The Challenge
A Fortune 10 automotive OEM struggled to meet customer demands for digital vehicle purchasing options, including increased transparency into current inventory, real-time pricing, and the flexibility to shop when and how they’d like. In response, leaders tapped Point B to structure, plan, and deliver a transformed digital retail program thanks to our successful, 15+ year partnership. Our customer’s new program went on to generate over $40M in new vehicle sales and reached cost neutral status.
The Opportunity
We partnered to deliver a single, comprehensive retail program that would offer customers the opportunity to lease, finance, or purchase their new vehicle without the need to physically visit the dealership, truly putting the car buying process in the hands of the customer. Our dynamic team brought automotive, omni-channel customer experience, agile product management, data & analytics, and tech transformation expertise together to ensure success.
The program has been so successful that its dealership adoption rate has increased ~15% every year for the last 5 years.
Our Approach
Working hand-in-hand with dealerships across the country, Point B led the research and development of a comprehensive retail program to offer customers the opportunity to confidently shop for a new vehicle without ever needing to visit the dealership. Our partnership began with initial need identification; visioning and scoping; and early pilot activities. We have since completed multiyear feature releases and expanded into the full breadth of the customer experience including Finance & Insurance (F&I) and Service.
We designed and implemented a strategic delivery playbook to provide a baseline approach and a set of tools and templates to help sales teams to engage customers in a consistent way. We delivered agile methodologies, critical capabilities, and strategic execution frameworks to support a best-in-class product. This included establishing governance, leadership structure, and operating principles to effectively manage the new program.
As the digital program evolved, Point B developed a messaging structure to communicate ongoing changes. We managed critical product delivery through optimized methods and tools to ensure on-time, accurate, and consistent service execution. Now, the digital retail program operates with a full breadth of foundational, backend capabilities including demand, release, incident, and problem management; and quality assurance.
These expanded capabilities are driving significant value for sales associates who are now equipped to better understand customer’s wants and needs, by accessing time-saving tools, enhanced analytics, and advanced lead handling.
Project Results
Our customer has seen significant improvement in sales performance wherever the program has been implemented. When compared to non-participating locations, digitally-enabled dealerships have experienced:
8.5%
increase in new vehicle sales, equaling ~$40M
48%
average profit increase
15%
higher gross profit for every sales expense dollar spent
~10%
higher sales volume compared to historical data
Participating dealers use the platform on over 50% of new vehicle sales, sell 15% more cars, and spend an average of 25 minutes working on a deal, down from 3+ hours.
The program has been so successful that its dealership adoption rate has increased ~15% every year for the last 5 years. Our customer plans to have 850 dealers enrolled in the program by March 2025.
Moving forward, Point B continues to support the digital platform’s rollout. Realizing the potential of synergies across expanded digital capabilities, we’re working together to drive a unified vision for digital transformations across omnichannel, integrated customer experience, and product development lifecycle operations.
RELATED INDUSTRIES
RELATED SOLUTIONS
