Sourcing, Merchandising & Logistic Tools

[Marc Lavoie]

Hi,

anyone here knows of a good software or product that can manage the logistic side of things when it comes to used car sourcing, logistics, recon, and merchandising?

What tools exist that can be used for auto dealers? Is there a leader in this space?

 

[Jon Singo]

I can speak strongly on the acquisition side. I have a team of 4 (myself included) that use Stockwave. As far as I know, it's the best at aggregating available inventory across multiple platforms and auction houses. The searches and filters are incredibly buggy but we've found decent workarounds that allow us to key in on what we want to buy. If I had a developer and a few weeks I could likely make it pretty powerful but it seems Cox has all but abandoned development on the platform. It's still the best out there I know to look at as many cars as possible in the shortest amount of time, and it's not terribly expensive. If there's something better I'm all ears.
Transportation logistics is kind of a mess across the board. No matter who you use, cars are going to arrive outside of standard arbitration windows so having someone on the ground checking them in and driving them asap is key.
We use RapidRecon to track cars through the process but I'm hands off when it came to its implementation and usage.

 

[qosha]

The searches and filters are incredibly buggy but we've found decent workarounds that allow us to key in on what we want to buy. If I had a developer and a few weeks I could likely make it pretty powerful

Interesting feedback @Jon, if you don't mind me asking, what kinds of things would you want it to do / what kinds of bug are they?

 

[joe.pistell]

Sexy merchandising @Jon Singo, theres a lot of work in your VDPs, well done
https://www.performanceautomotive.c...es-ii-4wd-4d-sport-utility-1c4sjvbt3ns142459/

 

[Jon Singo]

@joe.pistell Thanks! That's from one of our sister locations. An ex-Autotrader guy (Shawn Dennis) does those for all the stores at the corporate level. Next time I see him I'll give him the kudos.

@qosha The search filters are generally very buggy and don't line up with what's actually in the CR. For instance if you filter out AS-IS you'll still see Red Light/AS-IS vehicles occasiocally. The largest issue is market data population. It frequently doesn't populate data that is required to formulate a bid price. Once you click the 'light bulb' it will often populate. The other issue is data will often change once you click on the lightbulb. For instance, it'll give you a Stockwave price of $14500 but then you click on it, boom it's now $16700. It gives me the feeling that it isn't pulling the data from the same place all the time or at least not consistently. The ability to set your market area in VAuto to 'Auto' and have Stockwave dynamically scale to populate rBook would also be nice. Having it at a static number isn't always valuable.

How much time do you have? I could go on for a while lol

 

[qosha]

@qosha The search filters are generally very buggy and don't line up with what's actually in the CR. For instance if you filter out AS-IS you'll still see Red Light/AS-IS vehicles occasiocally. The largest issue is market data population. It frequently doesn't populate data that is required to formulate a bid price. Once you click the 'light bulb' it will often populate. The other issue is data will often change once you click on the lightbulb. For instance, it'll give you a Stockwave price of $14500 but then you click on it, boom it's now $16700. It gives me the feeling that it isn't pulling the data from the same place all the time or at least not consistently.

Very interesting thanks for all the detail!! The first one seems like they may just have some issues on their search logic because I can't imagine that's a 'feature'.

From the pricing perspective I wonder if there's some limitation from a computational or data cost perspective that's keeping them from pre-populating values. Eg. if they're paying per API call to some market data source they might try to avoid doing that automatically. Are they including other variables like recon / target profit in one but not the other? Is this on a list page of vehicles or on the detail page for a specific one?

The ability to set your market area in VAuto to 'Auto' and have Stockwave dynamically scale to populate rBook would also be nice. Having it at a static number isn't always valuable.

Sorry - I was a bit confused here. When you say it's a static number is that with respect to radius from the store? Is the goal here essentially to have VAuto configs automatically pushed to Stockwave so it can update the vehicle lists you see by default? By extension I suppose to have the vehicles you see first pre-filtered by your target market area (& potentially other configs)?

How much time do you have? I could go on for a while lol

haha this is what I do so... a lot . Disclaimer - not for Vauto or stockwave so sadly can't help there, but we do a lot of filtering / suggestions/etc here so it's always really helpful to hear about common searching complaints & issues & feature suggestions.

 

[Jon Singo]

@qosha

From the pricing perspective I wonder if there's some limitation from a computational or data cost perspective that's keeping them from pre-populating values. Eg. if they're paying per API call to some market data source they might try to avoid doing that automatically. Are they including other variables like recon / target profit in one but not the other? Is this on a list page of vehicles or on the detail page for a specific one?

It seems to work randomly and it's always on the same page of inventory. There's no consistency between which vehicles it shows values and those it does not. Feels like something is broken, not intentional.

Sorry - I was a bit confused here. When you say it's a static number is that with respect to radius from the store? Is the goal here essentially to have VAuto configs automatically pushed to Stockwave so it can update the vehicle lists you see by default? By extension I suppose to have the vehicles you see first pre-filtered by your target market area (& potentially other configs)?

Yes, the goal is to import your VAuto configs into Stockwave so they match. The issue is that if you have a set radius of 100 miles you may not always get a large enough sample size to populate an rBook figure - which defaults to no figure at all (not able to sort, etc.). If you were able to set the rBook range to dynamic it would scale out distance automatically to populate a value. I've suggested this feature to them before and they don't seem interested in my feedback.

haha this is what I do so... a lot . Disclaimer - not for Vauto or stockwave so sadly can't help there, but we do a lot of filtering / suggestions/etc here so it's always really helpful to hear about common searching complaints & issues & feature suggestions.

This is sort of where my passion lies. I'm always open to a conversation/consultation if you wanted to dig deeper!

 

[Henrik Andersson]

Hello,
We have a software thats keeps track and measure all stages for both new and used cars. Totally independent of which DMS, CRM, Test software, External partners, Adverstising platform, Transportation company etc you are using.
Just give me a call or schedule a demo -> Meetings

Henrik Andersson
Carcare System Europe
+46 730 55 06 58
henrik.andersson@car-care.se

 

[qosha]

@qosha

It seems to work randomly and it's always on the same page of inventory. There's no consistency between which vehicles it shows values and those it does not. Feels like something is broken, not intentional.


Yes, the goal is to import your VAuto configs into Stockwave so they match. The issue is that if you have a set radius of 100 miles you may not always get a large enough sample size to populate an rBook figure - which defaults to no figure at all (not able to sort, etc.). If you were able to set the rBook range to dynamic it would scale out distance automatically to populate a value. I've suggested this feature to them before and they don't seem interested in my feedback.


This is sort of where my passion lies. I'm always open to a conversation/consultation if you wanted to dig deeper!

Thanks for all the thoughts Jon! Very helpful. I think i'll take you up on that offer to dive in more. Would be great to get your thoughts on some stuff were working on at Topmarq. I'll shoot you a PM once the schedule clears up a bit Happy Fourth!

 

[Dakota La Tier]

Hi,

anyone here knows of a good software or product that can manage the logistic side of things when it comes to used car sourcing, logistics, recon, and merchandising?

What tools exist that can be used for auto dealers? Is there a leader in this space?

Hello Marc,

I come from a high volume store that did 300 cars a month here in Kansas City. We sold an additional 75 cars a month by switching to VinCue on the showroom which is a Vauto replacement and an end-to-end inventory management tool for private party acquisitions and auction sourcing, all under ONE platform and login for a fraction of Cox's costs. Integration with all CRM and DMS systems. I've used it firsthand and highly recommend it, so much that I left the dealership to join their team in KC. I can set you up with a short demo of all the capabilities we offer.

Dakota@dealercue.com
www.VinCue.com