Photo by brizzle born and bred
The future is in the digital, actually, it is the present; if your company isnÕt ready to ride the wave of the Digital automotive you are the dinosaur that is disappearing!
Now this is a mantra repeated endlessly to the point that someone wonders: “could it be real what they go on telling us in every meeting?”
Good question … but maybe not!
Only because “everybody” says the same thing, repeating it over the time, it doesn’t mean it is true.
Firstly I always remember to check the source critically, not the one of the data that would be the basis, but of the ones who make such statements!
The person who only three years ago sold shirts, life plans or performed in places with what skills, what argumentations can speak about the dynamics of the automotive which cannot be learnt in one day or in an ad hoc course?
Who would be the actors of this change?
Guru (with huge amount to invest on the wave of the moment), surrounded by influencers who worked as shop boys in dealers old style, obviously already went bankrupt and closed!
Today more than ever a company that sells to the public, but even to several B2B, can’t avoid the web channel both for the releasing of information, and so of engagement, and for the selling in itself.
Changing from this statement to saying that without a digital strategy you are out… well it takes a lot!
You are out of the market even earlier if there aren’t business processes on which set up all the digital affair, in its entire.
I know important national realities, which live with such results as leader in the sector investing only the minimum wage forced by the OEM… they could be even exceptions, sooner or later they will have to “convert” too, but they are the demonstration that who speaks with you only and exclusively about digital (without a strong automotive background) has clear purposes.
Photo by familymwr
Which ones?
Simply they want to sell you something of which you know nothing and that you can really hard quantify.
The numbers they use to show you are out of the sector are false or not applicable to our national reality; the sale figures they show you are, for instance, referred to the USA and we know they are very different from ours.
How can you make a comparison between our market, if we are at the 19th position as nation using internet (GFK source) to other realities? It is like affirming that an African country having 60 billions of citizens (like Italy) should have 35 million cars … forgetting the GDP role, per capita income and infrastructures.
Someone will object that at a certain point we will reach higher values too, sure because Hong Kong, the North America, EAU, Norway, Germany and UK will watch us reaching them without blinking an eye… or we think that the technology will stand and wait our times!
When triumphant, the former seller, who has discovered his new virginity, enters and tells you the Audiweb data show that on average 18,2 million of Italian connect to internet every day by a mobile device so we MUST have a mobile platform otherwise you wonÕt sell no more a vehicle (touch wood)!
Of course you will have to got it even if they were only 1 million, but are you sure this investment will solve all your problems starting from the purchase performances, to the after sales management and the profitability of the after sales?
No, because you will risk, as one of the biggest Italian group which, while the CEO does conferences and collects prizes on digitalisation, its headquarter managers handle issues about Consumption Code” on the Used Car sales or it has the stock full of old models (but even this year it will reach the target in October)!
The next time you will be at one of these mega conventions, where the speaker still uses the dear old Fax or you receive the account on duty, ask him why the data aren’t referred to the Italian market or how many, among the 18,2 billion of people who use the mobile, are in the working age.
Ask him, then, the partition by income groups… at that point he will already be by the exit door!
Translated by Federica Izzo
