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Dealer.com and Reynolds inventory integration

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D

DanRank

Rust & Dust
May 22, 2014
25
6
First Name
Dan
#1
Got an email from Dealer.com asking for permission to access our DMS for inventory data. This should be a good thing overall and hopefully gets us close to real-time inventory updates.

My concern is discounted selling price. Currently I can export my new inventory to a spreadsheet from HomeNet, enter incentives and use a few formulas to create sale prices, then save as a .csv file and upload via FTP back to HomeNet. The sale prices go out in my inventory feed to Dealer.com and other vendors; the customer sees the same price everywhere. This is very quick, but Dealer.com says I should now do pricing manually in their backend which would take a very long time. It would take even longer to do this through the DMS which was their other suggestion.

On the used side we use vAuto, so any price we change in vAuto is sent through HomeNet and then goes out in a feed. I'm not sure how Dealer.com is going to get these pricing updates unless they accept an API from vAuto (my digital advisor said Reynolds is the only feed they will accept unless I pay extra integration fees).

Am I missing something or is this going to create a lot of extra work and headache?
 
#2
Dan,

Homenet pushes to DDC 3-4 times daily. You can even do a manual push if you want to on the fly. If it was me, I would work on how I could update my Homenet feed from the DMS more than once a day and have DDC to just get the inventory from Homenet.

Are you thinking about discontinuing your service with Homenet and using DDC as the inventory provider to all the third party sites? If that's the case then yes, they have to get the inventory from somewhere (your DMS).


Another thing for you to consider....

Your basically using Excel to set up and structure your pricing, Right?? Why not use Homenets Data Conversion piece. You don't have to download or upload anything. This is a very, very, very strong tool.

You can use it for anything, pricing included. I won't go into too many details about it but trust me, you can definitely use it for pricing if structured the correct way and it's strong as nails. Just call up tech support and get them to help you set up a couple conversions and you'll see.

Did I mention it's Very Strong... :) LOL

Once you use it and learn it, the skys is the limit.

Example: Got some new cars that's been on the ground for a while thats a slow selling color but the manufacture made you order them? Set up a data conversion like this to adjust the pricing on those cars of that color and that color only.

Type = xxxxxx
Year = xxxx
Model = xxxxxxxx
Color = xxxxxxx

Get from MSRP, Subtract or multiply by .xx percentage and put that result in the selling price field of your choice.

There's your conversion. Now every car that matches that specific criteria will get that conversion applied to it. I used color as an example, but you can base it on anything( transmission, trim, drivetrain, mileage, age and the list goes on and on).
 
#3
That's the entire point of my post: DDC doesn't want to get the feed from HomeNet.

Last time I checked, and it's been a while, DDC did not offer a feed service.

I've got 20+ conversions in place for various things, but they won't work easily for pricing. Ford is the main issue; rebates are different for nearly every VIN. DDC incentive manager isn't that granular (transmission, cab configuration, engine size, etc.) so their rebates aren't accurate enough to use in a competitive market. So I use a spreadsheet with MSRP, invoice, holdback, and rebate (manually entered for each vehicle) columns and a formula to calculate the selling price. It is actually pretty quick to do.
 
#4
Hi Dan, I want to preface this conversation with this; I'm loathe to sell a product here on DealerRefresh. I have too much respect for this community.

Since you are a vAuto customer, might I suggest that you may want to have a quick conversation with your Performance Manager (I think it's Jeremie Beckner) and ask about Conquest, New Car Inventory Management & Pricing Software. It may be the answer you're looking for.

 
#5
They do take a feed from homenet. I'm sending my data to them daily via homenet. Actually, I have a few different feeds going to DDC. An FTP, Homenet and Vauto (it's confusing I know but I had to do this way to get the results I wanted). Do this, call up tech support ( not your rep) and ask them to help you set it up. They will create a ticket and send it over to the inventory team for it to be set up. 1-888-895-2994.

What your rep's talking about doing will ad a truck load of work onto your plate.

Are far as the data conversions. I have around 1500 of them built for one roof top and about 600 a rooftop built for other rooftops. I'm very familiar with them. You can use homenet's tool for pricing and have a very aggressive pricing strategy. This is how you can do it.

The tool does the conversions from the top of the page to the bottom. So with that in mind, you would do something like this. First conversions could be X amount of discount off msrp before rebates and build one for each model, trim, etc. Dealer discount so to speak. Once you build those first, at the bottom of the page build conversions to subtract your incentives and rebates. Basically 2 conversions per model or trim.

If the top conversion is something like this
Type = new
year = 2014
make = ford
model = F150
cab contains crew

get msrp, subtract 2500 (or what ever discount before incentives), put in Inet price field(or if you want to see the discount on each car from the main page, just plug the price into a price field that isn't being used. Misc Price 1, 2 or 3 and activate that column on the main page to see it)

#################

This would be at the bottom of the page
Type = new
year = 2014
make = ford
model = F150
cab contains crew

get Inet price( or whatever price field you put the price in at the top of the page), subtract (Rebate / incentive) , put in Inet price field (or your selling price field)

This will be your sale price. Now all you have to edit and change monthly would be the incentives conversions at the bottom of the page if thats all you want to change. If you want to be more aggressive on your discounts, edit the conversions at the top of the page.



I'm doing this now with GM's Shop Click Drive program. That program automatically deducts incentives from the sale prices. I had to add the incentives back to the sale prices just for that program. So now all the 3rd partys are getting a discounted sale price like they should and the shop click drive program is getting their sale price before incentives. It works.
 
#6
Back to my original point: DDC sent an email saying they only want one feed and it will be directly from Reynolds.

From DDC: "As a certified partner of Reynolds, we've agreed exclusively to use a direct integration from Reynolds to Dealer.com. We will no longer support Homenet feeds unless you pay for the integration, as we're moving toward systems with stable, direct integration. This email in particular is focused on gaining approval from you, as Reynolds needs your authorization to permit us (Dealer.com) to access your DMS."
 
#7
Hi Dan, I want to preface this conversation with this; I'm loathe to sell a product here on DealerRefresh. I have too much respect for this community.

Since you are a vAuto customer, might I suggest that you may want to have a quick conversation with your Performance Manager (I think it's Jeremie Beckner) and ask about Conquest, New Car Inventory Management & Pricing Software. It may be the answer you're looking for.
Click to expand...

Ed,

I'm glad you mentioned Conquest. I looked at it at NADA. It is a nice tool. Simple to use. For me it won't work. In January, it didn't have the ability to price by days in stock. I like to be a little more aggressive on older aged units. At the time I saw it, you couldn't use age as a factor. Basically your fresh unit would have the same discount as the aged unit. They did say they were working on adding something like that to it. Wasn't sure when it would be added.

It was a very nice tool though.
 
#9
Dan,

Me personally, I wouldn't freaking do that. That's some major BS. Your already set up with homenet now right? So what integration fee are they speaking of? It's up and running now.

Crap like that really rubs me the wrong way.


DDC sent an email saying they only want one feed and it will be directly from Reynolds.
Click to expand...

So basically they're saying we're gonna charge you if you don't do this our way and it doesn't freaking matter if there's more work on your shoulders or not.
 
#10
I think I would ask them this. Who's relationship was built first? Mine and DDC or ReyRey and DDC and which is more important to them. Based on the answer that is given back to me, would help make up my decision on maybe finding a new provider or not.

At the end of the day, your their customer.
 
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