Digital Retail Transformation for Automotive Manufacturer
Industry
Automotive
Services
Digital Product Innovation, Strategy & Planning
As vehicle buyers increasingly demand seamless, transparent experiences, even established automotive leaders must rethink how cars are sold.
Opportunity
A leading automotive OEM sought to transform the vehicle buying journey by creating a digital retailing platform that seamlessly connected online and in-store experiences.
Customers increasingly expected transparent, accurate information and a frictionless process—needs that were only heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting inventory shortages.
Building this platform presented a strategic opportunity to modernize dealer operations, meet rising customer expectations, and position the OEM as a leader in digital retailing.
Outcome
Increased Sales
Early adopters of the new digital retailing platform drove a significant increase in vehicle sales.
Improved Efficiency
Improved dealer efficiency by reducing the time it takes to work the deal (i.e., specific vehicle, accessories, financing, etc).
Increased Profit Per Vehicle
By enabling dealers to realize higher front-end and back-end gross profit.
Growth Advantage
Participating dealers achieved a higher average sales growth vs. non-participating dealers.
Approach
Two Roads was involved in the program from inception all the way through to launching and scaling in-market. Our team played a key role in refining the vision, setting the product strategy, and developing the roadmap for the entire program. During implementation, we acted in a PMO capacity to drive product development timelines, financials, communications, and governance. For the launch phase, our team helped stand up a new launch coordination office that instilled factory-like disciplines for rapid scaling.
The work resulted in a successful rollout to over 500 dealers, with plans to rapidly scale to over 750 dealers in the next 12 months. Dealers opt in to use the digital retailing platform and pay a monthly fee, resulting in an additional revenue stream for the automotive OEM. The solution has since been expanded to include support for the luxury brand and for the company’s private distributors, and has performed competitively against other solutions in the market. Customer feedback on the new shopping and purchasing experience has been extremely positive. Our team is now helping the OEM expand this platform to include both vehicle retailing and servicing, while also exploring new marketing opportunities (e.g., Canada).
Authors
