UK-based motor retail software specialist Pinewood is poised to scale rapidly, propelled by a series of major contract wins and completion of the rollout of its dealer management system (DMS) across Lithia’s UK network of fifty dealerships.
Lithia’s takeover of Pendragon dealerships and its cope with Pinewood led to some 2,500 Lithia staff within the UK joining Pinewood’s existing 30,000 user customer base, which incorporates former Pendragon staff.
However it also positioned Pinewood on an ambitious deployment trajectory supplying to Lithia’s 17,500 users globally – mostly in the US. Success there will probably be critical to the business’ ambitious growth plans. The North America dealer software market is estimated to be value greater than an annual £2.6 billion and will help double Pinewood’s underlying 2022 profits to a targeted £27 million by 2027.
A yr later it secured one other significant win, when the business landed a five-year contract with Lookers’ owner Global Auto Holdings to implement its platform across its entire dealership network within the UK, North America and Scandinavia.
With over 155 franchised dealership sites and an intensive recent automobile distribution division, Global Auto represents the most important non-affiliated dealership group to adopt Pinewood’s platform so far.
Now freed from the Pendragon reins, which previous bosses suspected as a barrier for its broader adoption amongst other major dealer groups, provided that a lot of those groups saw Pendragon as a serious rival, Pinewood proudly noted that it now supplies its services to 5 of the highest 20 within the AM100, including Lookers, Lithia and Marshall Motor Group.
Within the UK it desires to close the gap to market leader Keyloop.
The UK rollout with Lithia, in line with Pinewood chief executive Bill Berman and CFO Ollie Mann, has provided useful learnings that can shape Pinewood’s expansion across the Atlantic. By the top of 2026 Berman expects its software to be probably in 1,600 to 1,700 dealerships.
In a call with Automotive Management he credited the success of the Lithia UK deployment essentially to developing a collaborative approach: “They were a part of the choice and were intricately involved in it and incredibly supportive of it.”
Pinewood now goals to duplicate this model in North America, where interest is already constructing, even though it is a market dominated by a handful of entrenched providers.
“With those providers, if you should have a used vehicle management tool, you’ve gotten to jot down an API but those will be quite complicated. They’re clunky whereas our product is a seamless ecosystem, a platform that facilitates virtually your entire customer journey in sales or service,” Berman says. He claims Pinewood’s integrated approach reduces cost and increases efficiency, and adds: “Those older tech stacks simply cannot do what we do.”
The Global Auto contract signed in February puts Pinewood’s technology into the Lookers dealerships within the UK and Global’s 16 large sites in North America, whose scale Berman equates to 35 to 50 UK dealerships.
It’s Pinewood’s largest-ever agreement and an entry into recent markets – Global also owns eight dealerships in Denmark. Pinewood can be eyeing an extra opportunity through Global’s licensed automobile importer KW Bruun, which has the brand new automobile and parts distribution rights for Stellantis brands there and oversees 200 more outlets.
“If we’re in a position to get all of that… that’d be the most important store group we have now on this planet,” he says. “It’s an enormous opportunity.”
“Should you get into Denmark that opens up Finland and Norway and the Netherlands,” Berman notes. “It starts to sort of a domino cascading effect for opportunities.”
When it comes to product developments, its recent acquisition of Seez is central to Pinewood’s push into AI and automation. The corporate’s chatbot technology is already being rolled out across Lithia’s UK and US stores. But the larger play is full integration.
“We’re built on modern tech, and we have now an incredibly pure and useful data stack,” said Berman “We could use a bot to do a full end-to-end sales transaction… whether that is a buy a PCP on a brand new or used automobile with or and not using a sales associate at any hour of the day.”
There’s also a long-term vision to reinforce aftersales operations with AI to begin to create predictive indexes on when and what services they’re going to wish. As Berman points out, “No person is taking place this pathway.”
To completely harness Seez, Pinewood can be rolling out a brand new user experience platform. “We’re in a few dozen stores immediately,” Berman says, adding that global deployment here will complete this yr.
On the prospect of future M&A activity, Berman notes potential for deals around finance and insurance or acquiring a smaller DMS to fast-track entry right into a recent region may very well be attractive.
As Berman puts it: “We definitely have one in all the market-leading products to herald to the market, plus we have now an ideal partner with Lithia.”
This Article First Appeared At www.am-online.com
