Based in Iceland, Microsoft 2019 Automotive Partner of the Year Annata is a Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner that delivers business solutions to the automotive and equipment industries. Their customers include auto manufacturers, distributors, and dealers, as well as rental companies and fleet operators around the world.
Manual methods are impeding future sales and services opportunities
Annata has been working with automotive companies for several years, watching their customers struggle to overcome the industry disruption and challenges. Many of Annata’s customers relied on outdated, disparate legacy IT systems, and manual reporting to run their businesses, resulting in paperwork overload, errors, and missed customer opportunities. Additionally, many automotive companies ran their sales and other processes manually, relying on salespeople and others to complete paperwork after a sale or service visit. Using manual methods meant it took hours to run complex processes such as pricing simulations at an automotive dealership. And because they were using manual processes, companies were unable to manage customer journey, closing off future sales and service opportunities. This left little budget for the companies to spend on innovation, improving customer experience, or nurturing sales.
Helping customers digitally transform their sales processes and operations
Annata developed a set of custom Annata 365 solutions for the automotive industry, covering sales, finance, operations, and customer relationship management (CRM). Using the Microsoft Azure-based Common Data Model, Annata’s solutions integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365, allowing customers to fully modernize their sales processes and operations. Annata 365 helps automotive customers eliminate manual paperwork and unify business and analytics data collected from internal processes, digital interactions, sales transactions, and more.
Increasing profitability through actionable customer insights
Annata 365 gives automotive companies access to in-depth business insights, which allows them to identify sales opportunities, such as seasonal patterns for summer or winter tires and scheduling service appointments at the correct time. The new solution also helps to drive relevant, timely, and personalized customer engagements driven by data and connected systems with seamless and unified customer experience across multiple channels through different levels of interest and ownership. Automotive dealers can be more agile, run pricing simulations quickly, in near real-time instead of relying on time-consuming manual processes. Armed with new data insights, Annata’s customers can increase sales opportunities by targeting specific customer segments at critical points along the customer lifecycle, from buying a new vehicle to encouraging after-sales purchases.