Azbook Auto is an official Volvo dealer in southern Ukraine with a twenty-year history and more than 25% of the premium segment across the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions. To protect that lead and move sales into the digital age, the company turned to ANIART for a full CRM system for a car dealership: a single customer database with the complete interaction history, online test-drive booking, service-slot scheduling and end-to-end advertising analytics. We built the solution on the boxed (on-premise) edition of an enterprise CRM platform with two-way synchronisation with the ERP system.
Context: premium automotive on Ukraine's south coast
Azbook Auto has been in business for 20 years and ranks among the top-10 car dealers in Ukraine by sales volume. In its home region — Mykolaiv and Kherson — the company holds more than 25% of the premium Volvo segment. This is not off-the-shelf retail: every deal involves a lengthy consultation, a test drive, a configuration choice, paperwork and years of subsequent service for the vehicle throughout its ownership.
The premium car market plays by different rules than ordinary retail. What matters here is not a one-off conversion but the quality of a customer relationship built over years. That is precisely why a dealer needs a system that remembers every contact, every service visit and every test-drive request — and makes that history available to any manager in a single click.
A long sales cycle — 5 to 7 years
A defining feature of the premium segment is an unusually long sales cycle of 5–7 years. A customer buys a car, services it at the dealer's station for years, and then returns for a new model. Supporting a cycle like this means keeping the full interaction history: from the first call and test drive to every service visit and the repeat purchase. Losing that data means losing the customer — and with them all the future revenue of the years to come.
The business challenge: the old system couldn't keep up
Before the project the dealer ran on the ERP accounting system, which handled bookkeeping well but was never designed for full-fledged customer work. It could not hold the complete interaction history or the complex, multi-stage processes of premium sales. Much of the work was done manually and on paper, which created several bottlenecks at once.
- Test-drive applications were filled in on paper forms, then re-entered into the system by hand.
- Service-station bookings were kept in spreadsheets, causing clashes and double-bookings of the same slot.
- The customer communication history was scattered and incomplete — managers never saw the full picture.
- Advertising effectiveness went unmeasured: it was unclear which channels actually drove sales.
An earlier attempt with the cloud
Before ANIART the company had already tried to implement a CRM with another contractor — on a cloud solution. The attempt failed: the standard cloud configuration was not enough to describe the dealer's non-standard scenarios or to connect the website seamlessly with the existing accounting system. It became clear that the dealer needed a solution with deeper customisation, not an off-the-shelf box.
Approach and implementation process
We started not with code but with the business. The team studied the dealer's processes in detail, analysed the needs and expectations of the sales and service departments, and then drew up a step-by-step implementation plan. This order of work let us encode the exact logic by which Azbook Auto really operates, rather than forcing the business to fit the platform's limitations.
- Audit of business processes: sales, test drives, service, marketing and repeat enquiries.
- Choosing the boxed edition of an enterprise CRM platform — for source-code access and full freedom to customise.
- Designing bespoke scenarios for the long sales cycle and the specifics of the premium segment.
- Building custom CRM modules in PHP: test drive, service, contracts, analytics.
- Two-way synchronisation with the ERP system — the most complex and critical stage of the project.
- Launch, manager training and the set-up of end-to-end advertising analytics.
What we built
The core of the solution is a single CRM that brings together every strand of the dealer's work. Four flagship modules closed the sharpest needs of the sales, service and marketing departments.
Unified customer database
The entire interaction history — calls, test drives, purchases and service visits — in one card, available to every manager.
Online test-drive booking
A website form with a driver's-licence photo upload: the data flows automatically into the customer card and creates a lead.
Service scheduler
Centralised service-station booking with real-time blocking of taken slots — no clashes, no double-bookings.
End-to-end ad analytics
Automatic UTM-tag capture and ROI reports per channel: you can see which advertising actually drives sales.
The flagship modules were rounded out by a set of tools that automated managers' daily routine and raised the quality of service:
- Phone-call recording for quality control of managers' work.
- An automatic SMS business card with the manager's contacts, sent to the customer after an enquiry.
- Automatic vehicle-price calculation and generation of a contract with the configuration and delivery dates.
- Feedback collection via web forms after service.
- Contact segmentation by parameters and automatic list building for marketing activities.
Architecture and technology
The system is built on the boxed edition of an enterprise CRM platform, deployed on the dealer's own infrastructure. The server-side logic and custom components are written in PHP, with data stored in MySQL. The boxed edition is fundamental: unlike the cloud, it gives access to the source code and therefore the ability to create custom components and describe complex scenarios that a standard CRM does not anticipate.
Two-way synchronisation with the ERP system
The hardest part of the project was the two-way synchronisation with the ERP system. It was precisely the link between the website, the CRM and the accounting system that had tripped up the previous contractor. We set up the data exchange so that information from the site and CRM reached the ERP system correctly and vice versa, preserving the integrity of the customer's long history. This turned a set of disconnected tools into a single working loop.
Before and after the implementation
The result is clearest in a side-by-side view of the dealer's daily processes before and after the CRM went live.
| Process | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Customer history | Scattered in the ERP system, incomplete | A single card with the full interaction history |
| Test-drive booking | Paper forms, manual re-entry | Online form with licence photo, auto lead |
| Service slots | Spreadsheets, double-bookings | Real-time slot blocking |
| Prices and contracts | Manual paperwork | Auto-calculation and contract generation |
| Ad analytics | None | UTM tags and ROI per channel |
| Manager paperwork | Hours of paper work | −2 hours per day |
Results of the implementation
The CRM freed the dealer from manual entry of test-drive applications, removed errors and clashes in service booking, and gave every manager back around two hours a day previously eaten up by paperwork. Most importantly, marketing gained a measurable ROI for the first time: decisions about advertising budgets are now made on data rather than intuition.
Instead of a patchwork of spreadsheets and paper forms, the dealer now has a single system that accompanies the customer through the entire multi-year cycle — from the first test drive to the repeat purchase.
Planning to digitise sales and service for an automotive business, or to implement a CRM integrated with your accounting system? Get in touch — we will discuss your processes and propose a solution. For more examples of our work, see our portfolio.
