Several automotive companies have been recognized recently for their contributions to their employees and their products.
First off, Fortune and Great Place to Work recently released the 2015 list of 50 Best Workplaces for Diversity. Among the automotive-related businesses honored were Credit Acceptance (19), JM Family Enterprises (47) and CarMax (48).
All of the aforementioned companies were also honored by Fortune and Essence on their list of 10 Best Workplaces for African-Americans, ranked in order with Credit Acceptance (2), CarMax (6) and JM Family Enterprises (9).
The awards were based on surveys of over 128,000 women and 69,000 minority employees nationwide.
“We credit our growth and success to our hardworking, dedicated associates, which is just one reason why providing a diverse environment where they feel valued and good about coming to work is so essential,” said Colin Brown, JM Family’s president and chief executive officer. “Since this ranking is a reflection of what our associates are experiencing, it is an even greater honor to be recognized on such an exceptional list.”
In other award-related news, Solid Keys USA also recently announced that its new product, “Universal Car Keys,” was voted as the Best New Product at the 2015 Automotive Aftermarket Product Expo in Las Vegas last week.
Mark Lanwehr, the company’s president, was excited to receive the award.
“We’re glad we did as well as we had hoped,” Lanwehr said. “There were hundreds of great products competing, but the Universal Car Key is such a unique and special product we knew it would be a hit. We’re glad the AAPEX panel of buyers recognized our unique value proposition — the world's first Universal Car Keys and Universal Car Remotes bring automotive key replacement back into the hands of retailers and repair professionals something that’s been absent for decades.”
To learn more about Solid Keys USA, check out its site here.
IHS Automotive announced the second-generation iteration of its global aftermarket solution, WorldView 2.0, during the recent Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo in Las Vegas.
According to IHS, WorldView is the industry’s “most complete resource for analyzing vehicles in operation” as well as both aftermarket and OEM parts intelligence.
The update to WorldView headed into the product’s second generation included the following changes,as listed by IHS:
- OEM platform and program coding – supplements the global make/model search capability for easier identification of global vehicle equivalents
- Graphical user interface with dashboards – provides quick access to frequently asked questions about global VIO, forecasts, and average vehicle age
- Workflow-based organization of functionality – focused work areas based on user profiles
- More intuitive query building for faster data navigation – allowing users to develop analytics faster and easier
- More flexible data export capability – once analysis is formatted via query building and cross-tab functionality, provides the ability to export identical format into Excel or CSV
Mark Seng, the global aftermarket practice leader at IHS Automotive, says that the program offers the “most comprehensive view of the global vehicle market in terms that our customers can relate to — in a format that is easier to use than ever before.”
“As the global automotive aftermarket has evolved, we have identified new opportunities to provide our customers with additional insight that helps them navigate and identify new business opportunities — across the entire aftermarket value chain,” Seng said.
For those not previously acquainted with WorldView, the company listed the following information as being available to its users:
- Global Vehicles in Operation (VIO) – Vehicle population figures for over 100 markets around the world.
- Global VIO Forecasts – providing the ability to trend the data historically and into the future.
- OE Parts Research – OE part numbers, specifications and vehicle fitment details
- Aftermarket Industry Standards (ACES, TecDoc) – helping bridge across part numbers and vehicle population counts to provide the most accurate account of fitment opportunities
- OE/Aftermarket Parts Catalog Analysis – analyze catalog coverage against both the OEM and the VIO.
- OEM Program and Platform Code Visibility – identify global vehicle equivalents around the world.
For more information about IHS’ insights into the automotive industry, visit its site dedicated to the topic here.
Dealers: ever wish the hang tags for your inventory on the lot would update themselves? That’s the aim for eCarTag, a subsidiary of Pearl Technology Holdings, who announced that its digital hang tags have just completed a first test pilot with Sonic Automotive, who plans to install the tags at all of its dealerships next year.
Sonic tested the tags for 90 days at its flagship dealership, Town and Country Toyota, in Charlotte, N.C.
Following what Pearl says was an “overwhelmingly successful” pilot, the company says that Sonic has ordered tags for its entire new and pre-owned inventory across the country, with a rollout to begin in 2016.
“We were thrilled that the pilot was so successful,” said Jeff Dyke, Sonic Automotive’s executive vice president of operations. “Dealers can sympathize with the amount of labor and effort that goes into changing paper tags on a daily basis in more than 100 Sonic dealerships across the U.S.
“Here at Sonic we have aggressive market pricing strategies across our dealerships that utilize a central custom pricing platform. The tags solve a huge issue for us and give us the speed and technology we have desperately needed. Such a simple idea, but not so simple to execute. So, I commend Pearl for bringing eCarTag to market and I’m sure other dealers will do the same.”
According to Pearl, the eCarTag digital tags are battery powered with an estimated battery life of approximately four years and a replacement cost of said batteries of only a “few dollars.” The tags can be installed and programmed by simply scanning a vehicle’s VIN and the digital tag with a smartphone. The tag then instantly synchronizes the vehicle to its listed price, which will proceed to update automatically.
The tags have other tricks, too, such as displaying up to five different messages in rotation, which can display targeted messages such as lowest payments, promoted sales, or even congratulate a customer who just purchased the vehicle.
“Paper hang tags have long been a hassle for dealers and are one of the most glaring changes that have been needed for decades,” said Bruce Thompson, Pearl’s chief executive officer. “Dealers are changing prices on the Internet faster than ever before. They pay attention to the competition and some dealers change prices daily. Most states regulate that the price on the Internet and the price on the lot must be the same.
“This creates a huge logistical challenge at the dealership. We simply catch the Internet feed from the dealer’s listing tool and as prices change on the Internet, they are instantly changed on the lot.”
For more information on eCarTags, visit its site here.
Two-hundred million dollars. That’s the high end of the fine that vehicle-part manufacturer Takata will have to pay the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for its indiscretions in violating the Motor Vehicle Safety Act with its handling of defective airbag inflators.
With an initial penalty of $70 million due in cash, the remaining $130 million imposed by the fine would become due if Takata fails to meet its commitments in remedying the situation or if additional violations of the Safety Act are discovered.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, this is the largest civil penalty in NHTSA’s history.
“For years, Takata has built and sold defective products, refused to acknowledge the defect, and failed to provide full information to NHTSA, its customers, or the public,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “The result of that delay and denial has harmed scores of consumers and caused the largest, most complex safety recall in history. Today’s actions represent aggressive use of NHTSA’s authority to clean up these problems and protect public safety.”
In addition to the fine, the consent order requires Takata to phase out the manufacture and sale of inflators that use phase-stabilized ammonium nitrate propellant, which DOT believes to be a factor in the explosive ruptures that caused seven deaths and nearly 100 injuries in the U.S.
The consent order also lays out a schedule for recalling the airbags that are still actively in use, unless the company can prove they are safe or show otherwise why it has determined its inflators are prone to rupture.
In addition to admitting to being aware of the defect and failing to issue a timely recall in the consent order, Takata will also experience what the DOT considers “unprecedented oversight” for the next five years, which will include an independent monitor selected by NHTSA to assess, track and report the company’s compliance with the phase-out schedule and the other requirements of the consent order while also overseeing what the DOT calls its Coordinated Remedy Program.
“Today, we are holding Takata responsible for its failures, and we are taking strong action to protect the traveling public,” said NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind. “We are accelerating Takata recalls to get safe air bags into American vehicles more quickly, ensuring that consumers at the greatest risk are protected, and addressing the long-term risk of Takata’s use of a suspect propellant.”
According to the DOT, a separate Coordinated Remedy Order was issued to Takata and the 12 other vehicle manufacturers involved in the existing Takata recalls.
The department said it directs those involved to prioritize their remedy programs based on risk and establishes a schedule by which they must have sufficient parts on hand to remedy the defect for all affected vehicles. The order establishes the aforementioned Coordinated Remedy Program which says NHTSA will oversee the supply of remedy parts and manage future recalls with the assistance of an independent third-party monitor.
Under the Coordinated Remedy Order, DOT says, vehicle manufacturers must ensure they have sufficient replacements on hand to meet consumer demand for the highest-risk inflators by June 2016, and provide final remedies for all vehicles — including those that will receive interim remedies because of supply and design issues — by the end of 2019.
Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Brauer says this all sounds like a small step toward a solution instead of a be-all and end-all resolution.
“It’s interesting to see Takata fined while so many questions remain unanswered,” Brauer said. “We still don’t have confirmation on what exactly is causing the problem with these inflators, and we still don’t know the full extent of the vehicles involved. The recent recall of Takata airbags in new GM, Honda and Volkswagen models suggests there could be an ongoing problem with the bags’ fundamental design. This feels like a single step in a larger process, rather than a resolution to the issue.”
Given the incredibly connected reality of today’s technology infused business practices, it might be difficult for dealers to track just exactly where data from their company — and their customers — is traveling.
CDK Global hopes to help with that through its free Dealer Data Exchange product.
Designed to give dealers more visibility into the flow of their information going to manufacturers and third-party vendors, CDK hopes its DDX solution will help give piece of mind to dealers in the current digital landscape, where everyone can be vulnerable to security breaches.
"A data breach can put your dealership's reputation at risk," said Jim Foote, chief business security officer at CDK Global. "With the daily business challenges facing dealers, security can easily become an afterthought.
"But just like you have a system to keep track of the keys from the cars on your lot, you need a way to keep track of the connections to your DMS and where your data is distributed. With DDX, we're giving our dealers a free tool to provide the visibility they've been asking for."
Want to check out DDX? Click here.
Here are a few extra security tips for dealers, provided by CDK:
- Create a plan: Developing a comprehensive plan to proactively protect your data and to deal with potential data security breaches will help to prevent and deal with them should something arise. Be sure to include best practices for employees using e-mail, social media, safe web browsing and interacting with customers and vendors online.
- Educate your employees: Ninety-one percent of targeted cyber-attacks start with a phishing e-mail. Make sure everyone in the dealership is educated about how to spot a phishing attack; if it looks and sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
- Change passwords frequently: The most common risky behaviors by employees are the failure to change passwords frequently, reusing the same passwords and user names, and leaving the computer unattended. Make sure passwords are complex, always lock machines when not in use and use software that enforces strong passwords.
- Update software: Making sure you have the most up-to-date software helps ensure that the systems you are using include current protections against hackers. With the complexity of modern software ever-changing, security gaps are more prevalent in outdated software, which exposes your business to hackers via previously identified flaws in system technology.
For more information about CDK Global, visit its site here.
Digital marketing intelligence company Netsertive announced Tuesday it has been selected to join Kia’s list of digital providers.
The company is now one of six Kia Certified Website and Digital Advertising providers, a program that began in September at the Kia National Dealer Meeting in Las Vegas.
“Digital advertising is an important focus of our business to ensure that our dealerships are showing up in search and are using our brand-compliant assets to achieve success,” said Gene Black, national manager of digital sales at Kia Motors America. “Automotive shoppers average 19 hours of online research and will visit just one or two dealerships before buying. Netsertive will help us drive more sales with measurable, results-driven strategy designed to target those online consumers.”
Netsertive offers a variety of digital solutions for dealers, including its MarketWise for OEMs and StreetWise for Automotive Dealers products. For more information, check out its site here.
“As Netsertive continues to be chosen as a partner of choice, it validates the role of local digital marketing programs for automotive dealers and manufacturers,” said Brendan Morrissey, Netsertive’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “We are honored to be selected by a major brand, such as Kia. It is a true testament to both the power of our offerings and our phenomenal team, and we look forward to the work we will do together.”
Have a GoMoto Digital HUB in your showroom or service bay that you’re looking to easily integrate into your customer relationship management system? Do you utilize VinSolutions’ VinConnect CRM and looking for a way to expand its usefulness? Maybe you even use both?
Either way, VinSolutions announced Monday that the two solutions have integrated, allowing for the customer information entered into a GoMoto HUB to be sent directly to the dealership’s VinConnect CRM tool.
Todd Marcelle, GoMoto’s chief executive officer and founder, commented on the situation in VinSolutions’ release.
"We are excited to announce an integrated customer experience with VinSolutions as they have continually been innovators in automotive,” Marcelle said. “Our partnership will improve the in-store customer experience, streamline the car-buying process and provide powerful data for dealer management to improve performance."
For more information on these two offerings from VinSolutions and GoMoto, visit the VinConnect site here or the GoMoto HUB site here.
Putting the auction at the center of the retail trade-in process — sounds odd, right?
Not to Selectbidder, a Web platform and smartphone app that aims to utilize the auction’s traditional role of dealer network and bring it to the front end of the retail process to help get the dominos dropping a bit faster.
Based out of the Canadian city of Moncton, New Brunswick, Selectbidder has recently taken its first official strides into the United States market by signing its first U.S. wholesale partner, Space Coast Auto Auction, over 1,800 miles away in Melbourne, Fla.
It’s only fitting that that relationship was also auction-facilitated — in this case, at last month's National Auto Auction Association Convention in Orlando, Fla.
So how does it work? To put it simply, Selectbidder takes an auction’s already established network of dealers and connects those with recent or pending trade-ins to interested buyers.
With the primary objectives of speed and transparency at the forefront, the aim is to spread the auction’s role from the middle of the process to the very beginning, making it clear to everyone involved in the process what a fair trade-in price will be and minimize the discrepancy that can sometimes result between the trade-in price and the at-auction price.
According to Sean Liptay, Selectbidder’s chief executive officer, it took a bit of experimenting to decide to make the auction the center of the environment.
“The trials and tribulations of trying to start a tech company,” Liptay said in a conversation with Auto Remarketing at the convention. “It took us to this point to find out the right product and market, and it turns out it’s having the auction at the center of the ecosystem.”
The company reached that point after three years of building its dealer-to-dealer platform.
After growing up in the wholesale business and serving as the second-generation owner of The Great Northern Auction (TGNA), the largest public auto auction in Eastern Canada, it makes sense that Liptay would understand the role auctions have always played as the “original dealer network.”
Kevin Berry, Selectbidder’s chief operating officer, says that Liptay saw the future of brick-and-mortar auctions in peril. After TGNA launched its pilot with three dealers in April and put the program into full deployment in May, the company said that Selectbidder has helped the auction gain more customers and more touch points, and has increased traffic through its lanes.
“And as we started doing that, started experimenting with dealers, we realized that the auction actually provided a lot of the value-added services to it,” Berry said. “And we started talking to dealers, too, who had tried other dealer-to-dealer platforms, and we realized that that was a key component missing and that the auction is the local market maker.
“They provide that trusted mediator to be able to facilitate a lot of these transactions. From the pickup, to the detailing, to the title services. The financing for the buying dealers. Arbitration. The list goes on. So we did a pivot and said, ‘you know, we’re going to do a dealer-to-dealer platform for the auction,’ really realizing that the auction is the original dealer network.”
Logan Keirstead, serving as both a business development representative for TGNA and a marketing and sales rep for Selectbidder, says that the latter system not only helps speed up the process — which can take as little as 20 minutes (and sometimes less) to start receiving offers — but can also take the dealership away from being the “bad guy” during a trade-in.
“We understand that the trade-in process is painful for most people … It needs to be a quick turnaround, because the consumers really want a price as quickly as possible. So we tried to make it instant.”
She later added: “The used-car manager is no longer the bad guy. He can turn and say, ‘These are the real offers coming from the auction where it’s going to go. This is what I can offer you for your trade-in.’”
Berry distilled the difference between how most dealers approach trade-ins and how they work with the Selectbidder system, pointing out how it can help make customers feel more at ease with the offer they receive.
“Right now a dealer will look it up in a book or online and say, ‘Black Book or Blue Book or whatever says it’s worth this much.’ My grandmother doesn’t know what that means,” Berry said. “Or they can say, ‘I called four wholesalers, and this is the best number I got.’ That customer doesn’t know whether or not to believe them.
“But with this, it’s a real system; you can show it and say, ‘here’s five offers from five real dealers.’ And it shows the condition reports, too, showing, ‘here’s the reasons why you might not be getting as much as that car you saw on Autotrader. You know, your check engine light’s on, you need new tires, you’ve got a cracked windshield.’ It takes them right through that.”
Liptay says the company has aspirations to take the system across the entire continent.
“The beauty of the product is that it can be up and running within a week in any location in North America, based around surrounding independent auctions,” Liptay said. “So it doesn’t matter if it’s the local auction in Florida versus the local auction in Louisiana, they can be up and running because they already have the relationship network built.”
Editor Joe Overby contributed to this story.
Insurance solution Fetchaquote.com announced Wednesday the integration of its auto insurance service with the Wayne Reaves Dealer Management Software.
According to the company, this integration will allow car shoppers the ability to quickly obtain multiple insurance quotes and purchase a policy online while present at a dealership.
Joseph Kindley, Fetch’s president, explained that by working with Fetch, the Wayne Reaves offerings receive an expanded portfolio of service providers with an integrated auto insurance solution.
"Wayne Reaves has been helping dealerships with software needs since 1987, and Fetch is excited to be on the Wayne Reaves platform,” Kindley said. “With this integration, Wayne Reaves' dealers will have an integrated option to allow their customers to shop for and purchase affordable automobile insurance from nationally recognized insurance carriers.”
According to the release, Wayne Reaves’ aim for the integration is to help streamline the process of transmitting customer information with insurance companies to help benefit not only the customers shopping in the dealership but the dealership personnel as well.
For more information Fetch’s offerings, click here. To find out more about Wayne Reaves, click here.
Vcommerce announced this month that it will use a membership system to support its collaborative efforts to unite the brick-and-mortar auction industry.
The organization was founded in June and soft launched its website on Labor Day. Founder Kelly Bianchi says that her platform aims to “bridge several gaps within the wholesale automotive industry” and is a natural fit for a membership structure based on feedback following its soft launch phase in September.
“We knew what was needed,” Bianchi said. “But we needed more input as to what would be the best approach for a Vcommerce intervention, and at what price customers would feel comfortable investing in their online initiative. The result became a member-based structure that blankets the online industry with a much-needed collaborative effort of marketing and support, while still providing the option for additional marketing services, training, and online management.”
According to the company, a membership to Vcommerce includes a full subscription to its website, where the service will focus on marketing.
“We need to extract the online business from the brick-and-mortar,” Bianchi said. “Our auction pages will not depict ‘Free Lunch in the Lane’ type of promotions. We want digital dealers to become acquainted with everything relevant to the online process, including incentives.”
To recap, through its portal, customers will be able to access services like the following from Vcommerce or Vcertified Partners:
■ Online auction management services
■ Online infrastructure support
■ Training
■ Sale day customer support
■ Technology vendor support
■ Marketing support
■ Other supplemental services
Scheduled to exhibit throughout the Used Car Week conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. next month, Bianchi hopes for Vcommerce to eventually represent the online auction community at the national level through heavy online marketing, direct sales initiatives, industry events and strategic partnerships.
“We need to start with a foundation,” Bianchi said. “For a $600/month membership, auctions can create the perception of a full online department as opposed to reducing their Internet credibility by allocating one online manager who is not entirely dedicated to the initiative.”
