The power of collaboration
Automotive manufacturers, retailers, and partners across South Africa recently came together for Keyloop’s Experience-First event in Sandton, Johannesburg. The day-long event featured insightful presentations and collaborative discussions on current market trends and the industry’s future.
“Our key objective at this Experience-First event was to and direction as an organisation,” explained Monzer Tohme, Keyloop’s Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa. “And most importantly to network with customers and listen to their feedback.”
The spirit of collaboration lies at the heart of every Experience-First event, and this one was no exception. With speakers and attendees sharing generously, everyone left with valuable insights. Carel Volschenk, CEO of CFAO Mobility, praised the event, saying:
I’m walking away from today feeling very comfortable that we’re strategically aligned by far the best people, and I definitely feel that I’ve got the right partner to support my vision and strategy going forward.
Centred around Keyloop’s Experience-First ethos, the event aimed to help industry players understand the lay of the land so they can future-ready their businesses. Experts discussed changing consumer needs brought about by digitisation and other trends. They emphasised the paradigm shift needed to meet those needs and highlighted the critical role of a connected retail technology ecosystem in driving growth and loyalty in this new era.
Reflections on the region, predictions for the future
A key highlight of the day was guest speaker Paul-Roux De Kock, Chief Analytics Officer at Lightstone Auto. Paul-Roux shared the latest insights around the impact of affordability on the South African automotive landscape. He highlighted key regional trends such as increased urbanisation, new vehicle sales recovery post-Covid, and sales forecasts for the year ahead.
One of the key takeaways of Paul-Roux’s presentation was the impact of new entrants on the market. He noted that new brands had battled it out to earn a place in the top 10 for light vehicle sales at the expense of premium brands such as BMW and Mercedes. Most notable among these was Chery, who shot into the top 10 from 15th place the year before, displacing Haval.
These movements leave the industry in a delicate predicament. As many new brands can produce cheaper cars in places like India, South African car buyers increasingly rely on imported vehicles and their corresponding parts. Add natural disasters (like the one Toyota experienced) into the mix, along with the political challenges OEMs face in their production and export process, and it’s easy to see the impact on sales in the region.
Paul-Roux closed his address by proposing talking points the industry should raise with the government: Are excessive import duties still an effective strategy to protect local industry? Or should the focus be on stimulating the market by making cars—EVs especially—as cheap as possible for consumers? Should the focus be on driving aggressive pro-business strategies and sorting out our electricity, infrastructure, and export administration issues to ensure most OEMs remain invested in the region?
Leading with Experience-First
James Fernandez, Keyloop’s Chief Revenue Officer, spoke eloquently about how Experience-First reflects the new reality of automotive sales – a fundamental shift with customer experience at the forefront, enabled by a connected ecosystem of automotive retail technology.
He explained that the old world is quickly disappearing as waves of change disrupt the industry with profound and sudden impacts. Eroding loyalty, EV adoption, non-captive finance, and the uncertainty of the agency model are just a few of the challenges the industry contends with.
Most importantly, consumer behaviour has changed—forever. Digitisation has given everyone new expectations around convenience, responsiveness, and interaction. Unfortunately, too many dealerships and OEMs are struggling to keep up with these expectations – this is what we call The Relevancy Crisis.
Staying relevant is made difficult by fragmented point solutions and rigid integration: trapped data and functional silos stifle business agility, and it takes too long to adapt to new opportunities.
Those that capture the consumer experience will be the growth and margin winners in this new era. Why? Because that’s where key moments are won, trust and loyalty are earned, and high margins are rewarded. However, capturing the customer experience requires a new way of doing business, an Experience-First approach.
A new platform for a new paradigm
Shifting to Experience-First requires retailers to adopt a new paradigm, switching from a function-out way of doing business to an experience-in approach.
Retailers now operate more than just dealerships; they run experience centres. They’re no longer managing a space constrained by four walls but an ecosystem that blends physical and digital touchpoints. Instead of working in friction-filled silos, they need all parts of the ecosystem to work in unison to deliver seamless, delightful customer experiences. That means it’s not solely about closing sales but about opening relationships.
Growth and margins are no longer dependent on super-skilled salespeople. Now, retailers can leverage data, experience, and ecosystem power to drive experience, efficiencies, and growth. Keyloop’s Experience-First platform is designed to help industry players deliver the experience customers want. The platform unlocks data and connects it across other Keyloop and partner solutions. It enables retailers to weave disparate systems throughout the entire customer lifecycle, placing consumers at the heart of their transformation.
Driving success in the new era
We were delighted to share details about our recent acquisition of ATG with our partners and customers at the event. The acquisition will help our customers serve their customers better by adding critical capabilities to Keyloop’s solution portfolio, thereby further enhancing the customer experience. solution
More than 20,000 dealers and 80 OEMs currently place their trust in us, and we’re actively operating in 90 countries, with over 20 million touchpoints and one billion transactions running through Keyloop each year. This means we view the automotive landscape from a unique vantage point. And as the largest global automotive technology company, we understand what it takes to drive success in this new era. It was a joy and a privilege to share our insights with our partners and customers at the Experience-First event in South Africa.
We were thrilled by the positive response to the event in Johannesburg and look forward to doing it again soon!
Jacqui Barker, Keyloop’s Global OEM Strategy Director, hosted a fascinating panel discussion with five of our dealer and OEM partners. The panel began by talking about the factors driving the disruption in the market, which led to an eye-opening conversation about the importance of high-quality aftersales experiences.
Watch this space for Jacqui’s blog, which will soon be launched. In it, she will share the key takeaways from the discussion.
