Advertisement feature: CDK Global releases Unlock. Unite. Advance. report to help dealerships achieve a Connected Experience in 2021 and beyond

Advertisement feature from CDK Global

CDK Global has today launched a new report titled Unlock. Unite. Advance: How delivering a connected consumer experience can unleash your dealership’s full potential, which acts as a guide for dealerships looking to harness today’s technologies to deliver exceptional customer experiences and relationships.

As it stands, the dealership experience is a fragmented one for customers, with disparate tools and systems used by different teams for each stage of the process. All too often this makes the car buying or servicing experience inconvenient and impersonal. In Unlock. Unite. Advance, CDK Global addresses the five key issues that its Connected Experience seeks to address in 2021 and beyond, all of which focus on a customer-centric approach and seamless digital workflows.

The CDK Global Connected Experience connects every dealership function through six key pillars: Marketing, Sales, Workshop, Parts, Systems and Analytics. This open platform is further strengthened by the International Partner Programme, which sees industry-leading partners integrate their applications to CDK Global’s Dealer Management System (DMS).

The five key themes, and how best to tackle them, highlighted in the report are:

Retail innovation: The likes of Amazon have raised consumers’ expectations of the retail experience to such a degree that this level of service – a truly end-to-end customer journey – is expected from every retailer interaction, including those delivered by automotive retailers.
Dealership challenges: Connecting disparate systems to create a single, go-to platform for both consumers and employees to access where and when they need it is key. Research shows that 29% of data held by franchised dealers is incomplete, so this a task that dealers need to focus on in the short term.

The modern consumer: Price is no longer a deciding factor for customers, who now expect a seamlessly tailored customer service both online and in-store.

Consumer-centricity: Dealers need to shift their mindset and business model from being product-driven to consumer-driven if they are to maximise their competitive advantage and boost resilience by staying in-step with evolving consumer demands.
Data and the connected experience: Businesses using data to understand their consumers saw a profit increase of 8% and a 10% reduction in overall cost, so the benefits of investing in a good data strategy are clear.

CDK Global will present its Connected Experience and the whitepaper in more detail during a series of webinars in 2021, each focusing on a different pillar and starting with Connected Workshop and Connected Sales. It will also be presented at this year’s AM Live, which takes place on 20-21 January 2021.

Download the Unlock. Unite. Advance report here: www.cdkglobal.co.uk/unite

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