Built for scale: what Middle East automotive retail demands next

What happens when a dealer group that ran two brands suddenly runs 12?  
 
In the Middle East, it’s not a thought experiment. More than 40 Chinese car brands have arrived in the last three years, and the region’s groups are taking them on at speed. The real question I keep coming back to is whether the technology underneath them can keep up. 
 
That was the backdrop when I sat down with Monzer Tohme, our Managing Director Sales MEA, to open Fusion Live Dubai 2026. More than 100 leaders from the region’s dealer groups, OEMs and partners joined us at TODA, Madinat Jumeirah, on 21 October, the day Keyloop marked 50 years in automotive. 
 
Monzer and I both joined Keyloop within the last five years, from outside its traditional DNA. That gives us a slightly different view of how far the company has come. Our conversation landed on a clear conclusion. The region’s retailers aren’t asking for more software. They’re asking for three things: a platform built for their scale, a partner on the ground and data they can trust before they bet on AI. 

A platform built for multi-brand scale 

Middle East retailers don’t wait for the market to mature. Monzer says every customer he works with already uses Keyloop extensively, and still asks for more.   
 
Monzer runs Asia Pacific as well as the Middle East, and he drew a sharp contrast. In Asia Pacific, OEMs drive expansion. Here, large family-owned groups set the agenda, and their complexity comes from size, not process. “All of our customers are multi-million businesses that demand high availability, attention and a very strong partnership,” he said. I agree. The size and scale of the groups here is remarkable. 
 
A group running a dozen brands can’t afford a dozen ways of working. Euro Motors in Bahrain learned that firsthand. Before moving to Keyloop, two of its parent group’s three divisions ran seven to eight brands on a custom system. “Every single request becomes a project,” Mustafa Hashim, who led the programme, told the audience later in the day. The group now runs around 12 premium, Chinese, Japanese and Korean brands on one platform, and its teams “all start talking the same language.” 
 
We’ve rebuilt Keyloop for that scale. When I joined, just after the carve-out from CDK, our vision was a unification layer that gave customers, partners and finance providers easy access to data and APIs. That vision has changed dramatically in a short time. Today it’s an end-to-end omnichannel platform across sales, service and ownership. Underneath it sits investment most customers never see: hundreds of millions of dollars in AWS, our data infrastructure and acquisitions. 
 
Speed matters too. We completed 195 OEM certifications in the past 12 months, so a group adding a new franchise isn’t left waiting on its systems. 
 
I’ve always said that I thought automotive was an industry ripe for transformation, but unwilling to do so. The Middle East is proving that it doesn’t have to be that way. 

A partner on the ground, measured on outcomes 

Scale changes what customers expect from a technology partner, and Monzer has led that shift in the region. “The engagement has transformed from discussing what you need to buy versus what you need to achieve,” he said. 

Conversations now start with a retailer’s plans for the next two to three years and work back to where we can help. Global products still need local fit, and as Monzer put it, “that 10, 15 or potentially 20% of localisation makes a big difference for our customers.” 

That’s why we’ve put people in the region: 

• Premium support. A local team that works to the region’s business hours, weekends and public holidays. A team that knows each customer’s business well enough to cut response and resolution times. Two customers are live and more are in discussion. 

• Account management. One point of contact for OEMs and key customers, focused on outcomes rather than sales. They share our roadmap and meet regularly with both IT and business teams. 

The same principle has changed how we run our own technology. I’ll be frank: our acquisitions were a lot harder than they looked on paper. Early on, we integrated them inside out, fixing our internal plumbing first and the customer experience second. We’ve reversed that. Serve the customers first and make sure that’s solid. The plumbing follows, at a pace that never disrupts the showroom or the service desk. 

Data foundations before AI 

When Monzer asked me where the biggest opportunity lies, I stated it’s underneath the AI headlines. I believe deeply in data and analytics. Whilst we have this firestorm of AI happening right now, if the data isn’t there, it simply won’t work. 

Service Hub is where that principle is already paying off in the region. It takes the workshop journey from online booking and check-in through inspection, approvals and deferred work. Technicians send findings from a tablet straight to the service advisor or the customer for approval, instead of photos on WhatsApp and rounds of phone calls. 
 
Euro Motors was one of the first in the region to sign up and took home the Early Adopter award on the day. In its first three months on Service Hub, it recorded a 23.5% increase in invoice value and a 29% increase in vehicle health check upsell. Mustafa put the real gain simply: “Having a standard system will save a lot of time, which we can spend on customers, not on the screen.” 
 
The wider numbers point the same way. Across live sites in the UK, Denmark, Norway and the Middle East, online check-in saves around seven minutes per pre-check, and service advisors save an average of 15 minutes per customer. The product is moving fast too, with 350 feature releases in a little over a year and a new release every two weeks. 
 
Next comes AI built on that connected data. AIME, our AI agent for customer conversations, launches in the Middle East in 2027, starting with sales enquiries. In the UK, it already influences 14% of total sales. Sales Hub follows later in 2027. Each one draws on the same data foundation, which is why that foundation comes first. 

50 years in, still early 
 

Keyloop’s roots in the Middle East go back around 35 years, from a distributor in Kuwait to a regional hub in Dubai. Yet nobody on stage talked about heritage. “We are still in the early stages in this region,” Monzer said, and the opportunity ahead is far bigger than what’s been achieved so far. 
 
That’s why Keyloop chose Fusion Live Dubai to launch The Unified Theory of Automotive Retail, its new thought leadership book. It’s a live edition, grounded in customer results rather than theory, and it’ll keep growing as more retailers put the full Fusion platform to work.  
 
The region’s retailers have stopped asking for software. They’re asking for a partner who can keep pace with them. That’s what Fusion is built to do.