Newcomer - How do you get your inventory online?

[djc225]

I'm creating an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of vehicles and I'd like to know how you're currently broadcasting your inventory to sites such as autotrader and others. From what I have learned Inventory Management Systems typically push dealer inventory to third party sites once you are signed up with their solution. Is this the only way it is done? What are some of the most reputable inventory management system companies? Also if I wanted a dealers inventory on my site would that reach out to each dealer and say "tell your inventory management soultion to also push data to my site" or could i simply go to the inventory management provider and say "send me inventory streams for all dealers you are currently working with".

If any of the questions dont make complete sense it might be because I need to better understand the process of getting dealer inventory on third party websites. if anyone can better explain the process i'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[danoneil]

Our company uses Homenet Inc. HomeNet Inc

 

[mattwatson81]

I'm creating an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of vehicles and I'd like to know how you're currently broadcasting your inventory to sites such as autotrader and others. From what I have learned Inventory Management Systems typically push dealer inventory to third party sites once you are signed up with their solution. Is this the only way it is done? What are some of the most reputable inventory management system companies? Also if I wanted a dealers inventory on my site would that reach out to each dealer and say "tell your inventory management soultion to also push data to my site" or could i simply go to the inventory management provider and say "send me inventory streams for all dealers you are currently working with".

If any of the questions dont make complete sense it might be because I need to better understand the process of getting dealer inventory on third party websites. if anyone can better explain the process i'd greatly appreciate it.

You will need to work with inventory management providers so that you can receive the proper inventory data and pictures of the vehicles. Some inventory management providers might send you a "global" feed of all of their dealers but some will only send you data if the dealer requests it.

Your biggest problem will be trying to accept data in all the different formats from all the different providers. That can be a big challenge as there is no standard. There are companies that can help you with that if you need someone to help aggregate and normalize the data.

These are some of the largest inventory management companies:
VinSolutions, Dealer Specialties, CDM, AutouplinkUSA, homenet, eBizAutos, ecarlist, liquid motors, Auction123

But there are dozens more...

 

[Alex Snyder]

We go Dealer DMS (ADP) >> iMagicLab Inventory >> The World. In the case of Autotrader and Cars.com, we have Dealer.com send to those two. We have done other things in the past, but that's our current scenario.

Any time we have opened up things with a new inventory advertising site, we simply notify either iMagicLab or Dealer.com to grant permission and they work directly with that new site. If you're planning to house dealer inventory for advertising purposes, then you'd be working directly with whomever your dealership(s) house their inventory through.....like Matt stated.

 

[OmniQuest Enterprises]

Are you planning to obtain the leads and then redistribute to the dealers or do you want the leads to go directly to the dealers, i.e. AutoTrader and Cars.com?

 

[Patrick80639]

Depending on what DMS the dealer is using, they might be able to export thier inventory to a simple csv file. We do it for some of our smaller vendors, such as lemonfree.