As the country heads into a temporary lockdown period, now more than ever we need to work together to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to keep our colleagues, family and fellow South Africans safe.

In his recent statement, President Ramaphosa, amongst many other positive directives, requested that all businesses that are able to continue their operations remotely should do so. We believe this is critical to the balancing act of preventing the spread of COVID-19 all whilst maintaining economic activity.

As a cloud-based company, we are open for business over the lockdown period and will continue to provide Pinewood DMS and the support from our various teams, albeit remotely and at times on a reduced staffing basis – Helpdesk, Customer Experience, Training & Implementation, and Accounts.

A reminder for you as a dealer, that you are able to access Pinewood DMS remotely (with a VPN or FortiClient), and as various business’s elect to take a holiday over the next three weeks, your business does not need to, and we would like to encourage you to be proactive over this period and take advantage of the uninterrupted access to Pinewood DMS. We are certain that businesses that are proactive during this time will be in a better position than those that aren’t.

LET US BE PROACTIVE

Some suggested Proactive measures that should be considered:

• Financial Housekeeping– as your Finance Team continues to run month-end, they can also use this time to complete the Balance Sheet reconciliations and all investigations and corrections that may result from such reconciliations.
• Departmental Housekeeping– your Team Leaders, with their staff, should use this time to interrogate all module reports and/or processes that affect their Department:
  • CRM/ SALES– Overdue Contacts in the Contact Diary, Database Cleansing by processing Customer Duplicates, Cleaning-up Sales Opportunities, interrogating Survey Responses and assessing the accurateness of Survey setup. You must remember that a cleaner database improves Pinewood DMS’s and your ability to anticipate aftersales activity and Workshop bookings, as an example.
  • VEHICLES– Cleaning-up Supplier Orders and Customer Orders, reviewing accurateness of Stock (pricing, costs, locations), Reviewing and updating Debtors and Creditors, Vehicle Price Lists and Outstanding Prep.
  • WORKSHOP– Reviewing and cleaning-up Work In Progress, Job Progress Report (including Bookings not arrived), Health Checks, Customer Orders, and Bookings due, and interrogating all job costing for future proof costing.
  • PARTS– Reviewing and cleaning-up of Customer Orders, Supplier Orders, Back Orders, GRNI, Movement Bands for future Orders, and Stock Valuation analysis.
• Online Business Presence– with customers accessing the internet more frequently over the upcoming weeks, this is an opportune time to review your online presence as a dealership. Check your vehicle pricing, images, listed Options, and Internet Sales Notes. Make sure your sales staff’s contact details are correctly published on your website. Further to this, have you checked with your web provider that your internet enquiries are being fed back into Pinewood DMS. Also, use this time to explore our Online Workshop Bookings API, and review our Sales and Aftersales Journeys (below) to see how much of these processes can be carried out online.
• Using our Apps– as a start, have your sales staff use the free Stock+ app by creating a personalised video and sending it through to their customers to keep the relationship in tact or do the deal during this period.
• Consider Lockdown Specials– to maintain an interest from prospective customers, this may be a good time to promote specials for any deals done during the lockdown period. Are there OEM rebates in place that could assist you in structuring these type of deals?
• Upskilling your Staff– all of the above suggested items can be supported through training, and with our ability to easily run online training sessions, this is an opportune time to train your staff on Pinewood DMS in their dealership role.

Sales & Aftersales Journey – take the time to understand the Pinewood DMS Sales and Aftersales Journey, and how your dealership can adopt these processes to better equip you going forward when managing the Customer Journey in both areas of your business. Please see link for these journeys, and other web pages for a reminder of how realistic it is to start taking your business online.

For up to date information on COVID-19 please visit:

• The official COVID-19 Corona Virus South African Resource Portal
• The National Institute for Communicable Diseases
• The World Health Organisation

“Stay Safe. We will overcome this together”