AutoBI opens new avenues of opportunity for Barretts of Kent

At the beginning of 2022, Barretts of Kent kicked off the new year with an ambitious resolution – to implement a brand new business intelligence platform across all of its sites.

Working with industry-leading BI specialists, AutoBI, the dealer group seized the opportunity to streamline its processes and transform the way that the business uses its DMS  – with the aim of making Barretts more profitable, efficient and ready to take on the future of automotive retail.

A family-owned business based in Canterbury, Barretts of Kent is this year celebrating its 120th anniversary. Barretts now operates 5 multi-franchise dealerships across the Ashford and Canterbury region, not including the additional retail centres, distribution and parts hubs, prep centres and bodyshops that form part of the group - making Barretts one of the largest automotive businesses in the area and securing their position in AM Magazine's top 70 dealer groups in the UK.

Running such a busy and complex operation, Barretts have a huge amount of data to work through on a day to day basis, all centralised through their DMS. It was only through meeting with AutoBI that they realised that they were not making the most of the opportunities their data could offer.

David Banfield, Barretts Group Aftersales Director, said: “I wasn’t looking for a business intelligence solution when I first came across AutoBI, but as soon as I saw what the analytics suite could do and understood how much time and resource could be saved by using it, I was sold.

“Everything I could possibly wish to know about my business can be on my screen at the touch of a button. If I want to check the status of my parts stock, it’s there. If I want to see how one of my sites is performing against another (and encourage a bit of healthy competition), or to see the productivity of my technicians, or to find out how we’re doing financially at any given moment, I can do it. It’s freed up over 4 hours a day of my assistant’s time – she’s not having to pull all these reports from different places for me. I’ve got an instant overview of everything.”

Barretts began the process of onboarding AutoBI across all sites at the beginning of the year, and David describes the implementation process as being seamless. He continues: “Everything was explained to the team very well and we have found AutoBI easy to work with and extremely responsive. If we have any adjustments or requirements bespoke to how we work, AutoBI have arranged them for us there and then.

“The biggest benefit for us is that it’s brought our focus onto opportunities that we may have been missing before. We can see the areas that we are weak and where we’re strong and dedicate our attention to the parts of our business that really need it. Whenever I meet anyone in the industry, I always tell them about AutoBI and how much it has helped us to get the best out of our data.”

The AutoBI analytics suite provides near real-time updates on critical information about all aspects of your automotive business including CRM, Sales, Service and Parts. Our suite uses Microsoft PowerBI, the best BI toolset available today. You can be sure that it is secure, scalable and affordable, and that your Workspaces will grow with your business.

If you’d like to find out more about how business intelligence dashboards from AutoBI can help to transform your automotive business, drop us a line at hello@autobi.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1522 711111. Alternatively, book a demo at www.autobi.co.uk

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