vAuto - Is it worth the DOUGH?

[Alex Jefferson]

I was wondering who uses vAuto or a similiar product and if it is worth the dough...
Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

 

[Alex Snyder]

Yes and yes. Only downside is when every dealership in the market has it. You have to learn to be careful not to get into a pricing war with competitors that superficially lowers the market price for particular vehicles. I work in one of those markets.

 

[AndrewDiFeo]

Alex, are you using any type of Used Vehicle Inventory Management system now?

We were using AAX and cancelled once Dealertrack bought them. Large companies seem to be very good at halting innovation in the product life cycle.

Vauto is well worth the expense. It has become one of the most used tools in the dealership for me. I would demo both Firstlook and Vauto as it comes down to personal preference of the visual presentation of each of the products...that being said though, Vauto has a lot of good people working for them, and constantly improving their product is a high priority.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

We were using AAX and canceled once Dealertrack bought them. Large companies seem to be very good at halting innovation in the product life cycle.

Andrew, was that the only reason for dropping AAX? I know there was hesitation amongst our group as well when this happened. We decided to stick it out with with AAX for many reasons..one being that we already had AAX and a process implemented across so many of our stores.

Interesting enough though..we still decided to test both out in one of our markets. We'll be using AAX in some of our stores and vAuto in others. We'll see what happens.

 

[Alex Jefferson]

We do not currently use an inventory management tool because we have a
used car director that has an aversion to products like this.

I am pushing for it because personally because I like what I have seen and I don't believe one man can do what this software can do. I can sit down and do an entire PPC campaign with hundreds or thousands of keywords but do I do it....NO. It doesn't make sense! I use a combination of my knowledge and advanced software to be more efficient and effective.

We have debates about which specific components of vAuto will increase sales and gross. It will be interesting to see which direction our stores will go.

 

[Eric Miltsch]

I second Alex's comments...

The product and the people within vAuto are all top notch.

(I'm not an end user but I work very closely with those who are.)

 

[Alex Snyder]

Alex, are you using any type of Used Vehicle Inventory Management system now?

Of course. We're on iMagicLab's currently. We also have Dealer.com's playing in the background on a few things as well.

In the past we've used HomeNet (great product by the way), ADP's webVehicle, SelectQue through ADP management, Dealer Specialties, Auction 123, and I'm drawing a blank beyond that.

 

[joe.pistell]

Alex,

Pass this message up the food chain.

vAuto user here. Can't help you with product comparisons, but, I do have some eye opening observations that may help.

The MOST IMPORTANT decision will not be which platform is the best, that's easy. What's going to be PAINFULLY hard is what you're going to do with all this information. The information vAuto presents is the kind of information a field general needs to make tactical decisions on the fly. The better data the field general has the better he can out maneuver his enemy.

Make no mistake about it; the information presented by the vAuto platform will turn on a light in a very dark room. You can use it selectively (as needed) or forcefully (across the entire inventory and enforce at all times).

So, to summarize...
It's all about attitude. To embrace change, or fear change. The information will FORCE your management team into uncomfortably productive discussions of letting go of treasured 20th Century business models and into the 21st century battlefield... the Internet.

 

[AndrewDiFeo]

Jeff,

That wasn't the only reason we switch from AAX. At the time, AAX didn't offer the market days supply calculation that Vauto/Firstlook has. This is a very powerful statistic as it allows us to be aggressive on trades/auction buys that have a low days supply. The flip side is also true about being cautious about stepping up on a trade where the days supply is in the triple digits.

There is a good amount of other features that Vauto had over AAX (better stocking tool, merchandising piece that checks to see if you vehicles photos/prices/miles are posting properly on Autotrader/cars/dealer website, etc.) But the biggest reason was that market days supply calculation.

 

[Alex Jefferson]

Does anyone know anything about ADP inventory management tool? I haven't seen it yet and don't know how it compares to vAuto but I did hear there have one.
Any insight would be great.