When do you release your dealers inventory?

[Brian T in Etown]

managing the feeds would be one of the questions I have for the third party vendors. If I release the inventory and update the feed later with more pics and better description will it speed the process up?
For example what is the turn around time of ATC placing a fresh listing compared to updating a existing listing, IS it faster or the same? I have been watching listings and it seems the updates are quicker once the inventory is placed. I could be imagining this....can anyone back me up on this?

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

You're definitely on to something there Brian. I'd update our third-party listings much more often if they'd accept a feed more often. I can't say exactly where ATC is in updates, but I constantly come across cars that have been sold for days still showing on that site. I don't see that happening with other sites.

We list anything that hits our DMS. We've got too many cars spread across too many lots to manage every single car. Things are handled at our corporate level for consistency. We could divvy-out that task to the individual stores, but that always falls apart at some point. I like the way we do it now, and our customers get to see more selection all the time. Yes, we sell more cars because we post more cars.

 

[andwrig]

I agree with Chip. Inventory feed updates are another issue. It doesn't seem to matter which vendor we use, there always appears to be an issue with cars coming off more so than getting added. It annoys me when a customer calls about a car they saw on cars.com in my inventory that was sold a week ago. Telling a customer that a car is sold even though it is still showing in stock only builds distrust and damages our credibility even if it is only a little bit and that is too much in my opinion. Plus it is unprofessional. As an industry, we have enough challenges to overcome to have to deal with this problem. Having a standardized method of inventory distribution that would operate in real time would be great. The problem is that the DMS providers, the inventory management platforms and the inventory aggregators all have to be on the same page with respect to security parameters and technology standards and that would be a nightmare to establish. Hopefully they will all get their act together one day and solve this problem. Perhaps this is an agenda item for AAISP or NADA from a business process recommendation standpoint.

 

[Jon Groenig]

A couple things to keep in mind, even if the third party vendors update multiple times a day, your data is probably only pushed out to them once a day, so any updates you make won't appear until that happens.

The other thing regards the removal of inventory on these sites, in my experience, just because a car is marked sold doesn't always mean the deal is capped imediatley and pulled out of your DMS system, we are all familair with these deals, the ones that need extra work in F&I or is held up on stips. So if the deal gets stuck in F&I a few days, gets sent to the officethen gets held up another day there, it could be three to four days before this deal is pulled from you DMS, and depending on your system it could be another two days before it is off you third party sites.

I'm not trying to side with trader or cars, I've just seen reasons why it seems to take so long for inventory to get offline and it is probably the reason I update the sold information to my export feed manually on a daily basis. Any time I update information I usually see the changes the next day on my third party providers

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Jon - your DMS should have a series of status codes to help mark the path of a completed sale. If you have ADP, then those are Pending, Booked, and Finalized. If you have something sitting in the finance office, mark it Pending. If a car is busting bugs, mark it Booked. If a deal is funded and completely clean, mark it finalized. Then set your inventory feeds to show a vehicle as sold when the deal is "Booked". Pretty simple.

When you've got that setup, come join us in some frustration with ATC over how long it takes them to remove a sold vehicle.

 

[Lao Shi]

I always am amazed by the dealers who do not want to place their inventory on line.

I recently looked at a Honda Dealer for my wife who leases a Pilot as her company car and one dealer I went to does not like to place their inventory on line.

I aksed the GSM what this was all about and he said it was too much trouble. I asked him how sales were going and he complained he was down 36% from last year.

She leased from another Honda Dealer who was more technology oriented, was able to get the same package at the same price as 3 years ago. They took all the information on line and all she had to do was bring in the vehicle for inspection, turn in the keys and sign the paper work on the new lease and was out in 28 minutes.

The other dealer called two days later and asked if we had made up our minds and I said yes she did. He wanted to know why she went to the other dealer, I did not have the heart to explain.

 

[Brian in Etown]

Lao,
Maybe that dealer will read your post and fix everything

 

[Robin Frey]

Brian, sorry took me so long to respond...takes about 15 min ea vehicle to prep photos (now that I have a system down) and I use photoshop to do it...

 

[Brian T in Etown]

I have been watching my inventory rather closely the last few weeks and I am noticing quite a few cars still listed on third party sites that should have been deleted. I am beginning to think that cars and trader have some sort of system that ensures they have x amount of cars hosted on their server.

 

[Joe Pistell]

hmmm... interesting thought Brian. I have always felt that a vehicle is an "advertising unit".

More inventory = higher search volume and greater "time on site" stats.

I always thought that this was a dealer vs dealer metric, stealing eyeballs with larger inventory. hmmm... WTG Brian, I think you've caught the marketing guys at ATC and Cars with their fingers in the cookie jar!