Mohamed Jaidah, Group Executive Director at Jaidah Group
Doha: Auto industry has been adopting technological innovation and digitisation to improve customer experience, as customer-centric innovations now redefines the automobile industry and manufacturers are trying to get closer to their end customers, said a senior official during an online event held recently.
Forbes Middle East, in partnership with Al Masaood Automobiles gathered automotive industry leaders who shed light on the impact of emerging technologies and shifting consumer preferences on business operations. The virtual event entitled ‘The Race to Digitise: Automotive Dealerships of Tomorrow’ discussed about keeping pace with the evolving customer expectations and how auto dealership can enhance their services to move towards a digital enabled experience.
Mohamed Jaidah (pictured), Group Executive Director at Jaidah Group said: “Customer centric innovations are redefining the automobile industry as customer centricity is very important. Manufacturers are trying to get closer to their end customers, the question is how the dealership reinvents itself”.
Elaborating on the initiative on how Jaidah Automative has helped to transform the traditional operating model to one that is empowered by digitisation to deliver a more personalised approach he said: “We are launching our e-commerce platform within the coming days. A digital strategy is not just an addition to a traditional sales strategy, it needs to live on its own. You have to think digital and have a digital sales strategy and there needs to be a seamless integration between the physical and the digital."
"The first step that we did is that last year we added on top of our ERP system, sales force which allows us to have much better front-end approach in the showroom with the customers. It helps the salespeople to have direct access to customer information in a much easier way and a 360 approach on the customer view," he added.
“We have established that and now we are working on the e-commerce which is going to be launched in the coming days. One of the major points that we wanted to focus on is the seamless offline and online approach and make sure there is a seamless integration which was the biggest challenge without the customer feeling any setback,” he added.
Al Jaidah reiterated that it is all about customer-centricity and to make it as easier as possible for the customer. One of the points “we have been looking in our phase one is the financing approach, how do we allow the customer to get the right information and even do the financing request online without having to come to the showroom. It is an omnichannel experience”.
Speaking about how can auto industry keep pace with rapid transformations in the area of transportation as a service, Jaidah said various technology trends had been revolutionising the automotive industry over the past few years. Citing examples of Careem and Uber, he noted that this part of the world has impacted the way the people approach the concept of transport and owning car versus using a car.
“We have seen a few years ago a lot of people changing their mind about changing cars, especially expats using other modes of transport like Careem and Uber. COVID did put a pause on this. All over the world we are seeing car manufacturers are trying new formats, for example Volvo is famous in US for the leasing programme, and Geely which is the biggest Chinese manufacturer nowadays has launched in Europe a car sharing service which is gaining a lot of momentum,” he said.
