- Dealer group Helston Garages saves £33k pa with fully automated APAK financing system
- Helston Garages benefits from Lombard stocking finance for wide range of vehicles
- Helston Garages rewarded with high level of Lombard customer service and attention to detail
A family-owned business with a 50 year heritage, Helston Garages is one of the UK's top car dealer groups. Employing 800 people across 29 dealerships in the south west, the Group supports a balanced portfolio of brands from Porsche and Ferrari, to Peugeot and Volkswagen.
Helston Garages was using a stocking facility from a major finance provider but was dissatisfied with the level of service that it was receiving. Importantly, as users of Kerridge (now ADP), the daily stock update was processed manually, absorbing a considerable proportion of the resources of the sales administration team.
Group Finance Director Neil Perry explains, "Each day the Group had to extract the complete stock list and manually check the changes from the day before. This then needed to be sent to the third party verifier, and then on to the funder. Given that this manual process was taking half an hour at each site every day, with always a risk of human error, we needed an automated system that would eliminate this labour-intensive process," Perry concludes.
Dan Sullivan, relationship director at Lombard, explains how he was able to help, "We provide our customers with an APAK management software solution that draws the daily refresh stock data from the Dealer Management System (DMS). Lombard is the only company that provides this system to its customers fully automated." Sullivan continues, "It eliminates the manual 'checking' stage of this daily process and automatically reports the stock differences to the funder, removing the possibility of human error and ensuring funding and stock is in place where needed."
With the Lombard automated APAK facility Helston Garages Group has saved, in time and money, the equivalent of two full time members of administrative staff, circa £33k per year.
A rewarding working relationship with Sullivan and his team means that Perry can call them with any query. Says Perry, "In addition to its cost-effective finance facility, I have been consistently impressed with the level of service from Lombard." Security may be required and product fees may apply.
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For further information on this transaction, please contact:
Dan Sullivan
Relationship Director
07736 101706
dsullivan@lombard.co.uk
Lombard North Central PLC. Registered in England No.337004. Registered Office: 3 Princess Way Redhill Surrey RH11NP
