VEHICULUM Digitizes Vehicle Leasing Throughout Germany
VEHICULUM delivers a very simple and vendor-independent leasing comparison platform. It helps businesses and business customers find the right vehicle at the best possible leasing rate. They currently arrange leases worth around 150 million euros and partner with more than 100 dealers throughout Germany, including major brands such as Audi, BMW, Volvo, and Ford.
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Leasing is the primary way people and businesses get vehicles in the German market, but the process has historically been analog, disconnected, time-consuming, and paper-intensive. Recognizing a greenfield opportunity, VEHICULUM created a web platform to connect dealers with business customers, making the entire leasing inventory –as well as discounts and offers on vehicles – visible across Germany.
However, the full leasing transaction process still required a print-sign-scan-fax workflow, and the bank loan approval process was completely separate.
We pre-fill fields for the customer with the information he or she previously entered in our order process. The only thing the customer needs to do is sign at certain places in the document. That’s it.
The optimal solution was to digitize the data entry process to allow dealers and banks to use information customers entered on the VEHICULUM website immediately, thus, reducing the risks of customer churn and revenue loss.
“The most important technical requirement for a digital signature solution was a simple, easy integration into our platform and process, starting from managing the templates to easily exchanging data with dealers and banks. As you can imagine, bank forms change from time to time, so it was important for us that we could exchange fields in our forms quickly.”
- Florian Nitschmann, software engineer
Integrated 80% of Vehicle Manufacturers
Using HelloSign, once a leasing application is completed, it is sent electronically to the customer, dealer, and bank. VEHICULUM currently has about 18 HelloSign templates in production use and they have integrated approximately 80% of German vehicle dealers into the digital signature process. “We have covered all of the manufacturers for big groups. So, for example, Audi, Volkswagen, BMW, Mini, Volvo, Skoda and SEAT are completely integrated,” says Florian.
Each Salesperson Processes 1,500 Requests Per Month, Saves Sales team 250 Hours
Before HelloSign was integrated into their process, VEHICULUM’s salespeople usually spent up to 10 minutes communicating with a customer, reminding them of fields still needing completion and missing signatures. Using the HelloSign API’s native select notifications gives them an internal channel for sales to see document completion status. The sales team processes up to 1,500 requests per month, so by saving ten minutes per request, they are gaining up to 250 hours per month that they can utilize on business development and other deals.
Fast Time to Deployment
Florian’s team evaluated Adobe Sign, but saw limits. Unlike other competitive solutions, Florian’s team was able to access the HelloSign test API directly from the HelloSign website which made prototyping easy. They chose the solution after only a few days of testing.
HelloSign offers SDKs in the languages VEHICULUM mainly uses, such as Ruby for the backend and JavaScript for embedded features. Access to the SDKs made the implementation really fast: from test to full production took about two months. Additionally, to speed data access for their dealer and bank partners, the completed forms and customer data is stored in Amazon Web Services S3 and Cloudinary.
Improved Customer and Bank Partner Relations
VEHICULUM saves customers an average of €4,000 per leasing contract. With the new digital signature process, customers are saving between ten and fifteen minutes completing their leasing contracts, as they no longer need to download and print the form, fill it out, and then scan and upload it to send to the dealer and bank.
“We have a full set of pre-filled fields for each form, and we pre-fill all those fields for the customer with the information he or she previously entered in our order process. The only thing the customer needs to do is just sign at certain places in the document. That’s it,” says Florian.
What’s Next for VEHICULUM?
VEHICULUM offers and manages their own insurance for vehicles. “Since we completely control the insurance form, we want to integrate it into the digital customer experience and have the insurance form be pre-filled with the data they previously entered. Besides this, our biggest goal is to fulfill and digitize the whole process. Hopefully we’ll be able to allow customers in the future to sign their final leasing contract.” - Florian Nitschmann, software engineer
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