Matthew Kroll

AUSTRALIAN company Titan Dealer Management Solutions has won the contract to be the standard DMS supplier to Mazda Sales Thailand’s 160-strong dealer network.

While Titan already supplies their dealer management system to Mazda dealers in Australia, Africa and the United Kingdom, it had not yet established a presence in Thailand until it had signed the contract with Mazda’s Thai subsidiary.

Mazda Sales Thailand (MST) had flagged its intention to consolidate its current DMS suppliers back in late 2016 to ensure consistency across its network, regardless of the location or size of the dealership.

According to Titan, Mazda Sales Thailand focused on a number of deliverables, such as implementation approach, functionality, integration and cost, before trimming down the field to Titan DMS.

Titan managing director Matthew Kroll said the fact that the company did not have a presence in Thailand had not hindered its chances of winning the contract.

“Throughout the tender, we competed against global providers that already had operations and dealers in market in Thailand,” he said. “What makes this achievement so rewarding is that our technologies, references and achievements to date were so compelling, we managed to overcome our lack of presence in the Thai market.

“The professionalism and support that MST have committed even at these early stages, including supporting us in the localisation and business establishment phases to ensure they delivered what was best for their dealer network, has given us a huge amount of confidence in the project.”

Titan opened its first Thailand office in Bangkok shortly after the project kicked off, with teams put in place to manage the implementation and ongoing support.

Mazda Sales Thailand has a network of 160 dealers across the country, and Titan says its projections see it rolling that out to all 160 sites over a three-year period.

However, that number will grow in the coming years, with Mazda planning to open an additional 20 dealerships and service centres in Thailand as well as upgrading all of its existing sites.

The dealership expansion was spurred by Mazda’s recent sales growth in Thailand.

Last year, the car-maker increased its sales by 20.7 per cent over its 2016 result, which was enough to outpace the overall market which grew by 13.4 per cent. Mazda holds a market share of 5.9 per cent in Thailand.

Titan has also recently signed contracts with BMW Australia and Hyundai Motor UK, and Mr Kroll said the Mazda Sales Thailand partnership marked another “significant milestone in achieving our goals of becoming a dominant player in the global DMS space”.

“Winning OEM-based contracts such as this provides greater opportunities for manufacturers to extend the benefits they achieve through use of our products, to even more of their dealer networks around the globe,” he said.”

“We believe this will be a deployment that sets the benchmark for OEM led rollouts for the years to come.”

Titan is Titan DMS’s flagship product and it is a cloud-based Dealer Management System designed for global application.

According to the company, Titan has been adopted by dealerships covering more than 45 automotive brands in Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East since 2009.

By Tim Nicholson