I'd like to see a CRM, desking solution, F&I solution, and a DMS be one tool. I'd like to see an inventory management tool with pricing metrics like vAuto and something that also records all of my stats on Cars.com/AutoTrader and uploads to eBay/Craiglist. I'd like to see my dealer website also contain everything for SEM, instant chat, video hosting, and all sorts of other things.
What I'm trying to get at is that although some companies can package all these things together we're not at a point where one company can do all these well inside that package. I think we're heading that way though.....and very close.
There are some truly innovative & ambitious companies in our space today: TK Carsites, eCarlist, eLeads, vAuto, HomeNet, iMagicLab, Dealer.com, VINSolutions are just a few that come to mind. I think some of these companies are very close to being able to put the whole package together efficiently....so you'll really only have to partner with 3 technology vendors on:
1. CRM / DMS / desking / F&I
2. Inventory Management / stickers / photos / aggregating / pricing metrics
3. Websites / SEO / SEM / chat / video / ad serving
And after that happens, then you'll probably see collaboration and partnering between vendors who opperate in one of those 3 areas. You'll end up seeing vAuto and Dealer.com integration or VinSolutions and DealerSocket (I'm just making these partnerships up by the way). Where you might have a complete inventory tool like HomeNet feeding your used car specials into your TK Carsites dealership website. Or if you have Dealer.com's CarFlix, those could be seen in vAuto's merchandising tool showing which cars have "videos" so the used car manager can see exactly what is happening to his inventory online. If vAuto was an inventory host, then the used car manager could change the order of his photos so the CarFlix video on the website looked better.
I think that's where things are heading.