Pinewood, the dealer management system company, has signed its first major overseas deal with South African franchise dealer, Reeds Motor Group.

Reeds operates four motor dealerships in Cape Town at Culemborg, N1 City, Tygervalley and Isuzu Truck Centre. Reeds represents Opel (Vauxhall), Isuzu, Chevrolet, and Saab.

The total annual turnover of Reeds Motor Group is expected to be about £68,000,000 this year, and the company will retail around 3,800 new and 1,600 used vehicles.

Craig Mylne, Reeds group services director, said: “We decided to change our DMS as we felt that we wanted to start a call centre to streamline customer enquiries and make better use of our customer database.

“We make extensive use of our current database, but felt that it was very clumsy to work with. It seems to be written around the accounting part of the business, and we felt that we wanted something that was more customer-centric.

“Our new call centre will be opening soon and we have already invested a large amount of capital in a Voip PBX system which is currently running from the head office in Culemborg.”

Neville Briggs, Pinewood managing director, said: "This is a very exciting development for us. We have resisted overseas expansion in the past because we wanted to concentrate our efforts on the UK market first. However, the time is now right, we believe, to start looking at international sales, and we are pleased that Reeds is our first.”