Aston Martin Lagonda
Overview
Aston Martin Lagonda (AML) is a British manufacturer of luxury sports cars, grand tourers and associated branded luxury accessories. Established in 1913, AML is a classic British marque that today combines the latest technology with craftsmanship and graceful styling to produce a range of critically acclaimed sports cars.
The challenge
The luxury car business is notoriously tough, even for renowned marques such as Aston Martin Lagonda (AML). With numerous marques competing in a relatively small market, hitting the right note in marketing and brand promotion has never been more important. For AML’s marketing teams, analysing and understanding marketing activities and related expenditure was a time-consuming, manual process. Information about marketing campaigns and budget requests was tracked centrally in Excel spreadsheets, which introduced delays and increased the potential for human error.
The makepositive solution
To gain deeper insight and increase the speed and accuracy of reporting, AML set out to build a new automated process for Fixed Marketing. The company chose to adapt its existing implementation of Salesforce CRM software, which is supported by the Managed Services team at makepositive, a leading UK Platinum Salesforce consulting partner.
With help from makepositive, AML replaced its spreadsheet-based tracking system with a set of automated processes in Salesforce. makepositive created custom objects, new picklists and reports, and future-proofed the solution by setting up simple controls for adding new vehicle models and engine types.
The benefits
The transformation of the marketing system has enabled AML to track marketing spend and audit both approvals and variations more easily. Marketing personnel in head office and in dealerships use the makepositive Salesforce system to submit marketing and campaign spend requests, which are automatically routed to the appropriate regional Finance Manager for approval.
In addition to smoothing and accelerating processes, the solution enables AML to capture a deeper level of detail in marketing activities and associated costs, and better understand how these costs relate to the overall marketing budget for regional campaigns. The company also enjoys increased accuracy and convenience in reporting, with dashboards that give employees instant insight into marketing performance by vehicle model and engine type, correlated with spending on campaigns and events.
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