With the digital age well underway, the days of being able to efficiently run a business with little-to-no technology are fleeting. Because of this, there is a pressing need for motor factors to utilize software to make their businesses tick. PMF looks into one company’s offering in particular.
Automotive Automation Ltd (AutoMM) was founded by two developers in 2016, with a combined background of almost 20 years in the aftermarket. Their primary focus was to create innovative, upto- date and affordable software to assist with the day-to-day running of busy motor factors and suppliers of any size.
Managing Director Luke Bettles started out in the aftermarket in 2003, when he joined Shaftec. Back then, the company’s IT department was mostly providing basic support and exporting reports from MAM’s Autopart for sales and pricing analysis. As Shaftec grew, it made sure that it operated in a smart and efficient way by creating advanced, bespoke software to assist with automated tasks for pricing, cataloguing, accounts, commissions and rebates – all of which are connected to the Autopart database.
Technical Director Matthew Wood joined Luke at Shaftec in 2010, and his development background was put to good use, improving the existing systems and beginning to work on more complex automated systems that were used for van runs, stock control, picking, and carriage and credit analysis.
After starting up over three years ago, AutoMM set out to work with motor factors to provide a simple, affordable and effective method of delivering critical information. From this, Vision Mobile was born.
Vision Mobile is designed for users of MAM’s Autopart software. The company claims that it provides a quick and easy way of accessing live operating figures that can be used anywhere, anytime. All data can be quickly switched between current day, month or year, and can be filtered by an individual branch, or by all branches as one.
Busy motor factors and suppliers can, at a glance, see sales, credits, net and margin information, with all of it measured against previous periods with progress against predefined targets.
Figures can be broken down by product group, customer or supplier to quickly and easily identify any unusual trading issues within minutes of them occurring.
Individual staff sales performance can also be monitored, for the selected period, and can be sorted by sales, credit or margin amounts.
When used alongside Vision TMA, AutoMM’s time management and attendance system, real-time staff clocking activity and staff locations can be viewed instantly from the Vision Mobile app. This gives managers and supervisors the ability to oversee attendance within all branches, and also be aware of sick days, holidays and other absences.
By keeping the focus away from sitting at a desktop exporting data and generating reports, Vision Mobile allows business owners and managers to remain actively involved at any level, whilst having immediate access to important day-to-day figures. The programme is even capable of scheduling reports to be automatically emailed to specific recipients with a onetime setup on the control panel.
By taking advantage of native mobile functions, Vision Mobile can be configured to send scheduled or conditional alerts for key events within a business. This means that managers and supervisors can be notified with a mobile alert when certain data events are triggered, or at specific dates or times.
The Vision platform is now ready to go live after a number of successful trials, which included MAM’s support and participation. Existing Autopart users can be set up quickly and securely. As well as being ISO certified, AutoMM has also been security tested by an award-winning industry leader in cybersecurity to certify that correct measures have been put in place to protect customer data.
