Integrated cloud-based solutions
For over 70 years, automotive company Volkswagen has had a presence in Canada. In 2021 Volkswagen Canada was looking for a way to cut time in their cumbersome and manual processes for documenting dealer visits and contact meetings carried out by the field managers. They evaluated various software solutions in order to find one that would fit all of the requirements they needed from such a system.
VW Canada has various systems providing different performance metrics. Consolidating all relevant metrics together was very time consuming and inefficient. Also, the field managers were documenting their contact meeting reports in Word and Excel and then storing them in a One Drive folder. This was an inefficient process.
With a manual process to upload reports into One Drive, there was not a standardized approach. This made accessing previous reports difficult for the field and corporate employees.
VW Canada needed a live system with a dealer performance dashboard. The field staff requested a KPI dashboard tool to help them to better analyze dealership performance and their action planning. They wanted a system that would be updated in real time when meeting with the dealers.
VW Canada looked at a few different solutions but most of them were not very flexible and required significant costs to be customized. Optimum Info had a solution that would essentially
meet their needs out of box. Optimum specializes in Network Development and After-Sales solutions and had already been providing their US counterpart with
AMOS, Optimum Info’s Business Management Solution. At the end of the evaluation process, VW Canada chose
IKON, Optimum Info’s Dealer Contact Management solution, which met all their requirements at minimal implementation costs.
With IKON, you are able to manipulate and sort the data for reports. You can also easily export the reports into Excel or PDF. Other solutions we were looking at lacked these flexible features,
said Benoit L., Pre-Owned Vehicles & Corporate Sales Manager for Volkswagen Canada.
The implementation was done in two phases:
In less than 12 weeks the system was up and running for Phase One. The field was able to create contact reports in the system which included
prepopulated discussions topics and recommendations. VW Canada had the ability to customize the discussion topics and recommendations to their needs
without any downtime or additional cost.
Optimum integrated VW Canada’s dealer performance data into the KPI dashboard within IKON. The KPIs and content were based on feedback from VWC management and field staff. This provided a seamless user experience as IKON became the one stop place for the field to create reports, analyze dealer performance metrics, and create action plans.
In Benoit’s words,
The implementation went very well. It was a quick plug and play. We were able to use the tool right away and there was no downtime as we continued to make enhancements to the system. The Optimum staff was available to assist every step of the way.
Benoit further added,
With all the customizable options available it was a little overwhelming in what we wanted to do. Their account manager used his best practices from working with other OEMs to make suggestions and explain the outcome of whatever we were thinking of doing. We really appreciated their insight in guiding us to create a system that fit our business.
In Benoit’s view,
We’re doing the same work as before so there wasn’t much of a learning curve with the system, but it’s automated, faster, and easier.
IKON's cloud system allows field managers to connect with their dealers on any device at any time. Field managers can easily conduct virtual meetings which provides better coverage with remote dealerships.
IKON has helped the field team optimize the time to conduct dealer meetings. The field can focus more on consulting dealers and improving the overall network performance.
Having a consistent process of conducting contact meetings and creating reports improved productivity. This provides an organized system for efficient contact meetings and helps streamline communication between dealers and field managers.
With the success of IKON, VW Canada is looking at possibly adopting
PRISM, Optimum Info’s Dealer Audit Management Solution. They are looking into possibly using the system to assess their dealerships’ EV readiness.
VW Canada continues to make enhancements to IKON. Optimum Info is working closely with VW Canada’s IT team to integrate more KPI data within the dashboard and to allow dealers to directly manage their strategy in the system.
According to Benoit,
I am surprised that despite all the customers Optimum has, we feel that Optimum has always treated us as their #1 priority. Every time we send an email or call, we get a response right away. The turnaround time is great.
Diana is a Senior Marketing Associate at Optimum Info, a business solutions company providing tailored software solutions for manufacturers to improve franchise network development and after-sales operations. Utilizing her experience in client engagement, Diana strives to create interesting and insightful articles to engage and inform OEMs.
Let us know how we can help you learn more.
