Team CooPars had a great (and very hot) day at the Aspire Sports Trust Charity Golf Day yesterday.
Held at Aston Wood Golf Club, the teams were supporting the charity in its work to help raise funds for local projects that improve the health, well-being, life skills and education of children and young people.
Well done on your second place Team CooPars!
Dan, Ian and Michael are pictured at Hole 15.
Being able to research online before visiting a dealership has changed the way we buy cars.
In our latest vlog, Beth talks about building relationships with customers.
Coopers World Cup Sweepstake (update from our resident wordsmith Keith)
World Cup fever is upon us again, everyone excited to see who’ll remain.
Pressures are mounting as temperatures run high, those ‘VAR’ decisions making us sigh.
Who will prevail and whose dreams will they dash?
For us, it’s Barry v Simon and Sacha v Ash.
Three Lions on our chest and the World in motion, who would believe this improbable notion.
It’s hot as hell like ’76 but we’re now dreaming more like ’66!
⚽ IT’S COMING HOME, IT’S COMING HOME
Technology has changed our buying patterns.
In our latest vlog, Ian talks about how the modern consumer chooses and purchases a car.
Our agile Development team sprints and jams to ensure our customers continually benefit from improvements to our solutions.
Beth explains how in our latest vlog.
An unexpected benefit of the real-time paperless mileage log designed to aid HMRC compliance
Lings Motor Group took on FullCompliance from Cooper Solutions in April this year, to streamline its systems when it comes to meeting national HMRC requirements for documenting all company car driver activity and fuel use. Soon after Lings started using FullCompliance, the system proved invaluable in helping the dealership prove its innocence in a case of vehicle licence plate cloning.
Two vehicle licence plates were cloned, one from the Lings car retail site, which uses FullCompliance, and one from its bike retail site, which doesn’t currently use the Cooper Solutions system. The cloned licence plates were involved in criminal activity and picked up traffic offences. The first Lings knew of the cloning was when the dealership received notification of the traffic offences. Thankfully, due to FullCompliance, Lings was able to prove that their car was not involved in the incidents. They provided a full mileage log from the Lings system, which showed that the car was not in the area at the time, avoiding the fine.
HMRC demands consecutive mileage logs for all demonstrator stock vehicles, including private, business and customer use, putting added pressure on dealerships to record this information. Removing this headache, FullCompliance registers real-time mileages, whatever the use, offering dealerships a robust paperless solution to comply with HMRC requirements and avoid potential exposure to significant penalties.
Whilst the system ultimately proves that no driver benefits business-provided fuel, Lings didn’t expect FullCompliance to help tackle the problem of cloned licence plates, saving them from a fine and lost reputation.
Matthew Barwick, of Lings Motor Group, says, “Without FullCompliance we wouldn’t have been able to prove that our vehicle wasn’t involved in the offence, leaving us with a fine to pay. Whilst we utilise the system to ensure we manage our fleet vehicles correctly, we’ve discovered that FullCompliance protects our business in ways we hadn’t anticipated.”
“All of our customers use our products slightly differently and always seem to find additional benefits that we might not have considered,” explains Dean Pipitone of Coopers Solutions. “In the case of Lings, they found that FullCompliance offers them protection from the risk of trading a cloned vehicle. The flexibility of the solutions we provide means they can adapt to the needs of every business, giving dealers added peace of mind and the support they need to operate confidently in a competitive marketplace.”
In our vlog, we asked:
What’s your dream car?
And where would it take you?
From touchscreen TVs and tablets to smart fridges and home assistants, smartphone technology has become ubiquitous. In fact, today’s consumers expect to have the same kind of technology at their fingertips as part of their buying experience. In our recent survey, 46% of consumers said that dealers who use the same smart technology that they have at home offer a more ‘positive customer experience’.
Over half (56%) of those surveyed believe that dealers who use smart technology offer a more ‘efficient’ car buying process, whilst 73% said that those dealers who don’t use technology for the benefit of the customer are not being as ‘professional’ as they could be. So if you’re one of the dealers who do embrace the latest innovations available today, you are benefitting from a perceived higher degree of professionalism, giving you that much needed competitive edge.
The ‘swapper’ – the customer who part exchanges their car – has particular expectations when it comes getting a vehicle valuation. Over a third (33%) of consumers surveyed revealed they would be more ‘confident’ if a dealer provided an electronic valuation; 67% of all those surveyed believed a more traditional type of valuation wouldn’t be as accurate.
Our research shows that as many as 68% of car buyers believe that dealers who are not using smart technology in the showroom are not being as transparent about the sales and services they offer as they could be. Those dealers who take a ‘Wizard of Oz’ approach to appraisals – disappearing behind closed doors to produce a quote – seriously underestimate the impression this leaves with the customer. One properly appraised vehicle will return the cost of an iPad, and offer greater reassurance to the buyer that they are getting the best market price for their part exchange, plus it could engender a greater level of trust.
Today’s tech savvy car buyers expect a seamless experience, from initial research using a dealer website through to the visit to the showroom itself. As our research demonstrates, those dealerships utilising the latest smart technology such as tablets, TVs and smartphones to assist with the customer journey, are one very large step ahead of the competition.
The flexibility of the solutions we provide means they can adapt to the needs of every business, giving dealers added peace of mind and the support they need to operate confidently in a competitive marketplace.”
And says the new approach to fleet remarketing should prompt motor retailers to rethink their practices too
Cooper Solutions is applauding news from the new and used car digital business giant, Auto Trader, that it is to bypass the traditional remarketing of fleet vehicles via physical auctions. The move to sell direct to dealers instead, should herald a much needed shift in mind set and future auction practices used by motor retailers themselves, it says.
Barry Cooper, Managing Director for Cooper Solutions explains, “Auto Trader has put the spotlight on the legacy networks of physical sites of the UK’s leading auction companies, which in this day and age bring a financial burden indirectly shouldered by dealers who sell stock via these channels.
“Given the business model of physical auction houses, it’s no big surprise that they need a high transaction cost to pay for their overheads. We conducted our own research to validate this point. After looking at over 71,000 car sales, we confirmed that physical auction fees are typically bigger than the profits that selling retailers make and therefore significantly reduce the sellers profit. Given the current pressure on margins this simply isn’t good for business for today’s retailers.
“The move by Auto Trader not only enriches the used stock now available directly to retailers, it opens the door for them to follow suit for trade stock. Sytner Group has been proving for many years that digital auction is their optimal route to market and now Auto Trader is on the same track.
“By pushing the direct online remarketing approach for fleet, Auto Trader confirms our own position since we launched our trade-to-trade online auction site, FullAuction. As the message gets louder and more influential as power houses get behind its logic, we would hope that more retailers will be tempted away from the more traditional legacy remarketing channels and towards a more profitable digital disposal route.”
FullAuction from Cooper Solutions, is a trade-to-trade digital auction site which operates in a similar fashion to Auto Trader’s new fleet disposal platform. With FullAuction, the maximum buyers fee is £33, as much as 10 times less than a physical auction fee for the same car, meaning retailers make more money from the sale. In addition, the new remarketing models, including FullAuction, reduce the time to dispose of stock, which means dealers get the money in the bank quicker, boosting their bottom line.