When you have incomplete information about a problem, it’s hard to provide a full solution.

Take one OEM that has always prided itself on high fulfillment rates. With the pandemic and the resulting supply chain disruptions, maintaining those high rates to their optimal level, has been difficult for them. What’s more, despite these bumps in the road, the Marketing Manager at this OEM’s parts division (let’s call her Mary) has been faced with a challenge: she needs to dramatically grow their parts business in the next few years regardless of the current market conditions and the unforeseen changes that she knows will happen.

To achieve this, she has to work closely with dealerships to make recommendations for what parts they should order and when. Her team runs marketing campaigns based on the season and inventory levels.

Although her team has been successful to this point, she knows that the tools that served us in the past cannot always be trusted to serve us in the future. Today’s market demands decisions on a regional, state and dealership basis to ensure her dealership inventory levels are correct for their particular environment.

The problem? For a long time, she could only see half of the picture.

 

There were a couple of key pieces of information her team was missing to run truly effective campaigns:

  • Accurate pricing data. Mary’s team manages tens of thousands of parts. Once a year, her team gathered catalogues from competitors. Then, they would go through and record the list price for competing products—a grueling, time-consuming process. To fill in the gaps in their information, they would also collect field information from marketplaces like Amazon, and even word-of-mouth.
  • Visibility into parts being sold by dealers. The only parts numbers they had were those being shipped out and general survey information. This told them nothing about the actual retail selling price or which parts were just sitting on the shelf. When it came to making purchasing recommendations for customers, she could only tell them which items were being shipped into their region most often.

Both these gaps in information impacted her ability to provide customers with meaningful recommendations. That meant money was being left on the table. Not only that but it also meant that every year, in the fall, customers would scramble to order the parts they need, putting Mary’s team in the tight situation of figuring out what their stock will need to be to meet the demand.

How the data eliminated the guesswork

“I do think having the data could transform our business.”

With Constellation Dealer Group’s Market Data reports, Mary can see the full picture. The report pulls data on wholegood unit sales from over 1,500 dealers. This gives her team valuable insights into sales into which parts are moving in their target regions, enabling them to know earlier on which parts to recommend to customers.

Getting accurate pricing

Using the report, she is able to see which parts are being sold and how they are being loaded into the system, to see if they’re in-line with their manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Because the data is updated nightly, she can feel confident that the pricing she’s looking at is up-to-date and they aren’t leaving money on the table. But probably the biggest win is the time the reports save her team.

Instead of spending hours scouring for pricing, her team can focus on other areas that will have an impact on parts sales.

Aligning parts to equipment categories

With the data reports, her team can know at-a-glance what their top-selling equipment is by category, including which parts are most often sold together. Not only that, but she can also monitor inventory levels by region (for example, who still has inventory left of snowblowers at the end of the snow season).

This data provides her team with valuable insights into what dealers need and when. That means that she can make more informed, confident recommendations to customers, earlier on in the year.

Knowing their inventory requirements earlier

In the past, they had one small marketing program in the spring and one large program in the fall. Up to 30% of a dealer’s year would be purchased in the last few months of the year. That meant their demand spiked hugely during that time—and the best they could do was guess which parts dealers were going to order, so they could have them in stock.

Now, thanks to the visibility she gets from the data, she has been able to implement a quarterly marketing program. This allows them to make recommendations for which parts customers should order throughout the year, flattening her division’s inventory requirements.

‘We’re at the right place in time for people to understand that data can drive a business. It can improve a business and make it more efficient, not just be a bunch of reports that someone has to look at.”

Leverage Constellation Dealer Group’s Market Data reports at your business

Constellation Dealership Software companies, Ideal, c-Systems and Charter, have developed the largest database of dealership transactional sales, inventory position and task completion information in the outdoor power equipment (OPE) market. Drawing from over 1,500 dealers on a nightly basis, this data warehouse is the largest, most accurate source for dealership and market year-over-year trending information in the industry.

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