How do you use your inventory tool? How can you maximize the ROI of your inventory tool?

[mattwatson81]

Just be careful when making price changes to Autotrader.com and cars.com because it will lock it just like making a manual update within their respective control panels. I only mention this because this can cause some issues if you sell the car at auction and don't delete manually.

If you are manually changes prices in AutoTrader.com or Cars.com then you probably need to sign up for an inventory management tool so you can manage those changes from one place and do dozens of other useful functions.

 

[joe.pistell]

Joe,
I like the DND view....kinda of thinking out loud here but I wonder if a crm could push a dnd via a sorting code to v-auto to disable any future price changes if you have a deal pending? Anybody got that setup?

Brian,

Just to recap... vAuto is a data harvesting tool that gathers information from the retail market place. The core benefit of vAuto is to help you keep your inventory priced to market so your not UNKNOWINGLY dead in the water.

It is possible for the GM to set up vAuto inventory management pricing rules that will nearly guarantee a "robust and healthy" UC department.

The "DnD" (Do Not Discount) allows the UCM to over-ride rules setup by the GM. For example, vAuto is limited to "sell side" analysis, it has no "buy side" data to review. ("sell side" is what the consumer sees, "buy side" is what the UCM sees at auction) vAuto could be showing that a unit(s) is not priced sharp, but the UCM knows the unit will be hard to replace, or has a rare package/color, or what ever "buy side" reason he/she has to DnD. Another DnD would be having a unit priced just for floor traffic.

Anyhoo... IMO, vAuto needs a knowledgeable human hand to optimize it.

 

[Brian Tucker]

Got you Joe - but I was looking for something that would notify you in V-auto if a deal was pending.
Example would be if a deal was pending in finance for a couple days because of stips or something along those lines.
While the deal is pending you don't want to delete the car or cap the deal because your not for sure if it is sold in the meanwhile the clock is still ticking on the car and it's depreciating. If you manage v-auto on a daily basis you could accidentally lower the price not knowing that a deal was pending on the previous price. My point in all this is if the customer sees that lower price online it could be a negative that you will have to overcome which usually ends up in giving the customer the lower price. I only bring this up because I have seen it happen.

 

[joe.pistell]

Ahh.. the 'ol deal pending trap! Gawd... I forgot about that.

We use Homenet and had them make a mod to take "deal pending" units off-line (but not delete them). HEY, you've got a good idea Brian. Ask vAuto if they can put a "deal pending flag" on units to prevent price movements like you write about!

Good one!

 

[Brian Tucker]

@Joe
What does that do to your autotrader and cars.com listings? Does it delete them if they can't find it in your feed from Homenet?

 

[joe.pistell]

Yup. Here's the script Brian.

"Deal Pending" units are removed form our website and all 3rd party exports BUT is not deleted from the back-end until the DMS has it marked as "Delivered". If the deal busts, the status is changed back to "Available" and viloa' it re-appears..

 

[Brian Tucker]

If you are manually changes prices in AutoTrader.com or Cars.com then you probably need to sign up for an inventory management tool so you can manage those changes from one place and do dozens of other useful functions.

I was talking about publishing prices via V-auto

 

[Jason Walter]

We use vAuto and have great success with it. My used car managers take the lead roll in pricing the used inventory and myself and the GM monitor it and tweak it if needed. We use Homenet as our main inventory solution so I only have vAuto send the pricing to Homenet. From there we push the pricing to the other sites we use. I do not edit anything on any other site other than Homenet and vAuto.

As for the deleted vehicles, when we book a deal in ADP it removes the vehicle from Homenet and then any feed from vAuto would not be able to update the vehicle.

I am glad you posted this because I had forgoten about the ability to email data to the customer!