Think of it as a tool that could deliver found money. And not just a couple of bills in the pocket of your jeans, but “potentially billions,” according to analytics start-up WePredict.
WePredict is aiming to free up this much money in auto industry warranty reserves through a unique analytics solution providing manufacturers and suppliers the opportunity to stabilize and mitigate risks they have in their warranty reserves today. The company recently completed a new funding round led by Munich Re / HSB Ventures. Existing investors Breed Reply and the Development Bank of Wales provided additional funding.
According to WePredict, most U.S. auto manufacturing companies will accrue between 1 percent and 3 percent of revenue to cover warranty costs. Industry analysis has shown that companies are more likely to over accrue to avoid “nasty” shocks in the future.
Using traditional methods, WePredict insisted it can take years to effectively determine reserve adequacy, resulting in inefficient use of funds and missed business opportunities. This is particularly problematic in a time when the auto industry is looking for ways to fund autonomous and other future mobility innovations.
Due to its work with automotive, agriculture and construction equipment and their respective supply chains, WePredict has developed an accurate, consistent way to use initial repair and telematics data to determine long-term product reliability, and as a result, warranty claims. This will allow companies to better understand and estimate their warranty reserves.
Munich Re will now develop an insurance solution that will back WePredict’s calculation. The insurance solution will provide an appropriate level of certainty to adjustments in warranty reserves, and this joint value proposition will bring greater balance sheet efficiency to clients by allowing for the reallocation of funds to working capital.
“Every company has a scary story from the last 10 years where they under accrued, hence they are likely to be more conservative in reserve setting than they might need to be. This is a perfect place for insurance to help reduce risk, reduce accruals and free up capital for the business,” WePredict founder and chief executive officer James Davies said.
The initial WePredict product launch targets the automotive industry. However, the company thinks the methodology applies to other industries as well.
Renee Stephens, WePredict’s North American vice president who previously spent time at J.D. Power and General Motors, believes there is an enormous opportunity.
“These are unprecedented circumstances. Manufacturers are looking for innovative solutions to what are many times long-running business problems as they work to rapidly fund changing technology. Companies are looking to unlock the value they have, but in a responsible way,” Stephens said.
Jeffrey Sirr, Head of Munich Re’s Corporate Insurance Partner North America division, added, “We are forming strategic relationships with promising new start-ups like WePredict in conjunction with our insurance activities. This allows us to build out our own capabilities for innovative products and services, and to provide new insights and offerings to our clients that enable their business models and enhance their business opportunities.”
The opportunities to expand more broadly across the manufacturing spectrum appear equally promising, according to Davies.
“We are constantly looking for new ways to enable our customers to benefit from the accuracy of our product failure predictions,” he said. “We see vast possibilities to expand these applications. With the help of Munich Re we are taking this a step further and allowing automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to free up a portion of their balance sheet to use more productively in their business.”
Dealers have submitted over 100,000 live trades on the Appraisal Lane app since its launch in just over two years, the company announced Tuesday.
This follows The Appraisal Lane’s September announcement that it recently expanded into the Upper Midwest.
The company now has markets across the entire Eastern Seaboard, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
“The dealers in our community have put in the effort and submitted over 100,000 cars independently, and they’ve incorporated The Appraisal Lane into their process, which demonstrates the value they see in it,” The Appraisal Lane co-founder and president Andrew Iorgulescu said in a news release. “Our community is both a sales channel and a used car inventory acquisition channel, and dealers use it differently depending on their needs. What’s important is that they’re using it to make more retail deals and improve their business and that’s what makes this milestone so significant.”
The Appraisal Lane app connects dealers with appraisers and buyers to receive real-time cash offers on inventory.
“We incorporated The Appraisal Lane into our process across all of our stores because it helps our business in a number of ways,” said Rob Iacono, vice president of BRAM Automotive Group.
In addition to four of five New York City Boroughs, the group also has stores in Westchester County and New Jersey, according to The Appraisal Lane.
“The expert cash offers we get while we’re working a live trade help us structure better retail deals. We’re also moving a lot of used car inventory through the app, we’re buying inventory we need, and we’re way more confident taking cars on trade. This is the best technology we’ve seen in over a decade,” Iacono continued.
Auto Remarketing will host a webinar on appraising trades with The Appraisal Lane co-founder and chief executive officer Jeff Risner on Tuesday.
Pearl Technology Holdings announced it has expanded its relationship with Experian to integrate its propensity scoring platform, designed to target consumers who have the highest propensity to make a purchase or lease a vehicle within a particular period of time.
Pearl now has the capability to calculate more than 1,000 elements when scoring a consumer’s propensity to buy or lease.
“We are simply thrilled to expand our relationship with Experian. We contemplated building our own scoring methodology, but ultimately there is no better data or analytic interpreter than Experian,” Pearl chief executive officer and founder Bruce Thompson said in a news release.
“Understanding what consumers are likely to purchase or lease, as well as when, is what it’s all about. Overlaying our existing technology on top of 240 million pre-screened records allows our clients to win big with much less investment. No more wasted advertising dollars with a shotgun approach. This new integrated platform gives Pearl one of the most powerful and accurate vehicle marketing system in the industry,” he continued.
Additionally, the newly enhanced platform enables Pearl to help dealers identify and market to pre-owned buyers, who amount to the largest segment of buyers, according to the company.
“We’re excited to continue our work with the Pearl team,” said John Gray, Experian automotive business unit president. “Understanding the current market landscape and when a consumer is in the market to buy is critical for automotive dealers and OEMs alike. With these insights available, dealers will be able to unlock the potential of the data and to uncover new pockets of opportunity, increase profitability and improve the overall consumer experience.”
Pearl’s incentive-based marketing platform VehicleXchange evaluates nearly 50,000 Experian consumer pre-screens per day for dealer and OEM clients.
CDK Global announced last week it has purchased partner program participant and full-service enterprise reporting company Dashboard Dealership Enterprises (DDE).
DDE has provided its business analytic reporting suite, Executive Eye, to some of the largest dealership groups in the U.S. and increased its customer base to 600 dealership locations within the last 15 years, according to CDK.
As part of the acquisition, DDE chief executive officer Josh Blick and chief operating officer William Page III will join CDK to help lead further development of Executive Eye.
The acquisition of DDE allows CDK to deliver a more robust reporting solution for dealers, the company said.
“We are excited to bring the capabilities of Dashboard Dealership Enterprises to our customers,” CDK president and chief executive Brian MacDonald said in a news release.
“By adding industry-leading dashboard and reporting capabilities, we will immediately help CDK customers effectively measure the success of their businesses. The company’s experience with many of the nation’s largest dealers also gives us great confidence in taking Executive Eye to our customer base,” he explained.
Additionally, Executive Eye will play a vital role in the company’s efforts to enable end-to-end automotive commerce and help dealers improve efficiency and profitability via metric reporting solutions, according to the company.
“We are very pleased to be able to join CDK and continue improving on the foundation we’ve built with Executive Eye,” added Blick. “The broad capabilities of CDK will help ensure we’re delivering even more value to customers.”
Call tracking and marketing analytics company Car Wars recently launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) service designed to help dealers connect more callers after first introducing the automotive industry to its CRISP methodology three years ago.
“Phone calls are precious, yet every inbound call is handled in a similar inefficient way. The calls hit the same bridge or receptionist who struggles to connect the caller to the right person. Callers end up frustrated and speaking to ill-informed employees or no employee at all,” Car Wars automotive vice president Mike Haeg said in a news release.
Using AI, Car Wars’ new Cari Connect, a CRISP Agent Responding Intelligently, service analyzes DMS data and previous inbound, outbound and text conversations to determine if the caller is a new or existing customer.
When Cari Connect recognizes an existing customer, it can identify which agent handled the prior call and direct the appointment opportunity directly to the agent who last assisted the caller.
This step helps speed up the sales process because returning callers won’t need to repeat information to uninformed agents, according to Car Wars.
When a call reaches an agent, Cari Connect provides them with useful information to assist the caller. And agents also have access to the existing customer records during live calls.
“The Cari Live Calls dashboard provides the ability to actively watch calls without spending time looking through each agent's dashboard or activities,” said Arianna Goodwin, BDC manager at Asbury Automotive Group.
“The capability to click the ‘Open In CRM’ button while on phone calls has also been a huge time saver. I’ve easily been able to find active opportunities that have not been entered into our system; [Cari Connect Live Calls] has saved countless deals for our dealer group since we’ve started using it,” she went on to say.
CarStory, the automotive AI platform from Vast, announced Tuesday general availability of its CarStory Analytics for marketplaces, lenders, OEMs and software providers.
CarStory Analytics powers the companies CarStory Market Reports, CarStory Insights, CarStory Leaderboard and CarStory Marketplace.
"The market is rewarding companies that deliver answers, not just information," Vast chief executive officer John Price said in a news release.
"Our suite of CarStory Analytics gives partners the market and vehicle insights they need to create more valuable solutions for their customers.”
CarStory Analytics provides insight on vehicle pricing, features, consumer demand, condition and images.
CarStory Market Reports are currently live on over 10,000 dealer websites.
The company said OEMs such as Volkswagen and Hyundai entrust the reports to boost CPO vehicle sales.
CarStory has a network of more than 7,000 dealers nationwide, who reach over 15 million consumers each month, according to the company.
While millennials still name car dealer as one of the top three occupations they would like to avoid, if car dealerships integrated more modern technology into the sales process, these same millennials would be more likely to pursue a job there.
This is according to new survey data Roadster released in partnership with research firm Survata on Tuesday.
Car dealer follows behind tax collector, the second most avoided occupation. Politician comes in as the No.1 most avoided occupation.
Fifty-four percent of millennials told Roadster that if car dealerships used more modern technology they would be more likely to consider a job there, according to the report.
“Imagine if you’re a millennial and the only way you’ve bought a car is through the traditional process, negotiating back and forth, writing everything down on a piece of scratch paper, but everything else you purchase is through an iPad, iPhone – some sort of screen device,” said Honda of Seattle General Sales Manager Tim Miller, who uses Roadster’s Express Store solution. “We’re attracting millennials by giving them the option to sell cars the way we sell it, which is through the Roadster Express Store, and that allows them to sell the vehicle just the way they purchase products off of Apple, Amazon and any other online retailer.”
When millennials were asked what retailers they would make car dealerships like, they listed companies Amazon (37 percent), Apple (23 percent) and Starbucks (11 percent) as their top three.
Over 90 percent of the millennials surveyed said having access to technology was important.
“On our end, normally when you go in to buy a car and you want to look at payment options, everything’s done on a piece of paper, and you have to go back and forth between the sales manager or an office,” Miller said.
“Now when you come into one of our dealerships, and you want to see the payments on the vehicle, the cash price, a lease quote, everything is done right there on the showroom floor without any management necessary and everything’s done on an iPad. For a customer, normally it takes 20-25 minutes just to get the customer the information of how much it’s going to cost to pay for this vehicle.”
With the Roadster Express Store, sales staff can have those options available to customers in about 30 seconds, according to Miller.
“We really try to value our customers time, because that is the most important thing that they have in their lives and certainly us as a dealership we value time over everything,” he said.
The survey also found that 61 percent of millennials say that one element about car dealerships they would like to change is the high-pressure sales environment.
Miller said that employing modern technology solutions not only simplifies the sales process and experience for customers, but also for dealership staff as well.
“Training is much easier because all the information is up front, so they don’t have to ask management what are the prices for the car, or what the interest rate is, everything’s on the Express Store. So it really just allows us to focus on customer service, selecting the right vehicle and then minimizing our customers’ time in store," Miller said.
Additionally, 57 percent and 30 percent of millennial respondents, respectively, named less commission-based compensation and a more predictable work schedule as other changes they would like to see at dealerships.
Between Oct. 11 and Oct. 12, there were 1,006 online respondents interviewed for the survey.
PERQ is the latest company to join the expanding CDK Global Partner Program, the company announced Thursday.
The program recently reached over 350 partners and 450 unique applications, according to CDK.
“The continued expansion of the CDK Partner Program plays a critical role in our ability to enable end-to-end automotive commerce for our customers,” CDK Data Services vice president and general manager Howard Gardner said in a news release.
“We want to provide dealers with more choices and ultimately help them deliver a better customer experience through increased integration with CDK systems and partner applications. We look forward to further broadening the range of solutions available to support dealer operations and the marketing of dealership inventory and services,” he said.
PERQ’s Online Guided Shopping Solution, designed to increase leads and improve close rates for dealerships, is now part of the program’s marketplace of applications.
“We’re very pleased to introduce PERQ as the newest member of the CDK Global Partner Program,” added Gardner. “PERQ is a welcome addition to our vibrant program that provides dealers with a range of partner choices and the assurance that their programs can be seamlessly integrated with our applications.”
The program fosters data and workflow integration between CDK products and partner applications. Participants can integrate with a range of CDK applications and CDK dealer websites.
“We’re thrilled to be part of the CDK Global Partner Program, which will make it easy for forward-thinking dealerships to take advantage of our unique online guided shopping solution,” said Stephanie Ragozzino, executive vice president of product at PERQ. “PERQ helps dealers make better online connections with buyers by creating an online guided shopping environment that rivals the experiences consumers get from big brand websites – all with just one line of code on their existing website.”
Auction Edge announced Friday it has attained over 115 customers running its EDGE Simulcast platform powered by Velocicast and brought aboard new senior vice president Julie Warpool to oversee the augmentation of all the company's auction systems.
“In partnership with the developers behind Velocicast we committed to crafting an unparalleled user experience for auction user, buyer and seller. The volume of vehicles running through the system coupled with tens of thousands of buyers channeled through Edge Pipeline create a truly immersive experience for all parties,” Auction Edge chief executive officer Dan Diedrich said in a news release.
Auction Edge began offering its multi-lane, multi-auction bidding platform fitted with a modern and intuitive interface design earlier this year, according to the company.
“Since changing simulcast providers to EDGE Simulcast powered by Velocicast nearly three months ago, we have experienced nothing but good things,” said Shawn Glatz, general manager at Morton Auto Auction. “We are hearing great feedback from our online buyers as well as commercial consignors who utilize the online rep capabilities. The ease in which they both can conduct their business is what it is all about. We couldn’t be any happier with the product and the service we are receiving.”
Warpool has been in automotive remarketing for over 25 years, according to Auction Edge. She spent the last 17 years with Manheim/Cox Automotive, where she served in positions as senior director of vehicle solutions, operational excellence, product strategy and technology.
“Julie has a proven history of innovation, but as importantly, execution in our industry. Julie’s skillset, mindset and experience align perfectly with our mission to modernize and deliver the solutions our customers need,” added Diedrich. “Moreover, Julie will assist us in the evolution of all Edge products to help keep auctions relevant, resilient and on the leading edge for years to come.”
Additionally, Warpool is recognized as an architect of enterprise-wide technological and operational solutions.
She has several patents for live-bid event online auction platforms, vehicle inspection/damage estimation and digital imaging systems, according to Auction Edge.
“It’s so exciting to become part of Auction Edge and help carry out the vision of evolving the universe for independent auctions,” Warpool said.
“There are a few things that attracted me to Edge. The first is the opportunity to give back to an industry that I’ve grown up in and unleash a common vision that the Edge team’s share. Second, is the culture and the people. The folks I’ve met are excited to come to work every day and there is a buzz about what can be accomplished. It’s wonderful to see inspirational teams who give their all and think beyond the possible,” she went on to say.
Warpool began her auction career in 1992 at ADT Automotive, which was acquired by Manheim in 2000.
Black Book announced Thursday it has partnered with AutoAlert to populate the data-mining and communication solution’s algorithms with its vehicle valuation data.
“With the addition of Black Book, our dealer customers will have access to the industry’s most accurate vehicle valuation data, which can make a significant difference in elevating profit potential," AutoAlert general manager and executive vice president Meg Stapleton said in a news release. “Today’s dealership environment requires resources and partners that are trusted by automotive professionals, particularly in an effort to grow their business and maximize sales potential.”
With Black Book as its valuation partner, dealers using AutoAlert can maximize sales opportunities and profit potential when making trade valuations as well as during service and repair visits, the company said.
“Data and equity mining are practices that are not necessarily new to the automotive world, but recently have become even more critical as dealers continue to find ways to maximize profits in light of a sales environment that has begun to plateau,” said Jared Kalfus, senior vice president of Black Book. “As such, dealers need the most accurate vehicle valuation data in order to effectively leverage all data practices, and we’re proud to know they can rely on Black Book to put them in the best possible position.”
