UAE Auto Firm Gets CRM from AutoLine

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

The Automotive Division at Alfahim, including Emirates Motor Company, Eastern Motors and Western Motors, has recently gone live with AutoLine Dealer Management System including CRM. Processes will be "engineered and reengineered as and when needed," officials of the United Arab Emirates-based Alfahim say.

AutoLine is a system geared for the retail motor industry with over six thousand installations active across more than thirty countries around the world. The system comprises more than twenty core modules to serve business efficiently in a process-controlled environment and allows for high standards of customer service.

Alfahim implemented the latest AutoLine version which has Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as the central hub. Peter Beynon, Managing Director of Alfahim, said with CRM being the core of the Dealer Management System, "every user who directly or indirectly interacts with our customer base will be able to update Customer or Vehicle information, so that we continuously update customer details."

In the long term, Alfahim officials say, adoption of CRM as a strategy will lead to higher employee satisfaction, since "all the information is at the tip of their fingers; which will reflect in higher customer satisfaction, better lead management and higher conversion rates, and more efficient up-selling, cross-selling, and repeat sales."

 

It's great to see customer service becoming more of a priority in the Middle East. Last month, crediting the bank's CRM project as a contributing factor, the National Bank of Dubai accepted the Asian Banker Award for Best Retail Bank in the UAE for the year 2007.

 

Mr. Suvo Sarkar, Group Head-Retail Banking, received the award on behalf of the National Bank of Dubai in Shanghai.

NDB was selected by an international panel consisting of figures in the world of retail banking. Winners were selected on the basis of a scorecard of ten categories used to rank banks and their retail banking units. Among the criteria used are retail banking performance, long term prospects, retail sales figures, how well the retail bank is managed and the quality of staff training.

"NBD is committed to providing our customers with innovative value-added products and the highest levels of customer service," said Suvo Sarkar. The bank has expanded its branch and ATM network to one of the largest in the country, and "a new 24/7 state-of-the-art call centre supported by CRM technology has recently been launched," company officials say.