As the shopping preferences of consumers and businesses continue to evolve as we move forward in the post pandemic world, trends show that the need for digitization is at a peak for the equipment dealership industry. In the end of 2021, AED and McKinsey conducted a survey of dealership executives from AED’s nearly 500 dealership groups regarding their insights into industry trends.
In the survey, respondents were asked what percentage of their new/used/rental equipment sales are conducted digitally today, as well as what they expected that percentage would be in five years. Currently, 14% of new sales, 25% of used sales, and 12% of rental sales are conducted digitally; those percentages are expected to be 38% of new sales, 48% of used, and 36% of rental sales in the next five years. Setting up an ecommerce site with features for the industry can be difficult and costly to implement on your own. e-Emphasys ePortal is specifically designed for dealerships. It doubles-up as a self-service portal for the dealership customers, and is an important source of information + knowledge, providing multi-channel, user-experience. ePortal enables dealerships to maintain comprehensive presence and gain competitive advantages as customer-focused organizations. ePortal is equipped with the tools you need for selling new, used, and rental equipment so you can rise to the challenge of these trends.
As dealership and B2B spending continues to move online, the access to customer data increases. It would be a missed opportunity to not fully optimize the information from this data. Our e-Emphasys CRM adds extensions specific to the equipment dealer industry to Microsoft Dynamics, ensuring that you have access to the right data to optimize customer upsells and manage your sales opportunities. Within the platform you can access Price Lists, Finance Options and Amortization Charts, along with Customer Credit information, split by line of business (sales, parts, service and rental), as well as edit the price within sales and rental quotes. The platform can also generate all-inclusive proposals for equipment, attachments, rental, warranty, service, and trade ins. Additionally, the platform gives insights into service and rental contracts, which can help your dealership compete, as many dealers are moving towards proactive service offerings. According to the survey from McKinsey, “sixty-four percent of dealers consider enabling [a better customer service] experience to be the top priority in the future of service. Dealers that utilize the digitization tools offered by e-Emphasys can meet this priority. With ePortal in the service portal, fleet managers and end users can schedule service. Dealerships can then schedule services and assign technicians through our eScheduler and eServiceTech applications which allow you to automate scheduling for technicians, and allow technicians to update customer work orders with pictures, notes, right from their mobile device, saving them the paperwork when they return to the office.
You need a business intelligence tool that can display the data in a readable manner. e-Emphasys Business Intelligence offers an integrated and fully scalable business analytics solution that supports the entire organization. It delivers in-depth reports, dashboards and analytics needed to improve decision-making, and the overall performance management of the business. John Kimball, CEO at Kimball Equipment says “I use the BI Dashboard from e-Emphasys everyday. It’s a refreshing change from the past where I would generally ask once or twice a month how things are going. One of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning is look at my phone and see what we billed the previous day.”
As you digest this information you may need a starting point for digitizing your dealership and rising to these trends. Our modern end-to-end dealership management platform along with our knowledgeable staff can help you. Schedule a demo today so we can discuss your specific needs.
