The Situation
The Hartley group runs three used car forecourts across the North West, each with its own manager, its own stock and — crucially — its own spreadsheet. Head office got a monthly figure from each site, usually a few days late, in three slightly different formats. Comparing sites meant an afternoon of copy-paste every month, and by the time the numbers were assembled they were already out of date.
What the owners lacked was a single dealership CRM with group-level car sales reporting — one place where all three sites reported the same numbers, the same way, in real time.
The Trigger
One quarter, group profit dropped despite total units being up. Nobody could immediately say why. It took two weeks of manual reconciliation to discover that one site was quietly discounting far harder than the others to hit its unit target — winning on volume, losing on margin. Two weeks to answer a question that should have taken two minutes.
What Changed — One Dashboard, Three Sites
All three forecourts moved onto one car dealership CRM. Every sale, every part-exchange, every enquiry is logged the same way at every site, and the group dashboard shows units, revenue, gross margin and average days-to-sell per site, updated live. The monthly reconciliation afternoon disappeared entirely.
Group Sales Reporting — Time Cost
Time to produce the monthly group report
Units and Margin by Site — First Two Quarters
Group gross margin index (100 = launch quarter)
Once the discounting at Site B was visible, it was corrected within a fortnight. Group gross margin recovered and then climbed as head office started using the dashboard to move fast-selling stock toward the sites that turned it quickest. Across the first two quarters the group added roughly £140,000 in recovered and additional gross profit.
Before and After
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly report prep | ~2 days | live | |
| Time to spot a margin issue | ~2 weeks | same day | |
| Reporting format across sites | 3 different | 1 unified | |
| Group gross profit (2 qtrs) | baseline | +£140k | |
| Stock shared between sites | rarely | routinely |
Key Takeaways
- You cannot manage what three spreadsheets disagree about. A single dealership CRM reporting the same numbers the same way is the precondition for every other decision.
- Margin problems hide behind volume. Total units were up while profit was down. Only per-site car sales reporting exposed the discounting.
- Live beats monthly. A two-week lag on a margin leak is two weeks of losses. A live dashboard makes it a same-day fix.
- Group visibility unlocks group moves. Once head office could see days-to-sell per site, it could route stock to where it sold fastest.
