Hands-on sessions included building your own consoles
Attending Quorum’s North American Tour Customer Conference, during its stop in Toronto on May 20-21, Canadian auto dealer got a chance to attend workshops and see first hand some of the latest developments in the company’s portfolio of products and solutions.
This year, the conference was broken down into two distinct days, with workshops specifically tailored to both fixed and variable operations within the dealership. Additionally, besides learning about some of the latest developments in Quorum’s suite of products and solutions, attendees also got a chance to participate in hands-on Console sessions where they were able to build some consoles of their own and see firsthand where the data comes from. Other sessions included how to effectively manage service appointments, how to improve service revenue through effective labour pricing, how to manage aging parts inventory, perform effective sales follow up, payroll management and reviewing the end-to-end sales process.
Speaking with Mark Allen, Vice-President, Sales, Marketing and Service at Quorum Dealer Management Technologies, the conference is not only a great opportunity for dealer attendees to get familiar with the latest product developments and learn how to use them, it also represents the ideal opportunity for the company to interact with its customers and gain valuable feedback and insight into the types of solutions dealers are using and requesting for their businesses.
Afternoon workshops were tailored to specific dealership departments
“The feedback we had last year was invaluable,” says Allen. “Everybody said they really loved the content but there was a consensus that they wanted a bit more of a deeper dive, so in 2014 we decided to make some changes.”
Allen says that was a major reason why this year’s conference was more workshop oriented and split into days catered specifically for service and parts and also sales and accounting.
He says the concept was really about “learning on the spot. You’ll notice that most of the dealer attendees have laptops that are opened up and they are following along, so the content is specific. It’s about how to do this or that, so you can log on your store and follow along.” As a result, Allen says each workshop is more like a classroom session rather than an overview.
On both days, the itinerary starts out with general sessions, where everybody gets a chance to learn about a particular tool such as Communicator, while later, separate sessions that divide parts and service (fixed ops) and sales and accounting (variable ops) into different rooms, provide more specific information and learning.
Wrapping up in Toronto on May 21, the tour’s second and final stop in Calgary includes the same format on May 22-23, with separate days for fixed and variable operations. Allen says that this year’s conference has seen over 100 attendees registered in total.
The Calgary workshops also include a special back and forth interactive session, hosted by Quorum’s Vice-President of Operations and Development, Dan Ichelson.
“This will focus on generating new ideas for features and functions,” says Allen “because it is from events like this where they tend to originate. In fact,” he says, “there are some specific things we’ve developed over the last few years that are a direct result of feedback from sessions like this, so we really value the opportunity they provide to interact with our customers.”
For the full schedule of Quorum’s 2014 North American Tour, go to: http://www.quorumis.com/customerconference/index.html
