Axess is the second largest automobile dealership for new and used motor vehicles in Mauritius. The portfolio includes brands such as Jaguar, Land Rover, Ford, Peugeot, Citroen, Mazda, Isuzu and Suzuki. The company sells, repairs, and maintains vehicles in roadworthy condition. In addition, Axess is also a specialist supplier of heavy vehicles and agricultural/industrial equipment and offers professional maintenance and repair for all brands of vehicles they sell. Because its existing CRM system could no longer meet today's demands posed by digital channels, Axess chose Automotive CRM from Konica Minolta and was able to make its marketing and sales activities more efficient. It also helped increase customer satisfaction by providing services that are more personal, reliable, and faster.
"In sales and marketing, we do not need new complicated technology that stands in the way; we need tools that help us to serve our customers quickly, efficiently and professionally. That's exactly what we achieve with Automotive CRM.”
Christophe Hébé
Customer Experience & Insight Manager, Axess, Mauritius
Buying a car is one of the biggest purchases most consumers make in their lives. The process itself can evoke a range of emotions. Even though 95% of purchases are made in a car dealership, almost every car sale today starts online , and in fact, most of the entire sales process now takes place online too. Axess had also recognised this, but with the previous CRM system the company used the use of digital channels was fraught with difficulties.
The previous CRM system lacked a unified view of customers (e.g. requirements, history, current issues in the process, sensitivity, value, etc.) across dealership departments and branches. The consequences were, for instance, that salespeople did not know when their customers came for a service appointment in the same building or sensitive customers in one department were not recognised when they visited another branch or department.
Activities such as direct marketing or customer service communications were costing a lot of time when managed manually. The on-premise document management system (DMS) was difficult to integrate with cloud- based marketing or reporting tools, and targeting and contact information had to be exported manually and for each campaign individually.
Customer data, especially contact data, often had duplicates or outdated data. The difficulty in accessing customer data across departments caused problems for both the Aftersales department, which has to maintain the relationship with the customer over several years, and the Debtors department, which has to ensure that all transactions are honoured.
Due to these difficulties, Axess opted for the cloud-based CRM solution Automotive CRM. The solution is an in-house development by Konica Minolta, whose core functionalities are based on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform with the Power Platform and the Dynamics 365 Sales module. It provides a powerful tool for capturing, managing and successfully utilising customer information in marketing and sales activities of car dealers.
Automotive CRM was certified by Microsoft as one of a very select group of independent software vendor (ISV) solutions. As Axess was already using the Microsoft applications Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online, Automotive CRM integrated perfectly with the existing environment. It also integrated seamlessly with the existing DMS. On top of that, it provided Axess with a marketing automation module that leverages the main benefit of the Microsoft platform – a shared database with unified data structure. Marketing and sales teams now work jointly with the same data, thus unifying and mutually enriching their view of the customer. If required, Automotive CRM can also be extended with functions from Dynamics 365 Marketing and Customer Service, which Axess already adopted and started to benefit from shared platform across departments of Sales, Marketing and Customer Care.
With Automotive CRM, Axess gets a unified 360° view of customers across all departments. This means that all transactions, interactions, preferences, scheduled appointments, sales opportunities, or complaints are accessible to those who need them, i.e. sales managers, customer service agents, the marketing team, technicians, accounting or branch managers. The information is always immediately available to provide the best possible service. Data-driven management helps improve efficiency and find hidden value.
Automotive CRM provides robust business process functionalities for sales, such as Lead and Opportunity management. This supports dealerspecific sales processes such test drive scheduling, contract and delivery management. When conducting test drives, for example, the company has achieved greater efficiency, as there is now less idle time and no more double bookings. Axess can also customise the graphic data dashboards, making them more intuitive to use and increasing user experience, which in turn has a positive impact on performance in the sales process.
Automotive CRM provides unified customer data, which benefits the marketing automation tool in targeting and orchestrating omnichannel marketing communications. This allows Axess to create specific, personalised and automated customer journeys, promote and execute events, generate social media leads and manage marketing content on one platform. The customer journeys map the complete process, from online marketing to sales and delivery to aftersales, and are always provided with all relevant customer data.
The integration with the dealership's legacy systems as well as the customisation, data migration and onboarding process ensure optimal functionality within the existing IT ecosystem and processes. Axess now uses only one platform and no longer has to switch between three different systems and applications. If required, Axess can create its own process automations and specific applications using Microsoft Power Platform. Implementation of the solution and onboarding of the employees was also done completely remotely. Also, the service takes place remotely. Thanks to the numerous tools that Automotive CRM contains, the CRM system supports Axess in its marketing and sales processes, makes the processes more efficient and meets the expectations of the modern, online-savvy customers. Christophe Hébé, Customer Experience & Insight Manager at Axess is completely satisfied with the solution: "In sales and marketing, we do not need new complicated technology that stands in the way; we need tools that help us to serve our customers quickly, efficiently and professionally. That's exactly what we achieve with Automotive CRM.”