How CDK Global Is Empowering Automotive Retail Industry

CDK Global – a US based, NASDAQ listed, global leader in integrated information technology and digital marketing solutions for the automotive retail industry. With revenues of over US$2 Billion, CDK Global provides solutions in more than 100 countries around the world, serving more than 26,000 retail locations and most automotive manufacturers. CDK Global’s solutions automate and integrate critical workflow processes from pre-sale targeted advertising and marketing campaigns to the sale, financing, insurance, parts supply, repair and maintenance of vehicles, with an increasing focus on utilizing data analytics and predictive intelligence. CDK Global is a spun off entity from ADP Inc. which is a global leader in Human Capital Management with revenues of US$ 11Billion (pre spun off).

The company says that almost every auto manufacturer in North America is CDK’s client. 7 out of the top 10 US dealer groups use CDK’s DMS Solutions (Dealership Management System). Each month, CDK’s Digital Marketing Solutions generate 1 billion ad impressions, 36 million inventory searches, 14 million website visitors and 1.5 million phone/email leads for its customers. The solutions from CDK have played a remarkable role in changing the way US Automobile Industry is operating now.

With strong plans for India the company is launching its operations in the country with campuses in Pune and Hyderabad, Bill Naughton, CIO - CDK Global in an exclusive interview gives insights about the company and its India play. Excerpts.

What are the key challenges automotive retail industries face when it comes to Digital Marketing? 

Car buying, like many retail industries, is heavily moving towards ecommerce. The Automotive industry is looking to give car buyers the same level of personalized experiences online that they are getting used to in other retailers.  Amazon, Apple, Uber, and other retailers are providing the experience that consumers want everywhere. That’s where CDK Digital Marketing comes in – our aim is to personalize the online buying experience, and help dealers set the expectation that buying a car from them will be easy and enjoyable, as well as blending the experience online and in the store—seamless and easy.

How is CDK Global helping them in creating a seamless Digital Marketing backbone?

To create a seamless online experience, CDK Digital Marketing offers dealers a wide range of solutions – from creating websites from flexible templates, to targeting online ads to the most profitable customer base in an area, to curating and collaborating on social media sites like Yelp and Twitter. Our goal is for the car buyer to feel like they know and trust a car dealer, even before they’ve necessarily been into a store.  And we’re able to personalize it.  In the same way, when you go on Amazon.com, you see a customized experience; we are doing the same thing with digital marketing.  Through our audience management solutions we have the only automotive website platform that’s smart enough to track individual shopper behavior on and off of a dealerships site, learn from it and then deliver customized content to their visitors on any device.

How are you leveraging your Digital Marketing Solution?

We are able to offer manufacturers and dealers an end-to-end solution, being the technology that can drive the first ad they see, to the software used to purchase the car in the dealership, to the service write-up, to payment – We aspire to be present through the entire end-to-end car buying and service journey.

In terms of Big Data Analytics, specifically how are you approaching this space and helping out your clients - can you give a sense about the solutions you have here?   

We have many solutions that present data in a meaningful way to help our clients make better decisions.  We have the largest automotive data warehouse in the industry. Our audience management technology, mentioned above, is built upon this data.  We also offer dashboard tools so you can manage all of it in one place – a 360 degree view.  Things like snapshot-lead source map, brand strength index, activity mapping, and audience segmentation.

What is your India plan? 

We do follow India’s automotive market, and see expected better-than-average growth for the next two years versus the global market.   Part of our normal course of business, we look at a number of factors to evaluate global expansions to locations like India.