Nowadays it is essential to have the ability, technology, and know-how to leverage 100% of the huge volume of information generated by the dealership.
Business Intelligence is the name given to a group of tools that can help you analyze this data in a clear and simple way so as to draw strategic conclusions.
Dealers adopt Business Intelligence mainly for two reasons: they have reached a superior level of professionalization and understand how BI can help monitor and grow the business; or they are having difficulty keeping in stride with other market leading dealerships
The most common questions regarding Business Intelligence are:
- When is the best time to implement it?
- Why is it necessary?
When Is the Best Time to Implement BI?
Ideally, a dealer should implement BI technology from the moment they begin operations, as it will allow them to get a habit of analyzing data right from the start, and also because it will continually serve as a compass to professionally manage the business.
However, in most cases dealers have been working for years, gradually adopting new technologies to professionalize their operations, whether due to self-motivation or OEM suggestion.
If the dealership’s aim is to grow or attract a bigger portion of the market, they can use Business Intelligence to get an outlook of the business, improve their processes, and track the evolution of the Key Performance Indicators. But BI is also an ally for planning and making decisions based on trustworthy data.
Finally, if the dealer has already reached a certain size (multiple stores and workshops, many customers, etc.), Business Intelligence is a tool that will help them organize their data and keep total control over each business unit.
Why Should I Implement BI at the Dealership?
Adopting Business Intelligence technology at the dealership brings about significant advantages. Here are 6 of the most important:
- BI allows you to know the buying habits of your customers through the analysis of services, parts, and vehicles purchased in different time periods.
- Negative trends can be detected before they become serious issues.
- Owners and managers can quickly see the health of each department and navigate through the data up to the finest detail to find root causes.
- BI can help detect defective and inefficient processes that tend to go unnoticed and lead to money losses.
- Modern BI tools are dynamic and intuitive, and let managers easily create indicators, charts, and reports based on their needs.
- BI replaces intuition-based decisions with data-based decisions.
If you think your dealership could benefit from modern Business Intelligence technologies, request a demo and learn about the stories your data can tell.