Penske Automotive Group recently announced the launch of PenskeCars.com, an online portal that allows customers to search for vehicles at any of the company's dealerships, as well as schedule service appointments. The site is part of a larger e-commerce push at Penske that includes an increased social media presence and online promotions. Senior Vice President Tony Pordon spoke to Aftermarket Business about the new site, and the company's service/parts initiatives.
What was the genesis of the PenskeCars.com idea?
We wanted to launch a portal that takes advantage of our scale. It's also the first part in a comprehensive social media strategy where we have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and our PenskeSocial and PenskePromotions sites linked together as part of a comprehensive social media and business strategy.
We have this platform of hundreds of dealerships across U.S., but we're very decentralized. The big players, the other big dealership chains, are not our primary competition. Our competition is the smaller, local dealer in each market. We allow our franchises to run their businesses the best they can for their individual market, and we give them tools to do that. They have a standardized operating system in the Reynolds platform, and a standardized Web site platform.
Since every store is on a standardized Web site, we can take all that data on daily basis, and pull that all together into a portal that has real-time data for all vehicles across the Penske Automotive Group in the U.S.
What is your approach to online interaction with the service department?
You can virtually schedule a service appointment at any one of our dealerships across the U.S. on PenskeCars.com. Every one of our stores does this a little differently, but there is a tab in the middle of the portal for service scheduling. When you click on that, all of our dealerships come up. It will take you to your dealership's individual system for scheduling service.
That goes into into our master database, but it also goes into the customer relationship management programs that each dealership is using. It's a little early to say how much this is being utilized, because we're barely 60 days into this. We're waiting to get some solid data before we can feed results out to the field.
Are there other e-commerce initiatives underway for 2011?
We have something happening on the racing side of the business. There will be a Phase 2 development of the PenskeCars.com site with some improvements, and we're going to bring some e-commerce activities to all of our Penske partner companies, like Penske Truck Leasing or the companies that sponsor our race teams, to drive more business to our company.
How has the importance of the service business changed over the past several years?
It's always been a very important part of our business, its something that we have always focused on, and we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the look and feel of the service bays to give our customers the ability to enjoy the service experience and atmosphere they are in.
We've embraced the OEM image programs at all the different dealerships, and have invested heavily to drive people to our service bays by offering clean facilities, Wi-Fi, children's' play areas, nice TVs, nice waiting lounges, quick lube centers, all of those different things. And each dealership will have it set up a little differently. Some may have coffee bars set up; others will actually have a Starbucks inside the dealership.
We've invested in a lot of programs on a national basis to drive more customers into the service centers. Things like offering a rapid repair process, or the tires now that we offer through most dealerships. That comes from working with the OEMs and some of the teams that we have. But it continues to be a huge focus for our business to grow the service and parts operations, because it is very profitable and it's important to the consumer.
Penske Automotive Group recently announced the launch of PenskeCars.com, an online portal that allows customers to search for vehicles at any of the company's dealerships, as well as schedule service appointments. The site is part of a larger e-commerce push at Penske that includes an increased social media presence and online promotions. Senior Vice President Tony Pordon spoke to Aftermarket Business about the new site, and the company's service/parts initiatives.
What was the genesis of the PenskeCars.com idea?
We wanted to launch a portal that takes advantage of our scale. It's also the first part in a comprehensive social media strategy where we have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and our PenskeSocial and PenskePromotions sites linked together as part of a comprehensive social media and business strategy.
We have this platform of hundreds of dealerships across U.S., but we're very decentralized. The big players, the other big dealership chains, are not our primary competition. Our competition is the smaller, local dealer in each market. We allow our franchises to run their businesses the best they can for their individual market, and we give them tools to do that. They have a standardized operating system in the Reynolds platform, and a standardized Web site platform.
Since every store is on a standardized Web site, we can take all that data on daily basis, and pull that all together into a portal that has real-time data for all vehicles across the Penske Automotive Group in the U.S.
What is your approach to online interaction with the service department?
You can virtually schedule a service appointment at any one of our dealerships across the U.S. on PenskeCars.com. Every one of our stores does this a little differently, but there is a tab in the middle of the portal for service scheduling. When you click on that, all of our dealerships come up. It will take you to your dealership's individual system for scheduling service.
That goes into into our master database, but it also goes into the customer relationship management programs that each dealership is using. It's a little early to say how much this is being utilized, because we're barely 60 days into this. We're waiting to get some solid data before we can feed results out to the field.
Are there other e-commerce initiatives underway for 2011?
We have something happening on the racing side of the business. There will be a Phase 2 development of the PenskeCars.com site with some improvements, and we're going to bring some e-commerce activities to all of our Penske partner companies, like Penske Truck Leasing or the companies that sponsor our race teams, to drive more business to our company.
How has the importance of the service business changed over the past several years?
It's always been a very important part of our business, its something that we have always focused on, and we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the look and feel of the service bays to give our customers the ability to enjoy the service experience and atmosphere they are in.
We've embraced the OEM image programs at all the different dealerships, and have invested heavily to drive people to our service bays by offering clean facilities, Wi-Fi, children's' play areas, nice TVs, nice waiting lounges, quick lube centers, all of those different things. And each dealership will have it set up a little differently. Some may have coffee bars set up; others will actually have a Starbucks inside the dealership.
We've invested in a lot of programs on a national basis to drive more customers into the service centers. Things like offering a rapid repair process, or the tires now that we offer through most dealerships. That comes from working with the OEMs and some of the teams that we have. But it continues to be a huge focus for our business to grow the service and parts operations, because it is very profitable and it's important to the consumer.
