ROI created a Business support centre in 2015 for the Global Fleet sales team in Sweden, managing a variety of tasks and processes to ensure that Volvo’s Sales team are as effective as possible in dealing with the world’s largest fleet operators.

An area that we felt could be improved was ensuring all of useful technical and sales information about the recently launched 90 series cars was packaged into a concise guide and that everyone who had contact with the customer had the best training and knowledge on new product. A difficult task when the sales team is spread over 10 countries.

Paul Black, part of ROI’s Global Fleet support team for Volvo, devised and managed a training event to disseminate Volvo’s strategy and technical expertise about the 90 series cars to Volvo’s team of sales people working round the globe. 20 Fleet sales team members had the chance to explore the Volvo S/V90 in detail, including the presentations from senior managers on the commercial background, product highlights and connectivity, as well as driving these innovative new cars in different conditions.

Field team efficiency is dependent upon a wide range of factors and getting optimised territory boundaries is crucial. ROI has been working with 20 brands over the last ten years and we understand the difficult balance for brands as Field teams change and the corresponding difficulty with home location vs. client disruption.

Therefore in 2014 ROI invested in Geo-mapping software that allows us to look at modelling the impact of various changes for both field team and SME Retailer programmes. We have now used the software with a number of brands, the latest being BMW UK.

Changes in the field team led to a project for ROI where we advised on matching the customers and prospect opportunities against the current field team structure and what various changes might mean when potential new personnel where considered. We were able to rapidly produce ‘impact charts’ showing how many customers might be affected by territory change and analyse the average drive times for a field team person over the course of one year.

Our recommendations were adopted by BMW UK and now the Field Team are working to this new territory structure.

The effective management of thousands of tasks such as Demonstrator requests, Agreement management or email enquiries is a challenge that every automotive manufacturer faces. Mostly these tasks are handled in individual software programs, inboxes or manual processes. Increasing pressure from Customers means turnaround times need to be made quicker and missing something, could mean lost sales.

A number of ROI clients, including Skoda, PSA Group and Honda are reaping the benefits of Resolve’s intelligent unified inbox and tracking methodology. All tasks are assigned a ‘ticket’ which is time stamped, categorised and given a priority. The system then distributes these tasks to the correct personnel who are trained to handle the specific tasks. All tasks are visible to the ‘task controller’ and they can see where tasks are building and can reallocate resources to ensure that things are dealt with correctly. Even if the ‘task controller’ misses’ things, resolve has clever business rules built in to automatically escalate or reroute tasks.

For more information and a demonstration of ROI Resolve’s capabilities, contact Lloyd Stretton or Simon Fretwell on 0870 460 5474

As well as running the Fleet programme for the PSA Group, the Fleet Business Centre also manages SME Retailer based activities.

After merging the Peugeot & Citroen sales operations earlier this year, ROI was able to then look at direct comparisons of the two brands activities in marketing & sales efficiency and make recommendations to improve both sales and processes.

A key area was analysing the relative success of Digital campaigns in converting to sales enquiries and the speed at which ROI can then filter and distribute to the Retail network.

The project resulted in ROI suggesting changes to the process, which after implementation, has seen an 800% year on year increase in the number of marketing enquiries received into the Peugeot fleet contact centre. These sales leads are now fed directly into the ROI CRM platform and followed up 100% faster, this has led to a smoother customer journey.

ROI has been certified to ISO9001:2008 for a number of years at its head office operation in Nantwich. We embarked upon a project to ensure that the new operation in Milton Keynes for VW Group also went through the same rigorous process to gain certification to the standard.  Part of that was future proofing the processes, by taking into account the new standard (ISO 9001:2015) that was introduced this year, with a greater focus on Senior Management involvement in the Quality System and ensuring the adoption of a Risk & Opportunity Management culture across the business.

PSA Group, the second largest car manufacturer in Europe, decided to create synergies from joining key systems, processes and the UK Fleet sales teams in late 2015. This meant taking a set of experienced ‘single brand’ Field Sales Managers and completely re-writing the rule book in how they engaged with the market, CRM systems and processes underlying it.

ROI manages the Fleet Business Centre for both brands and a joint project was set up to ensure that the newly formed teams had the best start, looking at:

• Correct territory alignment, using ROI’s mapping software
• Revised sales and appointment opportunity plans
• Visit frequency & drive times
• Account hierarchy with ownership of records & targets for data accuracy
• Synchronised databases between previously separate brands

The project started smoothly with minimum disruption both internally and crucially with PSA’s important fleet customers.

One consistent part of ROI’s relationship with our clients is that they see us an agency that can provide solutions on time every time. Technology is an integral part of our offering because we combine our leading industry expertise with agile methods to deliver the right solution for our clients.

Jaguar Land Rover had an interesting problem as they needed to not only move agency for their Agreement processing and dealer payments but also replace a system that had been supporting the process over the last 7 years.

JLR tasked us with using our FleetCRM solution to deliver a complete replacement in 3 months to support over 50 head office and field personnel.

Our solution delivered:

• Agreement request process
• Authorisation workflows
• Dealer payment reconciliation
• Live integration with JLR’s European SAP implementation

This was a critical IT solution that had to ensure thousands of existing live agreements and 7 years of history worked first time on go live.

ROI has for the last 9 years continuously improved its specialist FleetCRM solution that is used now by 17 major vehicle manufacturers in both its internal Fleet area and also with their specialist Fleet Retailer network.

Pulse has been developed by our IT team to sit alongside the FleetCRM and over the last 3 years has ensured our clients receive only the best quality information at the right time. Many of our new solutions will be external facing client solutions such as our mobile Field Sales tool – engage. Pulse however sits behind the scenes and provides two vital functions:

It is our quality checking system for all appointment calls. Last year it tracked, recorded and helped our QA team score over 17,000 appointments to make sure that when we send a Brand or Retailer sales person, they are seeing the right person, at the right time, with a valid opportunity.

Secondly, Pulse can also automate a number of tasks to make the appointment process as efficient as possible: Pre-checking Telephone Preference Service, create and send out calendar invites to both parties and send a summary of the meeting reasons and report pdf.

Following a comprehensive review of strategy and brand values, ROI has completely reinvigorated it’s brand with new designs and logo. A series of Brand workshops with staff will take place to ensure that these core values of “Teamwork, Professional & Trustworthiness” are understood and translated into real words and actions with all our interactions with clients.

All manufacturers have a difficult task when people in their field team move company, have a long–term illness or are internally promoted. Often, matching someone with the right skills, attitude, flexibility and location becomes a task that can take many months. That is why ROI have put together a service for its clients that allows different options to be taken by the manufacturer to ensure the ‘open’ territory is managed appropriately.