Car dealerships have withstood a slew of financial and logistical challenges in recent years, including a tanked economy, a kinked supply chain, rising interest rates, and continued inventory challenges. While many of these challenges have not gone away, car dealerships have figured out how to adapt.
However, this adaptation and innovation has not come without significant pivoting to technology. Paper is fraught with inaccuracies, and even Excel spreadsheets no longer cut it. In order to survive and meet customers’ rising demands – even in the face of a slew of logistical challenges – car dealerships must invest in the tools necessary to allow them to have all the data they need at their fingertips. Here’s a look at just why this real-time information is so important.
Fulfilling Customers’ Needs
Customers know what they want, and more often than not, they want it now. That, of course, can be a major challenge.
Businesses across the country have noted the rise in customer expectations. To that end, your challenge is ensuring you can fulfill your customer’s needs immediately. Doing so requires that you have access to real-time data about exactly where your fleet is, what is available at that given moment, and when you can get your customers into a rental or test vehicle.
If you need to fulfill your customer’s needs at a particular moment, you will need:
- A system that knows exactly where every car in your fleet is at a particular moment.
- Access to the health information on the car, ensuring that it is ready to go at a moment’s notice and that your customer won’t run into any maintenance problems.
- If you can’t put your customers in the car they want at an exact moment, you’ll need to know when you’ll be able to do so and be able to accurately relay that information to the customer.
Fulfilling your customer’s immediate needs means knowing where your inventory is, and the Zubie platform can provide you with this critical data.
Track Immediate Location
Think of all of the reasons you may want to know the exact location of your vehicle:
- You want to confirm where your customer or staff says where the vehicle is.
- You need an ETA for the vehicle’s return to the dealership lot.
- Someone stole your vehicle, and you need to be able to let law enforcement know where it is.
In all of the above scenarios, you need to know the car’s exact location. This is impossible without the most up-to-date equipment that tells you precisely where a car is at a given second. Our telematics system allows you a broad view of exactly where your cars are at a given moment. From this data, you can easily find cars, ensure that every vehicle in your fleet is where it should be, and make determinations about what cars you may need back in your lot.
As you may know, installing the equipment necessary to track the vehicle’s location can be complicated. You need to ensure that you use top-of-the-line equipment that is always online, can’t be easily removed by individuals who may have nefarious purposes, and can easily be upgraded as technology advances. At Zubie, we use an OBD-II device to track a vehicle’s exact location and ensure you always know where your fleet is. Furthermore, this technology is more than just an advanced GPS monitor. You can also use it to track a car’s exact location, start and end times, how many miles someone has driven it, and any unsafe driving behaviors.
Risk Mitigation & Geofencing
There are plenty of circumstances in which you may want to place certain limits on using your vehicle. For example, you will want to ensure that your fleet is driven safely, in line with local laws, and not leaving certain locations. Fortunately, this is where a real-time system – like that provided by Zubie – can be of assistance.
When you install Zubie devices in your vehicles, you can be automatically alerted when drivers use your cars in certain ways. This can include speeding, erratic driving, or leaving the confines of a certain geographic location (known as geofencing). These alerts can be combined with our robust management system, allowing you to remind the vehicle’s driver of the terms of their driving contract.
As such, technology-enabled real-time tracking is about more than knowing where your vehicle is. When used properly, you can use this technology to mitigate risk.
Vehicle Health Tracking
Knowing the exact location of your car is great, but it sometimes isn’t enough. You may also need to know the car’s condition and how well it is performing. Our system allows for the real-time monitoring of your vehicle’s health. As such, if there is a problem with the performance of your vehicles – or something that needs to be repaired – you can receive customized alerts that will allow you to address the problem.
Like all other facets of the Zubie system, this allows for both an individualized and fleet-wide approach. For example, you can use the system to make fleet-wide decisions, allowing you to schedule maintenance in accordance with your fleet’s needs. As such, you can optimize efficiency, reduce the time that a car is out of circulation, and ensure that you save as much as possible on the costs of any repairs you need to make.
Partner With Zubie
Real-time data requires tools, infrastructure, and insight. At Zubie, we can offer you all of these, plus our decades of expertise in this field.
Ready to learn more? Contact Zubie today to schedule a fifteen-minute dealership consultation and learn how we can give you access to all the data you need.