Enza Motors benefits from Autoline Profit Clinics

Enza Motors are Mercedes-Benz Truck and Van dealers with locations in Stoke, Warrington and Trafford Park in Manchester. Enza have recently acquired North Manchester Commercials to grow their presence and are known for their high levels of customer service in both vehicle sales and after sales care.

Autoline Profit Clinics - helping dealerships in challenging times

Enza, as users of the Autoline dealer management system, took the opportunity to attend an Autoline Profit Clinic - these free workshops were designed to give practical advice, hints and tips on how to work smarter with Autoline.

During 2009, ADP ran eight regional Profit Clinics. The purpose of these events was for ADP to help customers during the economic downturn by sharing ’best practice’ processes and ideas adopted by many Autoline users. By demonstrating how some simple changes to the way dealers were using Autoline, ADP could help them cut costs and increase profits. Each event was made up of a series of workshops, based on the feedback from a customer survey looking at the concerns of UK dealers.

Presentations were made on the following topics:
- Cash Flow - better management and control of debtors
- Workshop efficiency - increased utilisation of your workshop staff
- Service profitability - maximisation of profit on each repair
- Marketing effectiveness - increased success and return on investment from marketing spend

Simple ideas, easy to implement

Ram Gupta and his colleagues from Enza, attended a Profit Clinic held at the National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham. He talked about his experience; "When we attended the clinic, we were a little sceptical of what we would come away with, however; it became quickly apparent that ADP had done their homework. We were particularly impressed with the way the topics were presented. Instead of a more technical overview, the material was illustrated in a way dealership personnel could easily relate to and this encouraged the sharing of ideas amongst attendees. We went away from the clinic with a number of ideas that could be successfully implemented within Enza."

Delivering real results

As a result of the Profit Clinic, two of the initiatives that Enza have implemented are firstly, to start making an environmental charge on all service invoices and secondly, to switch to distributing sales ledger statements by email instead of by post.

Ram Gupta, confirmed that all the material was beneficial and clarified why these two initiatives are proving particularly valuable for Enza;

"The environmental charge enables us to recover the cost for safely disposing of tyres, oil and similar items. In these green conscious times most customers don’t query the charge and any resulting profit goes straight onto our bottom line. Additionally, using the system to email our sales ledger statements is saving us money every month. It is a faster process and does not rely on the postal service, therefore reducing the time it takes for us to get outstanding invoices paid. There is no question that taking time out from the dealership to attend the Profit Clinic was extremely worthwhile.

" The Profit Clinics were attended by over 120 dealership staff and many attendees commented how useful they were. At the outset, the intention of the Profit Clinics was to remind customers about processes or functionality already available within Autoline, which they may not have already been fully utilising, and that could have an immediate positive impact on bottom line performance. This approach, avoiding any requirement for a lot of time and financial outlay, proved very successful.