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Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA completed a $150 million project this year to replace its legacy contract management system with updated technology that will enable it to speed F&I growth and bring products and services to market more efficiently.
The overhaul, which took five years to complete, was an important investment, said Rodolfo Dominguez and Johan Swart, the IT experts who headed the project and were recognized as 2016 Automotive News All-Stars in the F&I category.
“When we reach the full stabilization of the system, we initially hope to see $7 million to $8 million in [cost] savings a year from this,” Dominguez, 44, said.
Swart, 46, added: “We will be able to tap into new channels of mobility which we could not before and bring some products to the dealer and customer space which previously were more challenging with our older system and older technology.”
Mercedes-Benz Financial Services launched its updated system in May. A month later, it was testing its own version of a marketing technique known as personalized URLs, or PURLs, whereby customers are provided their own personalized landing pages. MBFS tested PURLs at 34 of Mercedes-Benz’s 379 U.S.dealerships, Swart, 46, said.
How it works
Here’s how the PURLs work: When a buyer takes delivery, the dealership takes a photo of the customer and vehicle and registers the customer with MBFS, Swart said. The customer then receives an emailed link to his or her own personalized landing page. From there, MBFS can be specific in how it targets communication and marketing to the customer, he said.
“The potential on that is very big because it engages the dealer and allows them to see the history of the customer,” Swart said. “We can bring that information to a dealer more comprehensively.”
Product concierge Miles Charlton, left, with sales and financial services chief Scott Cooper of Mercedes-Benz of Coral Gables. The store is to begin piloting an electronic-contracting system this month.
The information ranges from how a customer can find service to how he or she can end a lease contract or potentially start a new one.
The personalized URLs are free to dealers. “It costs us if we don’t do it” because it’s “the life of the customer through the car,” said Scott Cooper, sales and financial services director of Mercedes-Benz of Coral Gables in Coral Gables, Fla.
“It has great value in that it’ll bring loyalty for both the store and the brand,” he said. “It keeps the brand recognizable to them as they enjoy the experience with the car. It’s not just selling the car.”
MBFS expects to start a rollout of its PURLs marketing program to all its U.S. dealerships by year end and complete it by mid-2017.
Paperless vision
MBFS is rolling out other customer-friendly services on its updated technology. In late November, it launched My MBFS 5.0 for Apple and Android phones. It’s an upgrade for My MBFS app, which has been available for seven years.
The app, which lets customers make payments and fill out mobile credit applications, added several new features in version 5.0, including a tool that lets shoppers see finance options and make payment comparisons.
“They can also decide leasing versus purchasing,” Dominguez said. “There is an increasing need for a customer to feel prepared when they come into a dealership, so this should help.”
There are about 275,000 users on the My MBFS app, the company says.
MBFS is scheduled to begin piloting an electronic-contracting system it calls eContracting in December, starting with Cooper’s store in Coral Gables. The company plans to take it to more dealers next year. Dominguez envisions eContracting allowing for paperless transactions from “end to end.”
To get there, in August MBFS started testing a product called eSigning at the Coral Gables store. With eSigning, a customer can view documents such as the vehicle’s title and sales orders on an iPad and sign them electronically. The actual loan or lease is still in paper form, but that will also eventually be electronic under eContracting.
Cooper said eSigning has shaved off five to seven minutes in transaction time because the F&I manager does not have to wait for a printer to queue up. He said he expects eContracting to take off “a few more minutes” from the transaction time.
“The deal is already digitally organized, so it will save the finance manager 10 to 20 minutes in organizing the paperwork to present to the dealership’s accounting department,” Cooper said.
That means the F&I manager can use time more wisely.
“They can get involved with the transaction themselves, establishing a stronger rapport and more time to advise a customer on the right F&I products,” Cooper said. All of that is critical to increasing F&I product sales and revenues, he said.
Fast and furious
Now that MBFS’ contract management system upgrade is complete, Dominquez said, there are many other projects in the pipeline.
“The speed that we will see with this new foundational platform being in place will be tremendous,” he said. “We launched in May and we’re fast and furiously driving a lot of other products.”
In fact, the upgraded system will let MBFS do more things with vehicle launches that it could not do before, such as testing “different incentives and payment structures,” on those vehicles, Dominguez said.
He added, “The marketing team has a roadmap for 2017 with even more changes.”
Investing in technology
- Test personalized landing pages for customers
- Launch an enhancement to the My MBFS app that provides, among other things, 24/7 access to MBFS customer service
- Pilot e-contracting, with the goal of achieving wholly paperless transactions
- Contemplate selective marketing strategies for vehicle launches.
What’s new?
- Driver’s license scan that prefills a credit application
- Reverse calculator that enables a user to enter a monthly payment and see a list of vehicle and finance options
- Lease vs. buy tool that helps users decide which type of financing meets their needs
Mercedes' IT overhaul benefits F&I
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