CDK Global and PSA Benelux recently signed a new partnership agreement that offers the region’s Peugeot and Citroën dealers access to CDK Global’s new integrated dealer management system — Autoline Drive.
Officials explained the move by PSA to enhance DMS provision across its network is part of the “ic@n framework” — PSA’s streamlining of its dealer management systems — to deliver greater efficiency and consistency across its retail network. Peugeot and Citroën dealers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg will be the first outside France that can opt for the new system.
Dieter Bodvin, general manager of CDK Global Benelux, said: “We are proud to begin an exciting new chapter that builds on our long-standing relationship with PSA Benelux. Peugeot and Citroën retailers moving to our new Autoline Drive DMS will benefit from a sophisticated, simple and user-friendly system that will improve productivity and the visibility of operations throughout each business.”
The new system is licensed to retailers via a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This feature can enable retailers to manage costs effectively, while ensuring the DMS system is always fully up-to-date.
By being hosted centrally, retailers can benefit from regular updates to the product to ensure it keeps up with changing trends and can offer new functionality as the market develops.
Officials also mentioned the PSA network in Benelux will also be at the forefront of technological developments as Autoline Drive is designed to work across desktop and mobile devices. Autoline Drive is a powerful management tool built around a new accounting and financial suite that is totally integrated and offers the dealers a 360-degree view of their businesses in real time.
PSA selected CDK Global’s system as one of the three choices for dealers, following the streamlining of software providers to enhance usability and simplify operations for its retailer network. The first dealers in Benelux will begin piloting the new Autoline Drive systems this year.
CDK Global Benelux has worked with PSA in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg for more than 25 years. The introduction of Autoline Drive for PSA has no impact on the support of the current dealer management systems (EVA or Autoline).
Blinker, the peer-to-peer car sales app, has been named a Colorado Company to Watch in recognition of its influence as a growing company in Colorado.
The online used-car marketplace, led by John Elway Dealers and Summit Automotive Partners founder Rod Buscher, was launched in Denver in September.
Each year, Colorado Companies to Watch honors second-stage companies that develop valuable products and services, create quality jobs and generate new industries in Colorado, according to Blinker.
The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, the Edward Lowe Foundation and community partners from across Colorado launched the program in 2009.
“Blinker is honored to receive this distinction, and we are proud to be based in Colorado,” Buscher said in a news release. “After doing business here for more than three decades, we built Blinker to innovate the auto industry by putting people in control of car ownership using a mobile app, in the same way that Airbnb revolutionized its industry.”
Blinker is among 50 companies Colorado Companies to Watch selected to honor this year. Since the program’s inception, its distinction has been presented to 400 companies.
Additionally, earlier this year, Blinker was selected for the SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards in recognition of its creativity, form, function and overall experience in the New Economy category.
Last year, Blinker was honored by the Denver Office of Economic Development during the 2016 Denver Startup Week when it named the company a Denver Gazelle, which is a distinction reserved for Denver companies exhibiting both high growth and job creation potential.
For more information about the Colorado Companies to Watch program, visit ColoradoCompaniestoWatch.org.
VinSolutions is set to host its annual VinWorx User Summit on July 11 and July 12 at the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center in Kansas City, Mo.
The two-day summit provides attendees training on improving CRM utilization and how to use data to increase customer retention.
"Automotive and marketing trends are changing on an ongoing basis, coupled with a shifting sales forecast in automotive. For dealerships to stay ahead of their competition, they need to know how to create a personalized customer experience and how to maximize marketing, lead-generation and ongoing customer engagement," VinSolutions Senior Director of Performance Management Mark Vickery said in a news release. "VinWorx is the perfect setting for dealers to gain some new insights, skills and approaches to making their dealerships more profitable."
VinWorx speakers, break-out sessions and software training will focus on topics relevant to auto dealers, such as what dealerships can expect from the car selling process in today’s digital landscape.
Breakout sessions will cover three themes related to VinSolutions' Connect CRM: Connect, Ignite and Succeed.
The summit's line-up of keynote speakers includes Cox Automotive Chief Operating Officer Mark O'Neil; Tim Mueller, automotive industry strategist from Google; PCG Communications founder Brian Pasch; and Mike Burgiss, Cox Automotive’s vice president of digital retailing.
"We are always asked by our customers what can be done to make them better dealers," Vickery added. "At VinWorx, you can have that conversation with VinSolutions experts and your peers from across the country."
For more additional information about VinWorx or to register for the summit, click here.
In response to increasing demand, Car Keys Express has expanded its nationwide footprint to now include Alaska and Hawaii, the company recently announced.
The initial rollout of service will begin in O'ahu, Hawaii, in July, followed by Anchorage, Alaska, in August.
“Both Alaska and Hawaii represent untapped markets. The opportunity to provide full-service, on-site key replacement to Hawaii’s booming car rental agency sector and Alaska’s abundance of automotive fleets related to the oil and gas industry are more than enough reason to justify the investment,” Car Keys Express vice president of sales and marketing Michael Bliss said in a news release.
Car Keys Express now offers services in all 50 states and currently covers more than 1,700 cities.
The company said it expects to extend service to more cities before the end of the year.
Reviver recently announced that it has appointed Fabrice Barbier as chief operations officer to oversee the product, design and development of rPlate, which recently hit markets in California.
Barbier most recently served as senior vice president of consumer devices at GoPro.
He has over 30 years of experience in technology, business strategy, product development and operations, according to Reviver.
“Fabrice’s experience heading a team whose disruptive solutions reinvented photography and camera mobility — and brought it to the masses — will be invaluable as we continue to expand rPlate's capabilities,” Reviver chief executive officer and founder Neville Boston said in a news release. “We are very excited to welcome him to our team as we positively disrupt automotive connectivity.”
During Barbier's six years at GoPro, revenues increased from $65 million to $1.6 billion, according to Reviver.
Prior to joining GoPro in 2013, Barbier spent four years at Flextronics as senior director of technology and product management, where he developed several new product line initiatives in display, computing, components and modules for mobile industries.
“It’s thrilling to join the team responsible for a fundamental shift in automobile design and connectivity – the rPlate brings change and innovation to a part of the car that has remained the same for 125 years, and will be a key component in a global ‘connected car’ eco-system,” Barbier said.
“Because Reviver worked in close collaboration with state DMVs and lawmakers while developing the rPlate, this technology is not only a reality, but also road-ready.
"I’m looking forward to working closely with the team as we develop the next generations of the rPlate,” he added.
automotiveMastermind has been named a winner of the Red Herring Top 100 North America award, which recognizes industry-leading companies' innovation and technological advancements.
"It's an honor to be recognized among some of the most exciting and innovative companies in North America," automotiveMastermind chief executive officer and co-founder Marco Schnabl said in a news release. "This award truly showcases the dedication of our team. Since the beginning of this year, we've added four automotive brands to our platform and have grown more than 200 percent. We look forward to continuing to deliver industry-leading predictive analytics to our dealer partners."
Red Herring Top 100 America awards about 1,200 qualified companies throughout the U.S. and Canada.
During a months-long process, Red Herring's editorial team examines a variety of criteria concerning each company, including financial performance, innovation, business strategy and market penetration, according to automotiveMastermind.
"2017's crop of Top 100 winners has been among our most intriguing yet. North America has led the way in tech for so many years, and to see such unique, pioneering entrepreneurs and companies has been a thrilling experience," Red Herring chairman Alex Vieux said.
"What has excited me most is to see so many people forging niches in high-tech and cutting-edge sectors. Some of the technical wizardry and first-rate business models showcased here at the conference has been fantastic to learn about. We believe automotiveMastermind embodies the drive, skill and passion on which tech thrives. They should be proud of this achievement — the competition was incredibly strong."
Previous Red Herring Top 100 winners include Alibaba, Facebook, Google, Skype, SuperCell, Spotify, Twitter and YouTube.
For a complete list of this year’s winners, visit http://www.redherring.com/2017-rhna-winners.
CarStory has released an enhanced version of its Market Reports that is designed to heighten mobile shopper engagement on VDPs, according to the artificial intelligence platform’s creator Chad Bockius.
“The main focus for this release was all about the design, in terms of the look and feel, but more importantly how we represent the analytics that we share and how to optimize Market Reports for mobile shopping,” Bockius said in a phone interview with Auto Remarketing.
“Over three-fourths of consumers today are shopping on their mobile device — both on their couch and on the lot. And as a result of that, it has created a culture of skimmers.”
Because mobile devices have become the primary type of interface for a large majority of the population it is important to make mobile shopping experiences conveniently engaging, Bockius explained.
“They’re going to skim information quickly and we had to address that,” he said.
“We had to create an experience that allows consumers to access and consume the data the way that they want it. Which is just a reality of 2017.”
CarStory Market Reports is now fitted with added additional data elements, such as a feature on the Market Reports home screen where machine learning is used to automatically identify images, according to Bockius,
“Based on our research, we know exactly which images consumers want to see first, and we use that data and our machine learning to process those images to create a collage on the first screen of the Market Report. Which is not just a nice design element, but more importantly it’s giving information to the consumer,” Bockius explained. “It’s not giving them the information over text, it’s giving them information visually, so they can see what features the vehicle has.”
Bockius said CarStory offers dealers three benefits: more engagement, more leads and ultimately more sales.
“In our research, we have found that dealers who have employed Market Reports see a 60 percent decrease in bounce rate. And we have seen a 24 percent increase in lead conversion,” he said.
Bockius believes the dealer VDP should be the best resource for a consumer who is making that decision to buy.
“The more people that you are bringing into the door, the more you are going to be able to sell. If you can’t engage that consumer on the VDP, it’s the equivalent of having that consumer walk off your lot,” he said.
“We have brought all the critical research information directly to bare on the dealers’ VDP to keep those consumers engaged and tell the consumer the whole story, so that ultimately they can make that confident decision to buy.”
CarStory has the largest depository of inventory data in the industry, according to Bockius.
“It’s quite amazing, the amount of science and the amount of data processing that occurs to generate these reports, but at the end of the day our goal is to hide all that to ultimately create a simple summary that consumers can access right on that dealer VDP,” he said. “When we analyze the data, we are looking at a specific vehicle relative to the market competition in a local area. All of our data comes down to two buckets of data we have to sort and analyze the first is all of the market supply data or the actual inventory, so what is available for sale today — that’s part of the data.”
Bockius said consumer demand data, which covers a variety of things, is the second source of CarStory data.
“We look at what consumers are searching for, the vehicles that they are spending their time on, the vehicles they are cross shopping and the features they are looking for,” he added.
Bockius mentioned that Kevin Frye, eCommerce director of Jeff Wyler Automotive Family once told him that with CarStory Market Reports, he can become an instant expert on every car on the lot.
“You can imagine how difficult it is for any salesperson to know the specific, the whole story about hundreds of cars,” he said. "We automate that process for you, we can put that information right in your pocket and you can be an expert whether you’re talking to a consumer on the phone or on the lot instantly, and that is going to help dealers move metal,”
CarStory is completely free to dealers. For more information, about Market Reports or to become a participating dealer, visit dealers.carstory.com.
ELEAD1ONE recently announced a partnership with automotive recall news and data provider Recall Masters to integrate real-time vehicle recall lookup data into the company’s lane management application Service1One.
Getting recall status information via the app during the mobile check-in process not only saves time during the initial inspection stage but prevents potential upsets between dealers and their customers, according to ELEAD1ONE.
“Trust can be a hard thing to establish with service customers. To discover that their vehicle needs to stay in longer for a recall repair – or even worse – that they have a recall which the dealership failed to repair, is not exactly great for customer relations,” Recall Masters president Chris Miller said in a news release.
“Our integration with ELEAD1ONE’s Lane Management Application enables the dealership to inform customers about any open recall in real-time while the initial check-in and inspection are done. This then helps build trusting relationships between automotive dealers and their customers.”
The Service1One lane app provides advisors with customer service tools designed to streamline the lane process.
On the app, advisors can quickly access customer appointment information, service history, pricing menus, inspections and real-time recall information.
Additionally, the line items on the RO Summary Estimate can be easily added or removed so that customers always get an accurate quote.
“We all know that service lanes can get hectic. Our aim is to provide dealers with the tools to increase service efficiency and give customers the ultimate service experience,” said ELEAD1ONE partner Bill Wittenmyer. “With the huge level of vehicle recalls, informing customers of any that affect their vehicle can be a major pain point for most auto dealers. Service departments will greatly benefit from real-time recall status information integrated with our Service1One Lane Management App.”
For more information about ELEAD1ONE’s or the Service1One app, visit http://www.elead-crm.com/products/service/automotive-service-management-service1one/.
Dominion Dealer Solutions’ CRM and lead management systems, Autobase and Web ControlTM, are now both premium CRM products for General Motors.
As part of GM’s Dealer Technology Assistance Program (DTAP), Dominion has agreed to complete integration to all available GM DTAP Data service integrations by the end of Q4.
Through DTAP, GM makes its data available in their dealers’ own CRM systems to improve sales, customer experience and customer satisfaction.
"General Motors bestows a Premium product designation on select CRM solutions that provide deep database integrations so dealers can do business as efficiently as possible all in one place," Dominion director of OEM partnerships Ryan Kelly said in a news release. "Dominion is proud that both Web Control and Autobase are recognized as Premium CRM products and have been approved for the iMR Turnkey Vendor Program."
GM dealers who utilize either Dominion Autobase or Web Control can now access GM tools from the client record. Previously, the tools were only accessible from various GM websites and other GM internal systems.
Key integration points that have been enhanced include DCDE Customer Search, VPS – Incentives Offer Management and VPS – GM Credit Card.
The integrations are now available to both Dominion Autobase and Web Control customers at no additional charge.
Additionally, Dominion said over the next several months it will also be adding both its Vehicle Locate Service (VLS) and Vehicle Invoice Service (VIS) for the GM dealers.
Auto/Mate Dealership Systems's DMS is now fully integrated with automotive CRM and BDC solutions provider DealerMine.
DealerMine is a 360-degree automotive CRM solution designed to advance revenue in both the sales and service departments.
The solution’s CRM can handle prospecting, lead management, desking and campaigns for sales departments and help drive traffic and maximize dealer’s shop capacity through service scheduling, online scheduling and telephony solutions, according to Auto/Mate.
"We welcome DealerMine as an Open/Mate partner," Auto/Mate president and chief executive officer Mike Esposito said in a news release. "DealerMine's CRM solution provides way more than just contact management; it provides dealers with the actionable data they need to increase their competitiveness at every stage of the sales and service cycle."
Additionally, Auto/Mate said it currently offers seamless integration for third-party vendors with its Open/Mate program.
"Auto/Mate is an advocate of open standards integration as a way to increase competition, lower prices and improve the quality of products offered by all vendors," the dealership DMS software provider said.
