Specialized technologies have become an essential part of the modern economy. When searching for potential solutions, you will often find vendor offerings that provide a solution for entry-level needs, or growth, to a premium product or service. Then as we grow, or the technology grows, we find ourselves with the need to upgrade.
This is the reason it is important to do our research when choosing a technology with the goal of finding a vendor that can grow with us. Sometimes technology is new and vendors are limited, so we elect to invest for the advantages the technology offers, but most of the time, we are building within a segment that offers multiple vendors, and each provides one or more of the solutions to meet our immediate requirements.
It is important to find a partner that can meet our needs today, but it can be frustrating to buy a product that we quickly outgrow or advancing technologies promptly make obsolete. This can result in original investment needing to be discarded — not to mention the training required to get our team trained on a new product and environment.
Finding a partner that can meet your needs today, and onethat offers a family of products or services to grow within, can help minimize this risk. Not only is it important to make this evaluation when buying a product, but it is even more important to build your offerings to meet this criterion for your customers making the same considerations. Look for a provider that has an expanded offering to meet entry, growth and premium requirements so you build upon your initial investment and easily grow within a family of products and services.
How do you see your market? If buying, first determine the best starting point for your operations, whether the entry, growth or premium level. If you are best positioned for the premium offering, the scope of your search will be refined. However, if you have multiple locations, each having a different entry, growth or premium requirement or your needs are currently at the entry level, it is important to find a partner that has the products and programs to allow expansion into each progressive offering.
A good partner can provide a program to start with an entry product that is built to grow into the next offering. The result is an investment that is “built upon,” and maintains an environment that also builds upon training already learned. Look at your options, can you expand products or services as your dealership grows and avoid starting over to meet your changing needs?
Evaluate the offerings provided by your company and determine if you are providing this advantage. As you review all the products and services offered, consider focusing on premium services first because it is easier and less expensive to expand into a broader entry and growth offering than to start from an entry offering and create growth and premium services.
A partner that has a more complete offering will improve a return on investment as a dealership grows and expands into premium services.
No matter what type of technology you are considering, build partners that allow you to keep it in the family. Keep your business strong and enhance your customer’s ROI with programs to keep them within your family.
