Taka Automotive, a market leader in networked key management solutions, has established a physical presence and commenced operation in South Africa, following a year of market research.

The new Traka Automotive team has already initiated conversations with car dealerships across South Africa, as well as marketing activities in the form of sponsoring the NADA Dealer Development Programme. 

As Traka Africa, the company already provides its asset management solutions to the mining and petrochemical industries and elsewhere, and following success in this market it has been a natural progression to enter the retail dealership market.  It already has a market leadership in this market among UK and USA automotive dealerships.   

Explaining its niche and entry to the local market, Traka Automotive director Paul Smith says: “Millions of key and vehicle movements take place globally every day, and we offer the opportunity to manage these more efficiently. From our own studies, a typical dealership will misplace or lose up to ten sets of keys a year at a cost of around R3,000/set. As a result of our provable cost benefit, we have seen rapid uptake of network key management solutions in the US and UK over the last decade. We are pleased to be able to offer South Africa-based dealerships the best key management solutions in the world.” 

Traka Automotive is specifically designed from the ground up for automotive dealerships, having been configured around the processes used daily in dealerships. It is flexible and scalable so as to cater for everything from small, single-site dealerships to multiple, large locations, enabling them to focus on their core activity of selling more cars rather than chasing car keys, and improving after sales service.  

“It is a valuable new tool for efficiency in motor dealerships, and especially seamlessly integrates with existing systems. You’ll always know exactly who has which key, when it was removed and when it has been returned. You can also control or restrict access to vehicles and see a full audit trail of all key movements,” says Smith. 

The effectiveness of Traka’s solution has enabled it to achieve No.1 status in both the UK Automotive sector (selling Traka Automotive) and the US (KEYper Systems).  The company has operations in more than 70 countries, with 47,000 employees and sales last year of €7.5-billion. 

For more information, visit www.traka-automotive.com