Gearing up for the road ahead with a digital steer

The automotive sector can tap into tech to drive quality as well as safety

Published: 10 May, 2022

Dan Joyce is General Manager EMEA at global technology company SafetyCulture. Used by over 28,000 organizations, its flagship products, iAuditor and EdApp enable teams to perform checks, train staff, report issues, capture data and communicate fluidly. Dan led the business into the UK market in 2016 and has spearheaded growth through EMEA as well as partnering with major insurance companies globally.

Doing more with less has become the norm for many in the automotive industry as garages remained open to facilitate essential activity during the lockdown. Under significant restrictions, technicians stretched their time to grapple with new rules and ways of working. As the UK emerges from lockdown and post-lockdown, garages and repair shops around the country are now faced with the challenge of scaling up operations, often with fewer people on the ground.

The dynamic nature of the automotive industry requires businesses to be agile, responsive and cost-effective. The pandemic has compounded this. After all, when you’re operating in the face of evolving guidance, it’s only expected that processes will need to be defined and redefined time and time again.
   The sector has demonstrated remarkable resilience throughout lockdown, upping its game with rigorous COVID-19 protocols designed to keep essential workers and customers safe. Now is the time to take stock of these procedures and how they can be leveraged further as the lockdown restrictions ease.

Technology can do some of the heavy lifting here. The right tools will help the industry manage increasing demand, mitigating risk while ensuring quality outputs at the same time. It all starts with the humble checklist.

Easily scalable processes drive your garage forward
Inspections are critical in the automotive sector, monitoring everything from procurement and inventory management to servicing, repairs and quality control. Keeping them in check starts with one important step: Inspecting your own processes first.

SafetyCulture helps some of the world’s largest industries embed a culture of safety and accountability in their organisations. In our line of work, we see the value in simple, effective processes every day. The automotive sector shoulders a broad scope of work and over-complicated workflows affect how it is managed, especially as businesses anticipate a spike in demand as lockdown eases.

Inspections should not be a burden, instead, it should be simple and routine. By assessing and eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy, organisations can help staff keep track of the various duties as volume increases, from machine inspections to daily safety toolbox talks.

Automation is the obvious solution here, but it need not come with the time-consuming complexity often associated with digital transformation. Consider introducing processes that already fit with your company’s ways of working. A simple way to start is by using a digital checklist. Spend less time on clerical tasks such as filling in paper checks, typing up reports, and finding the right photos. Moving from paper to digital through a platform like iAuditor helps drive accountability with actionable tasks and validation by having a clear endpoint that an employee can complete. It effortlessly streamlines the whole inspection process from collation to analysis, and to action.

A richer experience with data
Like most industries, automotive is experiencing a rapid shift to online channels. New ways of interacting with customers, such as service aggregators, and competing with online pure players make for a far more competitive marketplace. Digital checks are not just an efficiency boost for safety audits. It increases the quantity, consistency and quality of information gathered.

In digitising inspections, businesses have laid the foundation for levelling up their operations. Regular inspections for quality assurance, preventative maintenance and risk assessments, present the entire operational ecosystem instead of fragmented elements operating in their own silos.

By using a centralised system to house this data, businesses have oversight across everything from inventory to equipment failures and can act accordingly. Unpack trends over time and find opportunities to level up operations. For instance, data from regular preventative maintenance checks can move operations from outdated time-based maintenance models towards a more effective predictive maintenance strategy.

The knock-on effects of digitisation apply to front-of-house operations as well. Converting checks into digital vehicle inspection reports complete with rich media will help auto shops to stay competitive and bolster customer relationships.

Upskill for the road ahead
Now is the time to consider what new training your staff need to do their best work. As guidelines continue to shift, retraining staff will become a key part of business. Team buy-in is essential for implementing new processes but more often than not, staff members won’t have office desks or computers to facilitate traditional modes of training. In order to get everyone on the same page, consider introducing new safety training methods that lean into ways people are consuming information.

Using mobile-first platforms featuring smaller chunks of information can help. When repeated often, these micro-lessons can help ingrain practices in memory. With ongoing training in place, businesses can be confident that their teams are always up to the task, no matter how many procedural changes are made along the way.

Despite a growing workload, technology can empower the automotive sector to dial up their operations and meet safety standards at the same time. Taking away the burden of cumbersome, paper-filled processes lets teams spring into action right away to solve an issue, whatever it may be.

For more on how to scale-up safely, view SafetyCulture's COVID-19 Resource Hub with free digitised COVID-19 guidance from governments and industry bodies: https://bit.ly/34J2RZu

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Garages can now see the scale of the economic challenge ahead, with figures being released today (Friday 12 June) that show the UK economy shrank by 20.4% in April, which was the first full month of lockdown following the imposition of COVID-19 measures.
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International Women’s Day, which takes place today (Wednesday 8 March 2023) with the tagline #EmbraceEquity has been acknowledged by companies and organisations across the automotive industry.
Ben’s Health and Wellbeing Survey returns for 2022
Ben has launched its 2022 Health and Wellbeing Survey and asking many people as possible who work in the automotive industry share their thoughts on the challenges they have experienced over the past 12 months.
Does your paid search strategy need a MOT?
Globally, 97% of advertising professionals in the automotive industry say they are using paid search as an advertising channel. It makes sense when you consider that 97% of customers looking to buy, fix, or customise a car start their journey online.

However, many businesses are investing in this medium without properly assessing how much of their spending is delivering a return. With the UK automotive sector expected to have spent almost £2 billion in digital advertising in 2021, marketers must be asking how much of their paid search spending is truly effective, and how much is going to waste.

A deeper analysis of existing campaigns may reveal surprising insights which can trigger immediate corrective action. For instance, one study of 2,000 PPC accounts found that that the average account is producing all of its sales from just 12% of its keywords. Going further, paid search strategies should be based on a more sophisticated understanding of customers and how they are shopping, rather than treating every customer in exactly the same way, as if they are entirely new to a brand. Only then can businesses begin to identify where paid search is relevant and likely to be effective.

So how big is the problem? At Go Inspire, we conducted a series of control tests with customers between 2018 and 2020, covering the behaviours of over 500,000 consumers. The control tests were able to demonstrate typical proportional savings on paid search spend. We then used the results to estimate how much businesses in the UK automotive sector could be saving by intelligently optimising their paid search strategies. A conservative estimate is that automotive businesses could be saving £81.6 million of their paid search budget. What does this mean in practice? At Go Inspire, we’ve put together key pointers to help marketers bring their paid search strategies up to speed.

1: Build a 360o customer view
Where does paid search fit into a customer’s purchasing journey? The only way to answer this question is by having a holistic view of customer behaviour, linking both online and offline activity. This should then start to reveal the typical customer journey and triggers. It will also allow customers to be segmented by their preferences, value, loyalty and future potential. This analysis will reveal at what point paid search advertising is most effective, if at all. Though there are many tools available for companies to build this 360o customer view, they are still heavily under-used.

2: Review brand name bidding
One analysis suggests that almost half of traffic for online automotive content comes from organic searching. Without an understanding of customer behaviour and therefore intent, companies may be wastefully presenting paid search advertising to customers who are already looking for them organically. Paid search should be used to capture the attention of lapsed customers or those looking for a competitor.

3: Stop marketing to phantoms
Phantoms are mostly customers who accidentally visit a page, leave and don’t come back. Delivering marketing messages to unresponsive phantoms can lead to quality scores dropping, as these scores are based on click-through rates. This in turn increases your cost per click. However, companies should identify which phantoms have previously engaged with their brand and take the opportunity to entice them back.

4: Keep refreshing messaging
Once marketers have a holistic understand of their customer segments, they must continually revisit their strategies and optimise campaigns. As we emerge from the pandemic, behavioural segments are continually changing. Businesses must be able to flexibly adapt to any changes, to gain the best possible return from their investment, and grasp emerging opportunities.

To read Go Inspire’s report, ‘Which bit’s not working? An estimate of current wastage rates on paid search advertising’, go to: www.goinspire.co.uk/whitepapers/which-bits-not-working/
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