Today we received news that ARKONA, a provider of Web-based dealer management solutions for automobile and powersports dealerships, is developing a CRM solution especially designed for this market segment:
They seem to have a good approach. In general, I like the idea of Web-based applications -- and an application that is designed with a particular niche market in mind in a lot of ways has more promise than one bought off-the-shelf (one size fits nobody).
I do worry a little when I go to the Web site of a software provider and have a hard time finding screen shots. To sell a system, I think you need to give the customer plenty of opportunity to see what the product looks like and what kind of a user experience to expect. I did find a PDF brochure on their site that had this screen shot from ARKONA's dealer management application, which might give an idea what the CRM solution will look like:
Also, their press release does a better job than many in explaining what the new CRM application will be like. See this excerpt:
ARKONA's New CRM Includes
-- Customer Contact -- Data acquisition, customer/prospect contact history, and customer value
-- Daily Work Plan -- Customer and prospect follow-up activities refreshed daily, appointment scheduling, customer and prospect lists, DNC compliance, survey management
-- Showroom Management -- Sales process management for leads, appointments, demos, appraisals, offers, and deals with form generation for process control
-- Showroom Analysis -- Real-time analysis of showroom sales process statistics
-- Active Prospect Analysis -- Prospect status for key sales process indicators
-- Prospect Performance Analysis -- Advertising analysis and prospect source, performance, and disposition analysis ratios for salesperson and sales teams
-- Database Marketing -- Renewal management, flexible customer follow-up scheduling, database cleansing, and follow-up phone, e-mail, and letter generation
AB -- 1/27/05
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Have any dealers had the opportunity to work with this CRM. Auto dealers really need a good crm that works well with walk in customers, phone calls AND Internet leads. Too many CRM's have not been able to effectively incorporate all 3 methods of customer contacts. There also needs to be a robust inventory management and admin that would allow the sales people to email and print off brochures for specific vehicles. I could go on for hours about this subject.
Please let me know the latest status of your product. We are a Cisco certified reseller and we sell Cisco VoIP. We are interested in marketing to auto dealers and your product is of interest.
Thank you!