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Solution · Operations & qualityTransfers leave with their documents, and every demonstrator is where the diary says it is
The right car at the right site, and demonstrators in view
A transfer request in Teams triggers the checks, documents, transport and the DMS move; every demonstrator sits in one register with bookings, mileage, damage and the importer's demo clock.
Executive summary
Stop moving cars between sites on a phone call and finding out where the demonstrators are by asking.
The adviser fills in the request form, a Microsoft List in the site channel's tab: VIN or configuration, reason, customer or order, date needed.
A transfer costs a two-minute request instead of 35 minutes across three desks, and the car leaves with its documents rather than ahead of them.
each brand's DMS; the demonstrator register and booking list in Microsoft Lists; the VIN library on SharePoint
Business problem
Vehicle logistics
A group with nine sites holds its stock in nine yards, and customers do not shop by yard. Cars move for a signed order, to balance a slow site against a busy one, to rotate demonstrators. Moving cars is healthy; moving them on a phone call is what costs money.
Each transfer is a chain of small documents owned by different desks: a handover protocol with mileage, charge level and damage, the plates, the cover confirmation, a transport order, the stock movement in the DMS and, between separate companies, an intercompany invoice. The car leaves before most of this exists, and for days it sits in the DMS of the site it left, insured under whichever policy someone assumes, counted by two site directors or by neither.
Demonstrators multiply the problem: sixty registered cars across five brands and nine sites, each with a demo period the importer sets in months and kilometres, each booked from a different diary, each driven by people whose names reach a loan form if at all. Nobody can say where a car is, whether the scratch was there last week, or which cars are past the point where every further month lowers their price.
How it works today
- PersonThe adviser finds the car on another site's weekly stock export or by phoning its sales manager, and the transfer is agreed on the call
- PersonThe sending site hands keys and folder to whoever is driving that way: a preparer, an apprentice, or a transporter booked by email
- WaitingThe car is already in the receiving yard while protocol, plate record and cover confirmation are assembled, two to four working days later
- Risk of errorFor those days the car is in two places on paper: in the sending site's DMS and physically in another yard, where it may be sold before it is owned
- SystemThe admin desk moves the vehicle in the DMS, raises the intercompany invoice between companies, and files what came back with the driver
- PersonDemonstrators are booked in nine separate diaries; the adviser who promised a car for Saturday learns on Saturday that it is elsewhere, and the fleet list for the importer is rebuilt monthly by phone
- Risk of errorMileage, damage and drivers are recorded on paper loan forms or not at all; the demo period per VIN is tracked from memory, and cars leave the window unnoticed
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The most expensive part of this process has no cost line.
- Thirty-five minutes per transfer is the visible part, spread across three desks and nine sites, so nobody sees it as a process.
- Cars in transit without documents have no owner: damage found on arrival becomes an argument between site directors, and a car sold before the DMS move produces a registration file citing the wrong company.
- Demonstrators sold late are sold cheaper, as older used cars with more kilometres, and the loss never appears as a cost line because the sale still happens; the customer who did not get a test drive is a lost sale nobody records either.
Cost of inaction
Late demonstrators are sold in the end, at a price no report compares with the price of a month earlier, which is why the third row shows its assumptions: 3 × (€23,520 + €27,600) = €153,600 of desk work, plus 20 cars a year, two months late, at €400 a month, €48,000 over three years. The 20 and the €400 are placeholders for the group's own ex-demo history; the loss is larger than the desk work it hides behind.
The rest continues: cars in two places on paper each month, a damage argument between site directors every quarter, a registration file citing the wrong company once a year. A tenth site adds a tenth diary, and none of the habits scale.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A dealer group in Poland: five brands, nine sites, three companies under one holding, one DMS per brand, Microsoft 365 with Teams on phones at every site.
140 vehicle transfers a month between sites, half for customer orders, a third for stock balancing, the rest for demonstrator rotation; 60 demonstrators with about 480 bookings a month.
Transfers agreed by phone and driven the same day, documents and the DMS move assembled days later; demonstrators booked in nine diaries, mileage and damage on paper.
About 35 minutes of desk work per transfer and 12 minutes per demonstrator booking; cars in two places on paper for days; no register of where each demonstrator is or how long it has left.
A transfer request in Microsoft Teams starts a robot that checks stock, financing flag and cover, prepares the documents, orders transport and posts the DMS move once the receiving site confirms handover; demonstrators live in one Microsoft Lists register with bookings, mileage, damage and the demo clock per VIN.
In the modelled case a transfer costs a two-minute request instead of 35 minutes of desk work, the car leaves with its documents, the DMS moves on the day of handover, and every demonstrator is located, booked and priced in time. Illustrative, not a client result.
Proposed solution
The adviser fills in the request form, a Microsoft List in the site channel's tab: VIN or configuration, reason, customer or order, date needed. The new row starts a UiPath job, and the robot reads the brand's DMS for stock status, holding company, financing flag and cover rule. A free car within one company goes straight to the documents; a reserved or sold car, or a transfer between companies, goes to the sending site's sales manager as a Microsoft Teams approval.
Once released, the robot prepares the protocol, plate record, cover confirmation and transport order, or a driving task for the group's own drivers. At the destination, the receiver confirms mileage, charge level and damage in an Action Center task on the phone in Teams, with photographs into the VIN folder in the site channel. On confirmation the robot posts the move in the DMS, raises the intercompany document where needed, files everything against the VIN on SharePoint and closes the request.
The demonstrator fleet is a second list, one row per VIN, with site, status, mileage and the importer's demo period in months and kilometres. Advisers book through the same tab; the robot checks that the car is at that site, free at that time and inside its window. Check-out and check-in are Action Center tasks; a reported fault opens a workshop booking task, and nothing is diagnosed by a robot. Nightly the robot advances the demo clock and flags cars leaving the window within thirty days to the used-car manager. No AI is involved.
UiPath Orchestrator queues, triggers and credential store; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook 365; UiPath Action Center tasks with actionable notifications in Microsoft Teams; Microsoft Teams Approvals app; Microsoft Lists as Teams tabs; Power BI as a Teams tab
The lists, the checks per brand, the document templates, the transport logic, the DMS posting, the demonstrator register with demo clock and thirty-day flag, the Teams tasks, the Power BI model and the runbook
Each brand's DMS through its API where one exists, otherwise through the stock-transfer screens by UI automation; the insurer's or broker's notification by email where the fleet policy requires it
How the automated process works
- PersonThe adviser opens a transfer request in the Teams tab: VIN or configuration, reason, customer or order, date needed
- AutomationThe new row starts the robot, which reads the brand's DMS for stock status, holding company, financing flag and cover rule
- PersonA reserved or sold car, or a transfer between companies, goes to the sending site's sales manager as a Teams approval
- AutomationThe robot assembles protocol, plate record and cover confirmation, sends the transport order or assigns a driver, and marks the car in transit
- PersonThe receiver completes the handover task on the phone in Teams: mileage, charge level, damage; photographs go into the VIN folder in the site channel
- AutomationOn confirmation the robot posts the move in the DMS, raises the intercompany document where needed, files the documents against the VIN and closes the request
- AutomationDemonstrator bookings from the same tab are checked against site, time and window; check-out and check-in tasks capture mileage, charge and damage; nightly the demo clock advances and cars near the window's end are flagged to the used-car manager
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Reading stock status, holding company, financing flag and cover rule per VIN
- Assembling the documents and the transport order, and posting the DMS move after confirmation
- Checking demonstrator bookings against site, time and window, advancing the demo clock and flagging cars near the window's end
People decide
- Whether a reserved or sold car is released, and at what transfer price between companies
- Whether the car arrived as described: the receiver confirms mileage, charge and damage before the DMS moves
- The rules: demo period per brand, cover per plate type, who approves, who may drive, and what happens to a demonstrator leaving its window
Before and after
Systems and integrations
Where a rule suffices we do not use a model. Where judgement is needed, a person decides.
Inputs
- transfer requests and demonstrator bookings in Microsoft Lists
- stock and sales status per VIN in each brand's DMS
- the financing flag per VIN
- cover rules per plate type
- the importer's demo period per brand
- confirmations and photographs from phones
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- each brand's DMS
- the demonstrator register and booking list in Microsoft Lists
- the VIN library on SharePoint
- the transporter's mailbox
- Power BI semantic model
Human touchpoints: the request and booking tab in Teams; Teams Approvals for releases; Action Center tasks in Teams; the fleet tab in Power BI; the daily summary in each site channel
Technologies used
checks, document assembly, DMS posting, the demo clock; queues, triggers, credential store, run log
Astarts the flow from a new list row; files documents against the VIN; posts channel summaries; sends transport orders
Ahandover confirmation, check-out and check-in, workshop booking tasks
Arelease of a reserved or sold car and of transfers between companies
Athe request form, the demonstrator register and the booking list
Athe fleet by site and day, transfers in transit, cars near the window's end, as a Teams tab
Astock status, reservations, transfer posting, intercompany document; API where available, otherwise the transfer screens
CIllustrative economic model
Start by questioning the assumptions.
Transfers alone are in the calculator, because they are the repeatable event: 140 a month, 35 minutes of desk work each across three desks, at €24 an hour, a fully loaded cost blended across advisers, admin staff and sales managers. Demonstrator bookings sit outside these rows and are priced in the next section. Nothing was measured at a client; the rows show capacity released, not people removed.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate from your own inputs. It models released capacity; it is not a promise of savings.
Business benefits
- A transfer costs a two-minute request instead of 35 minutes across three desks, and the car leaves with its documents rather than ahead of them
- The DMS shows the move on the day of handover, so the stock ledger, the site directors and the finance team count the same cars in the same yards
- A demonstrator promised for Saturday is at the site on Saturday, charged and without an open fault, because the booking was checked against a register, not a diary
- Mileage, drivers and damage are recorded at every check-out and check-in, and cars nearing the end of the window are priced while the decision is still worth money
The management view
- The fleet by site and day on a Power BI tab: where each demonstrator is, who has it, its mileage and its days left in the window
- Transfers in transit with a named driver and expected arrival, and the days from request to DMS move as a weekly number
- Utilisation per demonstrator and site, so the demo fleet is sized by test drives delivered rather than by which site asked loudest
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
Where the data sits and who can see it.
- Each DMS robot account can read stock and post transfers, nothing else; its secret sits in a vault Orchestrator reads at run time, and every job is logged in the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud
- Requests, registers, protocols and photographs stay in the group's Microsoft 365 tenant, visible per site to that site's staff and across sites to the group office
- The requester cannot approve, the receiver confirms before the DMS moves, and the rules are versioned in the list and changed only by the group fleet manager
- Driving-licence copies stay out of the register; the loan form carries a Purview retention label, and drivers' names and mileage are kept as long as the group's policy requires
Why now
More cars are moving through more sites: 597.4 thousand new passenger cars were registered in Poland in 2025, 8.3% more than in 2024 (PZPM and KPMG, February 2026), and battery-electric registrations rose by more than 160% to 43,311 (PZPM, January 2026); an electric demonstrator adds a state of charge to every check-in
The desk work is about €1,970 a month for transfers and €2,300 for bookings before a single late demonstrator is priced, and a tenth site pays it twice
Action Center tasks are completed inside Microsoft Teams, a new row in Microsoft Lists starts a UiPath job, and Power BI runs as a Teams tab, all in the tenant the group already has
Relevant executive roles
Cars are where the customer is, demonstrators are where the diary says, and nine sites are on one screen instead of nine phone calls
The demo fleet the brand standards require is booked, driven and rotated on a record, and priced before the window closes
A transfer arrives with its protocol and photographs, and the argument over damage in transit ends before it starts
The DMS, the stock ledger and the yard agree on the day of handover, and intercompany transfers are documented when they happen
Common questions and objections
The flow knows which sites share a company. Within one it is a stock movement; between two the robot raises the intercompany document at the transfer-price rule the CFO sets, after the sales manager's approval.
They should; the call is how a deal starts. What changes is that no transporter is booked and no protocol exists until the request does, and the request takes two minutes.
Then the register reads it rather than replacing it. What the module lacks is the group view across five brands and nine sites and the demo clock per VIN.
When this is not the right solution
- One or two sites in the same city with a handful of transfers a month: a shared list and a rule that no car leaves without a protocol are enough
- Stock status in the DMS is not kept current; the checks would inherit the errors, so stock discipline comes first
- The pain is financing interest rather than movement: a car sold on Tuesday and still on the line on Friday is a reconciliation problem, and that comes first
A question for the next management meeting
Where are our sixty demonstrators tonight, who drove each of them last week, and which of them would already be worth more if they had been priced a month ago?
Implementation approach
We start with one slice of the process and extend only once it is proven.
We deliver
- Discovery with the fleet manager, the admin desk and two sites: transfer reasons, document set, cover rules, DMS screens, demo periods
- The request form, the demonstrator register and the booking list in Microsoft Lists, with permissions per site
- The robots: DMS checks, documents, transport order, DMS posting, demo clock and thirty-day flag; Action Center tasks and the Teams approval
- The Power BI fleet tab and a runbook for the admin desk
We need from you
- Three months of transfer protocols or the emails behind them, and the demonstrator list with registration dates and mileage
- A group fleet manager as process owner, a site director for the pilot, and robot accounts for each DMS, Teams and the fleet mailbox
- The cover rules per plate type, the demo period per brand and the transfer-price rule between companies
Stages
Discovery
Transfer reasons, document set, cover rules, DMS screens, demo periods
Design
Lists, checks per brand, approval rule, templates, permissions, fleet model
Build
Robots, DMS integration per brand, Teams tasks and approvals, registers, Power BI tab
Pilot and rollout
Two sites and one brand, then the remaining brands and sites with hypercare
Quick win. Effort depends on the number of DMSs and whether they expose an API, and on whether transfers are stock movements or intercompany sales.
Sixty demonstrators, and "where is it?" is still answered by phone.
Send us three months of transfer protocols, or the emails behind them, and your demonstrator list with registration dates. We come back with a written assessment: how many transfers moved before their documents, which demonstrators are past the window, and a first estimate of the desk hours released.
Locate your demonstrators with usThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
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