Steering Manawatu Toyota towards success

Manawatu Toyota are an award-winning Toyota dealership with seven locations across New Zealand and a team of around 160 staff. The business has grown rapidly over the past 20 years, starting with Manawatu Toyota in Palmerston North before acquiring dealerships in Feilding, Levin, Masterton and Whanganui, as well as Tractor Repair Company (TRC).

Their mission is to deliver exceptional experiences to their customers and make their team proud to be a part of the company. But as we all know, it is virtually impossible to achieve anything if your IT system is letting you down.

Finding the right match

To continue to grow, Manawatu Toyota knew they needed an IT partner to help them stay in pole position. While they had been with their previous IT provider for a long time, Sheona MacAulay, Customer Relationship & Marketing Manager for Manawatu Toyota, said that they felt like there might be a better option for them out there. They needed an IT partner who delivered communication, innovative thinking and reliable support.

“With our previous provider, I was actually taking on a lot of the IT help desk type stuff. So, when we were talking about moving, I was really nervous about it because I thought, oh, I'm going to be doing loads of work.”

But Sheona was thrilled to discover that wasn’t the case, with the transition being far smoother and easier than anticipated.

Yorb takes the driver’s seat

The automotive industry in New Zealand is highly competitive, with new dealerships opening, new legislation being introduced and new technology rolled out. Manawatu Toyota needed to be able to focus on selling and servicing cars rather than worrying about IT. Luckily, they came across Yorb about 18 months ago.

“I got in touch with Yorb for an initial meeting, and we were so impressed. Just from that initial meeting, we already had new ideas, stuff we’d never even thought of,” said Sheona.

“We’re not IT people – we have other things that we’re wanting to focus on. So, we don’t really keep on top of what’s out there in terms of technology or possibilities within the IT space… Your job as our IT provider is to tell us, oh, hey, how about this? This would work really well for your business because we know you.”

That was precisely the outcome they got with Yorb. Best of all? The projects are straightforward to implement and require minimal time investment and oversight from the Manawatu Toyota team or Sheona herself.

“Already, we've done quite a few big projects here, but I don't really feel like I've had to have that much involvement or, or it hasn't been stressful anyway, because you guys have just kind of taken all of that off us, which is really awesome.”

And if there is an issue, it is quickly and easily resolved, with Sheona commenting, “That's actually something else that that we've noticed, you know, if we give you guys feedback on something, you're more than willing to work with us to resolve anything, which is really great as well.”

A true partnership

Not only are Manawatu Toyota now getting proactive suggestions on how to streamline their technology and back-end systems, but they also feel comfortable and confident that the Yorb team are on hand to answer questions and deal with their concerns.

“I'm dealing with really personable people. If I call up the help desk or if someone on the team calls up the help desk, they know they're going to be helped, and they know that it's not going to be difficult to get the help that they need,” Sheona explained.

“It actually feels like a partnership rather than, I don't know, just us being told like, oh, you need to pay loads of money for this, and we're not going to tell you why.”

“If our previous provider came to us with a project, it would all be jargon and it was really difficult to understand what we were paying for basically. Whereas with our account manager and everyone that I deal with at Yorb, I feel like everything's in just clear English. We understand what we're doing and why. And that's been really great.”

Sheona credits Yorb’s fantastic support with helping them to stay relevant and ahead of the curve, saying, “Keep doing what you’re doing!”