Customer Feature - Ness Motors – Inverness

Ness Motors have two Renault dealerships in Inverness and Elgin running Autoline with 28 users. They went live back in 1999 and have enjoyed benefits of using the system ever since.

Rachel McInnes, service manager, commented to me about how their Kerridge system is a central part of the dealership operation.

Why did you choose Autoline as your DMS?
Back in 1999 Renault required all their dealers to have either a Kerridge or Kalamazoo system. We chose Autoline as we believe it is a better product and has provided us with superb integrated facilities for the 2 sites and inter-dealership communications.

What modules have you found most useful?
The marketing module is very impressive and we are steadily developing our use of this. A database assistant is very proactive in maintaining the customer and prospect data. This in turn provides the sales department with very good quality data for campaigning purposes. Aftersales marketing is promoted very heavily with all MoT and service reminders encouraging repeat business.

We believe that the main difference with the Kerridge system is that it develops thinking away from the vehicle onto the customer and encourages us to build a relationship with the person. With increased information held in a central place, this is easier than ever before and makes this service a pleasure.

The Accounts and Aftersales modules really shine in their reporting functions. All the reports that we require have been set up and provide us with the information that we needs to run the departments. The Kerridge Software Support department are also very good and will write new reports on request.

How easy was it to change to the Autoline system?
The system is very easy to use for all staff, thanks to the windows GUI style front end. It has even enabled us to conduct some internal training for new starters in the company. But the Glasgow based training centre has made a great difference for most general training, it saves a long journey to Hungerford or Telford. Also we have found that Kerridge are very willing to come all the way to Inverness to do on site training which is invaluable for people to train in a familiar environment with our own system.

Future plans are to upgrade to revision 8.35 to benefit from the advances in Aftersales and CRM development. We are looking forward to the future with Kerridge.

Taken from Kerridge Update North.