The availability of car online retail platforms has become one of the hottest topics for manufacturers, OEMs, and dealers in the last few years. Accordingly, some of the market players launch this kind of solution in a rush. This approach usually leads to poor quality of platform operation because business processes and data flows might be set up with discrepancies and mismatches.
To avoid such severities, it is necessary to pay attention to the following three objectives that require proper treatment before the launch of the online retail platform.
To avoid such severities, it is necessary to pay attention to the following three objectives that require proper treatment before the launch of the online retail platform.
1. Automation of data exchange between systems
For any online retail platform, it is extremely important to provide the customers with full and correct product data such as description, price, and availability status. The lack of product data makes the retail process almost impossible, especially when we are talking about complex and expensive purchases such as a car.
To ensure the proper provision of information for customers it is required to set up a reliable data exchange between the database of the platform and external sources.
For any online retail platform, it is extremely important to provide the customers with full and correct product data such as description, price, and availability status. The lack of product data makes the retail process almost impossible, especially when we are talking about complex and expensive purchases such as a car.
To ensure the proper provision of information for customers it is required to set up a reliable data exchange between the database of the platform and external sources.
2. Alignment between online and offline customer experience
It's common practice when a new online retail process required creating or upgrading the supplementary offline business processes. It might be some actions that are required to be implemented offline due to legislation or even full steps of the process that could not be implemented online due to lack of automation. Thereby the most critical objective is to provide the customer with as much possible seamless customer journey and ensure that O2O switches are carried on with the minimum inconveniences.
And for sure offline and online steps should not duplicate each other or even worse contradict. Otherwise, the purchasing process will sim to a tricky challenge for a customer or become a fiction where all processes will keep offline.
It's common practice when a new online retail process required creating or upgrading the supplementary offline business processes. It might be some actions that are required to be implemented offline due to legislation or even full steps of the process that could not be implemented online due to lack of automation. Thereby the most critical objective is to provide the customer with as much possible seamless customer journey and ensure that O2O switches are carried on with the minimum inconveniences.
And for sure offline and online steps should not duplicate each other or even worse contradict. Otherwise, the purchasing process will sim to a tricky challenge for a customer or become a fiction where all processes will keep offline.
3. Fullscale engagement and commitment of the employees in the implementation of new processes
As was mentioned earlier some of the steps of the new sales process might be executed offline (for example remote car video presentation or remote trade-in car assessment). Most likely this job will be executed by the managers that are responsible for traditional sales. And if these managers are not well-informed or undermotivated to handle their parts of the new sales process it might lead to a significant reduction of the potential of online sales. In other words despite the customer's will to buy a car online, it won't be possible to implement. And the only affordable opportunity is to switch back to a traditional way of purchasing and forget about online.
As was mentioned earlier some of the steps of the new sales process might be executed offline (for example remote car video presentation or remote trade-in car assessment). Most likely this job will be executed by the managers that are responsible for traditional sales. And if these managers are not well-informed or undermotivated to handle their parts of the new sales process it might lead to a significant reduction of the potential of online sales. In other words despite the customer's will to buy a car online, it won't be possible to implement. And the only affordable opportunity is to switch back to a traditional way of purchasing and forget about online.
Certainly mentioned objectives are not the only ones that have to be solved during the online retail platform roll-out. But in accordance with the practice, there are a lot of unnecessary difficulties on the way without the solving of these objectives.