What Should Car Dealers And Garages Be Focusing On In 2022?

As the new year gets underway, now is the perfect time for car dealerships and garages to identify where improvements can be made over the next 12 months. As technology continues to make itself easier and more accessible for the motor trade, it’s important to take advantage of the tools out there designed to increase your profits in 2022.

Car dealerships and garages should be bringing complete control of their business into a single software system, saving time from logging in and out of different platforms every day so that more time can be spent with customers and making more profit for the company. With a single point of data entry, dealers should be able to add vehicle stock and advertise online, create job estimates and service invoices, manage staff activity, track customer leads, handle their accounting and much more.

Dealer management systems are designed to bring every aspect of dealerships and garages under one roof, with individual log-ins and permission settings ensuring each staff member can access the tools required to complete their jobs efficiently. An easy-to-use system will allow both new and experienced staff to quickly get to grips with the software and this will be reflected in the reduced time spent on tasks.

Your sales team should be able to work effectively away from their desks, which is why it’s worth looking at integrated mobile apps that enable them to perform tasks out on the forecourt. Adding vehicles into stock and advertising online can be done from a mobile phone or tablet, and if this reduces the speed in which you can get vehicles listed for sale online, then you’ll be making sales much quicker.

Digital job cards are the modern way of tracking your technicians in the service centre, allowing staff to clock on and off jobs from mobile phones or tablets, and providing service advisors with a handheld overview of the workload. Maintaining maximum efficiency is key, so it’s important to always have this information at your fingertips so that jobs can be prioritised throughout the day and any tasks exceeding their time or nearing completion will notify you as a signal to take action.

First impressions mean everything, which is why your website needs to be modern and fully responsive to engage online customers, who are increasingly discovering your website on their mobile devices. While the website needs to be professionally designed and attractive, your online features are just as important to the impact you leave on prospects. Consider adding finance options, live chat and the ability to reserve vehicles to your website so that potential customers can begin the buying process outside of office hours and leave you with a lead to follow up on in the morning. If your website is integrated with your dealer management system, then these features will automatically feed details straight into the DMS, ready to be processed by your sales staff.

The last two years has seen even more of the sales process move online in what is likely to be a continuously growing trend, particularly amongst younger car buyers. Adding the option to buy or reserve a vehicle on your website will signal that your dealership is moving with the times and the ease of purchase could be the difference between you making a sale and losing the customer.

Alongside video, 360 images are another way to keep prospective customers on your website, with the ability to replicate the showroom experience remotely by offering a full online walkaround of the vehicle. Standard photos provide limited insight into how a vehicle looks, so taking advantage of 360° imagery on your website in 2022 is a great way of standing out from your competitors.

Over 1,000 UK dealerships and garages are currently driving their businesses forward using Dragon2000’s suite of fully integrated software, designed to take care of all the above features. The DragonDMS dealer management system, dealer websites and mobile apps we provide have all been created using first-hand experience working in the motor trade and have been trusted by dealerships and garages since 1995.

If you would like to know more about the services that Dragon2000 provides, contact us on 01327 222 333 or email sales@dragon2000.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help.