Forward-looking CRM (Customer-relationship management) vendors are making the shift to a cloud-based system to meet customer expectations.
In a recent study, the analyst firm Frost & Sullivan offer a forecast about the global automotive customer relationship management market, and suggest that cloud-based CRM solutions will increase among the smaller dealerships within the next few years.
“CRM vendors incorporating smart messaging tools, social media integration, and a predictive analytics engine in their solutions will be best poised to make the most of the emerging opportunities in the market,” said Dorothy Amy, Senior Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
Globally, Amy said cloud-based CRM systems are expected to gain traction among smaller dealerships and increase penetration to 35 per cent in the market by 2025. This shift is a result of changing customer expectations pushing automotive retailers and CRM vendors to lean more towards a customer-centric business culture.
The move to a cloud-based system signals a range of opportunities for CRM vendors — and in turn car dealers — who will be able to provide better customer insights and segmentation, and potentially improve on sales and service. It also provides them with opportunities to present training modules to educate dealers and help them to understand and efficiently use the analytics feature in the CRM tool.
Frost & Sullivan also said there will be growth opportunities for these vendors to promote partnerships with DMS providers that offer an open integration platform.
“The market is experiencing a surge in consolidations, as DMS providers currently lack advanced CRM capabilities,” said Amy. “Solutions resulting from the partnerships between open DMS vendors and CRM service providers will help dealerships capture customer data from multiple online retail channels.”
“New-age CRM solutions seamlessly synchronize customer data and analyze it using data mining algorithms to maximize customer engagement and drive profitability for automotive dealerships,” said Amy.
By 2025, automotive CRM is expected to evolve to the point where it will integrate customer data across multiple retail channels for dealers.
