Readywire's new ERP tools can boost operational efficiency at auto dealerships

With automotive dealership businesses somewhat lagging in terms of their affinity towards digital processes and systems, the back-office efficiency is often hindered due to slow and tedious manual processes which are paper-led as well as fragmented. To enhance the process efficiency by up to 37%, Readywire, a Hyderabad-based IT solutions provider aims to overhaul dealership operations by first implementing a digital backbone.

Its ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools, for instance, aim at establishing a digital foundation for dealership operations, thus, enabling quick data access, and analytics, to undertake appropriate decisions. According to Viren Choudary, CEO and founder, Readywire, “Automotive dealerships typically are brick-and-mortar legacy operations which lack a digital backbone. Hence, the first thing we have focused on is to make an integrated ERP that connects all the back-end processes.

“We are trying to elevate the dealership experience with our solutions, and if one wants to make a digitally-native operation, every aspect of the business must be integrated into one system and be digitised. It is only then that one has a true digital foundation,” he added.

Readywire CEO Viren Choudary: "An ERP implementation provides organised data, which, in turn, brings data hygiene, and structure."

Readywire claims that its ERP solution addresses key roadblocks such as manual data entry, reconciliation, and reporting, thus, enabling dealerships save up to 26% on data input time, and 62% in the other two routine tasks. “The automation significantly reduces the need for data reconciliation, thus, giving benefits in accuracy, and speed. An ERP implementation provides organised data, which, in turn, brings data hygiene, and structure,” Choudary explained.

While it commenced its Beta-testing operations around mid-2024 by catering to the needs of passenger vehicle (PV) automotive dealerships in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Delhi, the company aims at perpetual innovation and refinement of its products by integrating customer feedback. The company is presently working towards AI integration into its solution to further enhance process efficiency.

With its AI Co-Pilot, a conversational AI assistant for automotive dealerships, the company envisions high degree of process automation when it comes to dealing with data in day-to-day operations. “We are working towards integrating generative AI into our application, and will roll it out in a few months,” revealed Choudary.

Making dealerships smarter
While it ventured into the automotive dealership domain with its ERP tool, Readywire plans to eventually offer an end-to-end IT solution for automotive retail businesses and digitise their complete operations. On one end, its ERP solution takes care of the back-office operations, it now aims to introduce an automation layer that would integrate into the existing CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suites of dealerships and further enhance efficiency.

“With a laser-sharp focus on just one business (automotive retail), we have developed an entire base foundation application dedicated to a dealership business. While we have forayed into the area of automotive dealerships with our ERP solution, we are now moving to the other side – of integrating our application with the CRM to offer tangible benefits in the pre- and post-sales customer-facing operations as well,” Choudary pointed out.

The company is offering its solutions to PV dealerships catering to brands of the likes of Maruti Suzuki India, Hyundai Motor India, Kia India, and MG, among others, it aims to increase its customer base and grow its revenues in the coming years. Compared to any mainstream ERP products from global majors, Readywire claims its cost-effective solution is an attractive proposition for dealer principals eyeing gains in operational efficiency, and profits, without investing heavily.

With an aim to make automotive dealerships smarter by virtue of strengthening and streamlining their processes, the company envisions to be an IT partner to dealership businesses in the automotive value chain. While it eyes growing organic demand for operational improvements, Readywire also bets big on the upcoming DPDPA (Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023) to drive demand for more secure, and robust digital back- and front-end processes at automotive retail establishments in India.