The Motorcycle Company:
Topping dealership sales with real-time collaboration and efficient workflows
Success Stories > The Motorcycle Company
The Motorcycle Company (TMC) is the largest Harley-Davidson (H-D) group in the world managing 10 H-D locations in the USA, including 4 of the Top 10 Harley-Davidson dealerships in the country. TMC is founded by riders, built for riders, and is committed to passing that passion along to others from coast to coast. To support this commitment, TMC has an aggressive growth strategy, planning to expand into additional markets.
Google Cloud Results
Implemented enterprise-grade security at all locations
Leveraged insights from data to support growth
Modernized the customer experience with Google Chrome
In 2016, The Motorcycle Company’s growth had created a unique challenge for IT staff. At that time, company data was scattered across the dealership locations; being stored on multiple platforms and in various formats including personal Gmail accounts, Dropbox and on local file servers without rights management controls or universal visibility. For ease of use by staff onsite, often, process documentation was stored and shared from personal Gmail accounts exposing TMC to significant data vulnerabilities. If an employee left to a competing dealership, there was no way for the IT team to recover proprietary process information after their departure.
Locating and updating documents was a time-consuming struggle that impacted staff company-wide. It also meant that TMC was paying for redundant data storage platforms. “It’s difficult to grow as a business when your employees are spending their day searching for, and then updating documents in multiple places,” states Jason Dodd, TMC’s IT Manager.
Recognizing that The Motorcycle Company would need to update it’s IT infrastructure to support aggressive growth metrics and reduce costs, Dodd identified Google Workspace as the solution that would provide necessary file storage and sharing options, along with the enterprise-grade security and “admin-friendly” controls necessary to monitor their sensitive data.
“We needed a reliable, comprehensive tool that would help us focus on projects that support our future,” recalls Dodd. “Google Workspace is that tool.” By moving to Google Workspace, The Motorcycle Company saved tens of thousands of dollars by eliminating hardware replacement costs and reducing vendor sprawl.
TMC looked to Google Cloud Premier Partner, Suitebriar to manage the migration of their users and data to Google Workspace. “The transition to Google Workspace was great. Suitebriar really worked with us and got everything added to our Google Workspace accounts,” states Dodd. “Without the Suitebriar team helping us, we would have been lost!”
Suitebriar also offered Google Workspace skills trainings and Administrator trainings attended by Dodd’s team and continues to provide ongoing technical support.
Collaboration infused workflows
Because many employees were already familiar with Google Workspace tools such as Docs and Sheets, staff enthusiastically embraced the platform. Now all assets are stored in Drive, and all departments use a dashboard in Sheets to track their progress toward relevant goals.
For example, the sales process has been completely overhauled with Sheets. Frontline workers can now quickly offer updates about the status of a sale, citing any objections provided by the customer. Managers can then respond to those objections and provide sales support. This collaboration offers frontline employees, managers, as well as the executive team visibility into the progress of each dealership toward its sales goal.
“With Sheets, we can now process deals more efficiently. We can track customer objections and respond immediately to those that we can control. This visibility promotes staff engagement in reaching sales goals, which we believe helps to reduce turnover,” shares Dodd. “It also enables our dealerships to sell more units which translate into TMC and Harley-Davidson having an increased market share. All of that means a lower price for our customers.”
The process of onboarding and offboarding employees has also been streamlined with the help of Google Workspace tools.
The IT team in Riverside, CA is now notified via Google Forms and Sheets that a new employee has been added and they can then quickly provision a license and share only the assets necessary for the employee’s position. If an employee leaves, Dodd can quickly revoke access to assets via their Mobile Device Management Policy.
Modernizing the Customer Experience
Along with updating internal processes with the help of Cloud technology, Dodd saw an opportunity to refresh the full customer experience. Exceptional customer service and a loyal community of Harley riders are two pillars of TMC’s success and are what sets them apart from the many other Harley-Davidson dealerships.
To update the customer experience in Service Departments, some dealership now use TVs equipped with Chromeboxes to display the menu of service department offerings. This ensures that those offerings are always up to date. To cultivate area riders, Chrome signage throughout the dealerships is used to promote the hundreds of events hosted by each location a year.
The next phase of updates includes replacing PCs with Chromebooks and wall mounted Acer units to further reduce hardware spending.
“There are a lot of tools available within Google Workspace and even more via integrations. We are barely scratching the surface, and we definitely recommend working with Suitebriar to maximize your investment,” states Dodd. “They make it easy and have a solution for almost any issue.”
