Hausenberger
Digitally Strengthened After the Pandemic
As a third-generation family business, the Austrian car dealership Hausenberger tackled digitalization in 2020. Ten employees handle all tasks from new and used car sales to the garage and accounting. The Hausenberger dealership is a professional for vehicles of renowned brands and particularly stands out in Austria with its range of popular American evergreens.
A Must in the Industry
The starting point for the digitalization project was – as so often since spring 2020 – the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic. During the initial restrictions, mobility providers like Hausenberger were considered part of the essential services in Austria. As a result, the dealership was allowed to remain open, but also had to forgo much of the government’s financial assistance. In addition, during the exit restrictions in Austria, at times only four reasons to leave from home applied. “Bring your vehicle in for service” was not one of them.
Hausenberger is still feeling the after-effects today – similar to many other family businesses, not only in the automotive industry. Supply bottlenecks are making it difficult to sell new cars, and price increases for working materials are reducing profit margins. So in 2020, two options remained: either to close the business temporarily and register for short-time work. Or to use the time wisely to prepare the dealership for the future.
Hausenberger decided to digitalize the business in order to be better organized than ever once the customers returned. The optimized structures with easy archive and DMS are indispensable for all future competition. This is because, quite independently of the pandemic and the Ukraine conflict, demand in the mid-range segment that Hausenberger serves has been falling for years. Consumers are increasingly driving either less expensive vehicles or the luxury class. To remain competitive in this environment, there is no alternative to state-of-the-art technologies and workflows.
True digitalization is no longer about simply storing PDFs in a folder system. In EASY Archive, I can store documents in an entirely new way, search for them, and work with them. In the future, we will leverage these advantages of digital documents even further.
Johannes Hausenberger,
Head of Sales and Marketing
employees
founded
brands
PROJEKT-INFORMATIONEN
the central pillar of the new digitalization strategy
The decisive factor for choosing easy software as a digitalization partner was the recommendation of the Austrian IT service provider S4 Computer, which had been serving Hausenberger for years. S4 trusts easy because easy’s broad solution portfolio covers the versatile requirements of S4’s customer landscape.
The switch to easy archive established the central pillar of the new digitalization strategy. The digital archive not only simplifies administration efforts, saving time on a daily basis; it acts as the hub of all digital document processes – both immediately and in the future.
“True digitalization is no longer about simply storing PDFs in a folder system. In easy archive, I can store documents in an entirely new way, search for them, and work with them. In the future, we will leverage these advantages of digital documents even further,” says Johannes Hausenberger, Head of Sales and Marketing.
Originally, the dealership planned to digitalize on a larger and more extensive scale right at the start. However, in the workshop at the start of the project, easy knew that companies achieve the best results when they convert their processes step by step, getting all employees on board right from the start.
The first step was accounting, with all invoices and receipts. Even the spare parts warehouse is connected to easy archive. Already after this simple start in accounting, missed deadlines immediately became a thing of the past. The long-term goal is to banish all paper from the dealership until even the mechanic in the back room retrieves his documents via tablet.
Before digitalization, invoices fluttered into the dealership via various channels. So before the team could start working with the invoices, they had to gather them and then sort them. Now, external contacts send their invoices to a uniform e-mail address, which forwards all documents directly to easy Capture.
easy Capture, in turn, automatically takes care of digital readout and pre-entry. Thanks to this automatic pre-entry, the team immediately has all pending documents sorted when opening the easy archive, and can process them with just a few clicks. Even the cash registers in the dealership are seamlessly connected to the digital archive, and immediately route documents to the filing system. Each of these digitalized individual processes saves time and reduces the potential for errors in previously manual processes.
“Initially, we were worried that there would be some headwind from employees,” says Johannes Hausenberger. “After all, digitalization was a massive change, at least in theory. In practice, however, we perceived hardly any hurdles. Even the long-serving technicians on the shop floor, who had relied on the same tried-and-tested processes for ages, not only embraced the development – they actually liked it!”
This is not the only reason why Johannes Hausenberger has no doubts that he made the right decision: “After all, our warehouse workers thrive for their work and not for filling out countless invoices every day. It was important to take everyone with us right at the start of the project. To explain to them where the advantages lie and why digitalization is necessary. Indeed, there is no alternative for the future in our market segment.
The early pandemic period was very challenging for projects like ours. In one fell swoop, easy had to help countless companies digitalize their business in such a way that they remained marketable. Despite this heavy project load, easy always communicated the available capacities to us transparently, and reliably brought our project to the finish line within the targeted timeframe.
Today, the system helps us focus more on our core activities than ever before. As a result, the investment in digitalization pays for itself.”
the right data in the right hands