A leading automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) aspired to build an all-new digital retailing platform for their dealers that would transform how vehicles were sold online and in-store. This solution would empower customers with transparent, accurate information and provide a technology-backed, seamless shopping experience. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting inventory shortages accelerated demand for this capability.

Two Roads was involved in the program from inception all the way through to launching and scaling in-market. The team played a key role in refining the vision, setting the product strategy, and developing the roadmap for the entire program. During implementation, the team acted in a PMO capacity to drive product development timelines, financials, communications, and governance. For the launch phase, the 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. The 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). 

The Outcome:

  • Increased number of vehicles sold through strong usage of new digital retailing platform from early adopters
  • 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- and back-end gross profit
  • Achieved higher average sales growth vs. non-participating dealers