Are you a Finger Pointer?

[Joe Pistell]

Hi Eric!

Although AT and Cars update overnight, HomeNet hits our DMS hourly and updates our site. My experience has found that the closer to real time you get the more scrutiny your system gets. We have 40 reps under 3 roofs in the same market. Almost real-time updates changes your sales processes. All reps consider a car seen on our site means its not sold and they take deposits with conviction. What a train wreck we have when the hourly updates break (and they do break!).

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

I made that scenario up, but it is based on a whole lot of issues I've experienced in the past. I do recall dropping some brain cells once and forgetting that we switched our Cars.com and Autotrader feeds from our inventory tool to our website provider. A few months after making the switch I did have a problem with the Cars.com feed. We still had our inventory tool sending a feed to them too, but Cars.com wasn't picking it up (that was the right thing to do). It only took me about 2 days to remember we were sending through Dealer.com and not HomeNet - I felt bad for HomeNet having to work through my stupidity. Once I remembered a quick call to Dealer.com cleared it all up.

There are so many people involved and so many steps it is amazing any of us can really keep up with the whole process.

 

[mattwatson81]

One of the biggest problems is photos. Updating photos and trying to send them to vendors that don't have anything in place to automatically accept the new photos.

Inventory will not become more real time until all the DMS providers can provide updates that quick as well. Most of them are still limited to once a day updates.

And then there are the dealers that WANT to show sold vehicles on their websites so they continue getting leads on the vehicles....

I do remember the days when dealers would cancel on the lot service providers (I won't point fingers) and they would threaten to sue if the dealer took the photos to a new provider.

 

[@AlexinCA]

I completely agree with this bandaid. Our top dealers keep their fresh inventory from being digitally naked by giving all trades they plan on putting on the front line a quick wash, taking a few real pictures, and adding what options the vehicle actually has as opposed to the ones that come with an automated VIN decode.

This has been shown to turn inventory faster (having real photos, real options, and having the vehicle online sooner), which also means less interest is paid on the vehicle by the dealer. It doesn't remove the problem of why the vehicle isn't appearing in the right places, but it's something that more dealers should try to take advantage of.

 

[@AlexinCA]

Software development. Resources. Time. Our API doesn't work with their API, their API doesn't work with ours, one side doesn't have an API, but they're working on it, we can't get it to work until we get done with this other project, etc. are all common problems in this arena.

The good news is that it will eventually happen and everyone seems headed in that direction.

 

[Paul Husing]

Jeff - from my understanding, DealerOn does have an API with Homenet and it runs every 15 minutes. You may have to get in touch with DealerOn support to get it in place, but it's worth it. We have several clients using DealerOn sites and we operate our business on Homenet, so it's a great fit and damn near "real time". Good Luck - Paul.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'm already there. Our inventory gets updated every 5-15 mins. Love it!!Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

 

[@emiltsch]

Hey Alex,

Do you guys have a real-time API like DealerOn? I'd be all over this...

 

[Joe High]

Glen,

Great feedback. There are a number of issues at play here. In my opinion there are a few large vendors that think their size excludes them from accountability. Our dealers don't have time to deal with these headaches. Eventually the vendors that don't work with each other will lose their customers because of the culture within the company that allows it to happen in the first place.

 

[Mike Elmore (blog)]

Very nicely put Alex, it's like you were standing in my shoes trying to explain to the powers to be why I do the things I do to do my job, now, where did I put my camera?