Which vendor is the best automotive CRM solution for today's small dealerships?

This article looks at some of the common CRM requirements to run a small car dealership effectively, it offers you insights and tips on the most suitable CRM solution for your business needs.
By: Dealer Elites CRM
 
March 15, 2010 - PRLog -- Automotive CRM solutions are very competitive today, each with their own unique development history, along with list of necessary some times crucial features that can help you run your business more effectively. For a smaller dealership today choosing the right CRM solution provider can present itself as a challenge, one that is not so easy to meet. For one most of the CRM solutions you find on the market today are designed for the big dealerships, where new cars, used cars, parts, service departments are all rolled into one. This monster of a CRM solution usually means a big price tag, both on the setup fees, and the monthly cost, not to mention the long term and unfavorable contract you must commit to. Another problem is due to the complexity of the CRM solution, the big dealership CRM software is full of bugs, sometimes backward in technology. Because some of the CRM solution providers has been in business for many years, their core functionality and coding was done in the 1980s, and today without completely starting from scratch. These vendors choose to work with outdated technology just to save on additional development cost. Some of the vendors are still selling and pushing for CRM software that will be oblique in few years, and we are starting to see the effects today. With less and less support from Microsoft, and other big names. If your current CRM solution requires you to use a certain version of a browser (for example Internet Explorer 5, or 6) you should really be concerned, because pretty soon these browsers will be completely off the market. And then you will have a completely useless CRM solution with years of data that will be sitting idle.

Typically a smaller dealership will not have that many departments or unnecessary complexity to worry about, hence a lot simpler CRM solution is required, but at the same time the system should be powerful and proven solution to their unique marketing challenges. Some of the challenges facing the smaller dealers are: one the price tag, the smaller dealers wouldn't want to pay a setup fee from $2000 to $10000, and they certainly don't want to pay a monthly cost of $1500 - $5000. The smaller dealers will require something that is affordable to them, such as few hundreds per month with no setup fees, and on top of all support unlimited users without sacrificing on the technology and performance. When it comes to meeting their budget, there aren't many CRM solutions that will fit the bill, and ones that do fit the bill are usually web based generic CRM solution that is not developed for automotive industry. The second challenge is I.T support, because many of the smaller dealers will not have the luxury of having constant I.T support, therefore their CRM solution should require minimal user training, with intuitive user interfaces. It should be easily understood and used by the management, instead of leaving all the CRM problems to your I.T department. Another feature that is required by the smaller dealer is quick turn around, when they receive a vehicle, or stocking in a vehicle into their inventory. They will need to get that car published on their web site quickly to gain instant traffic and sell the vehicle as quickly as possible without tying up too much resource for too long. This usually means an ease to use software that can be quickly deployed and connect directly with the dealer's website to have instant upload capabilities and publish their online inventory with just few clicks.

The smaller dealers usually focus on their sales leads more than the bigger dealers, because every lead that comes in whether through the web or in person is valuable to their business. The system they will need to rely on not only can sort, filter, search the leads quickly. But it should be able to provide the ability to add appointments, follow up notes, and track the lead source which can generate sales performance reports on the fly. Another nice feature for the smaller dealers is the ability to self manage their own system, without calling for support, they can add, delete, manage their own user database which will save them valuable time and resources. Thank you for reading this article, it is brought to you by Dealer Elite CRM, your ultimate CRM solution for today's cutting edge dealers. For more information please visit us online at http://www.dealerelites.ca

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Dealer Elite CRM is a Canadian based CRM solution for today's cutting edge dealers, developed with latest technology yet affordable for the small dealerships. Visit us online to contact us by phone to schedule in person demonstration.
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