short: every step of the remarketing process. This can also include transfer handling, storage, insurance and claims handling, all the way to your sales management, including price setting, sales strategies, auction selection, payment and aftersales.

To have everything in one place, means that no information is lost, and your response time is quick and timely. With the Fleet Monitor, you get a centralized control, and New Car and Used-Car business that are highly synergized.

With its user-friendly and intuitive look and feel, the Fleet Monitor platform is designed around dashboards and worklists. It informs you about which vehicles to take action on, ensuring that they are processed quickly and efficiently.

What about integration to ERP, CRM and external partners and data providers?

The Fleet Monitor platform serves as a process backbone and data repository and allows seamless integrations. You can give access to all relevant people across your organization and even outside your own organization, to perform their tasks from the same platform. You decide what your they see, what they can do – at what time in the workflow.

Flexibility is key and inherent in Autorola’s way of thinking. This means that your Fleet Monitor dashboards and flows are tailor-made to reflect your way of working with your fleet from acquisition to disposal. The integration capabilities let you design your very own digital landscape – and you can keep adding to this as your business grows and your way of working changes.

Your dashboards are built around your workflows and the vehicle card gives you an instant easy-to-use interface to track all data and process actions on that car. No mater the complexity, we make it simple to use.

It all starts with trust in the systems

With Autorola’s user friendly Vehicle Inspections and Trade-In tools, you can make sure that all vehicles are described and inspected according to leading industry standards.

The inspection tool provides a VIN lookup and is fully integrated into the Fleet Monitor, sharing data through a real-time interface. This ensures that your central pricing team or B2B buyers “see what they get”. Approval layers can be configured according to your thresholds and policies.

With 14 or more retail pictures and 100 or more pictures detailing the damage condition, including type and severity, you ensure a very high level of transparency and accuracy in the appraisal process.

This builds trust for both the process and your customers.

Paperless online auctions

All auctions, which can be self-managed by your team, are directly interactable with Fleet Monitor, ensuring an end-to-end processing of your cars, including real-time auctioneer screen, direct negotiation functionality with bidders, bid acceptance and aftersales handling.

You can choose Buy Now, Basket (bulk negotiation), Instant Auctions, Incremental and Blind Bidding.

Autorola’s auction system allows you to do buyer group configuration and auction setup at vehicle level to optimize your sales channels and strategies.

Where should you start?

At Autorola we understand that finding the cure means understanding the pain. We will challenge your existing processes and help you with this. For OEM distributors/agencies, we recommend capturing all the Trade-In requests digitally from your showrooms and implement a data-driven approach towards how customers are managed end-to-end through the process when they want to sell their used car.

According to Roland Berger data, 96% of prospective car buyers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia initiate their purchase journey online, leveraging online channels to research and get more information about their potential new car. The vast majority of the research is conducted using a mobile device.

Consider introducing a sophisticated lead generator on your website using professional vehicle inspection methodology tailored to private sellers. The private seller can describe the condition of their vehicle more accurately with pictures from their mobile device – a massively underserved source to increase your Trade-In ratio.

We know that many private used-car owners browse your website, and if you can give them an accurate appraisal on their trade-in car, it will incentivize them to trade with you. This way you both renew a contract and source a car to your stock – to resell.

Now consider this process of a structured follow-up on trade-in leads being fully automated. This way you improve your Trade-In ratio and improve your earnings, with minimal effort and maximum impact.

Read our recommendations to counter these challenges and position yourself stronger

• Make digitization part of your strategy
• Review and reengineer your processes.The automotive industry is a volatile space, which requires a strong data-driven operating model if you want to remain competitive in the long term.
• Define measurable Trade-In criteria and process KPIs for all phases in the remarketing process.
• Automate processes and reduce non-productive time to save costs.
• Increase the knowhow in your organization by partnering with the right industry expert, who helps you adopt best practices used by your peers.

We are still at the beginning of the journey to realize the full potential of digital transformation in the regional B2B Used-Car ecosystem.

With changes in tech, the OEM landscape, regulation and new distribution and mobility concepts, it is the right time to work with a leading industry partner, who can help you fast-track your transformation journey and grow your business.

Key results

OEM Distributors, large fleet owners and leasing/rental companies implementing a reformed remarketing strategy after partnering with us have typically achieved the following:

• Seamless integrations
• 100% transparency of all processes and vehicles
• Automations eliminating manual processes and redundant data entries
• Up to 50% reduction in non-productive time
• +70% in avg. bid improvement
• +30% in Gross Margin Improvement
• Approximately 15 days in lead time reduction

Autorola Gulf L.L.C is an impartial Joint Venture company launched by Al Futtaim Automotive and Autorola Group, a global leader in online remarketing and automotive IT solutions for professional Used Car & Fleet Management covering dealer groups & agencies, car rental & leasing, OEMs and banks and financial institutions.

With more than 750 employees and subsidiaries in 20 countries, Autorola is a trusted name in the professional used-car business.

Explore a comprehensive suite of tools to elevate your used-car management with Autorola Gulf:

🔄 Trade-In App & VIS: Vehicle inspection tools equipped with extensive pictures for lease returns and appraisal.

📊 Fleet Monitor: A configurable workflow management platform for inventory and process management.

🏢 Digital Showroom: Self-managed sales platform for closed and open auctions, offering buyer group and vehicle-level auction configuration.

🔍 Self Inspection Tool: A lead generator on your website, employing professional inspection methodology simplified to private sellers.

🌐 Marketplace: Autorola’s renowned B2B used-car marketplace, boasting over 55,000 active B2B buyers.

📈 Indicata: A sophisticated business intelligence tool providing accurate RV predictions and real-time pricing. A clear alternative to traditional valuation tools, helping reduce the risk on fleet owners’ P&L statements.