In order to make decisions in a dealership, it is essential to have complete, trustworthy and updated information on the status of each department. This is how the most successful companies function.
“Making decisions based on temporary or seasonal situations may solve an issue in the short term, but in the long term you must consider projections and estimations.” Jorgelina Perez, Dealer Solution Specialist at Autologica
Business Intelligence tools are designed for this. They take the data generated in each department and help managers understand and leverage the information.
This article analyzes the benefits provided by business intelligence tools.
Control Panels
Dealership managers don’t have time to go through the dealer management system to find the key data they need to make decisions.
Control Panels provided by advanced management software can show the dealer’s KPIs in real time.
As a simple example, this screen shows management that the current month’s service sales will be below last month’s; managers can then drill down to see the information in increasing levels of detail to find the root cause.
Drilling down into each piece of data
Once a manager detects a performance indicator that requires attention, they can use the Control Panel to see a higher level of detail and analyze the composition of the indicator. In this case, for example, the manager can see if the sales drop is due to a seasonal cause, if it is a repeating trend, or if it is an unforeseen situation.
Deep diving into the data to increase sales
Finally, managers can drill down to an even higher level of detail to analyze the composition of each amount that makes up the indicator.
For example, the Service Manager can break down total monthly sales by sales type, then analyze each type by customer and compare per-customer sales with previous months. This helps detect habitual customers that have reduced their purchases. In these cases, for example, the dealership can decide to call each customer to offer parts and services.
A Service Manager with these three options (Control Panels, historical data and data navigation) can make better decisions based on the trends that arise in the dealership.
However, even though these technologies can make the dealership data “talk”, it is essential that managers know what they want to analyze and why, since there are many possible ways to look at the information.
