Two Innovations to Support Your Inventory Management Strategy | vAuto

Today’s increasingly complex used car industry presents some serious challenges for dealers. It’s getting harder to find cars that align with your inventory management strategy. And it’s also getting harder to make your listings stand out online so car shoppers notice them. At vAuto, we’re aware of these challenges, and we’ve been working to develop solutions to help you overcome them.

1. Find Inventory that Matches Your Acquisition Strategy

For the past several years, inventory shortages have forced you to cast a wider net to find the vehicles you need. But you don’t always know how to acquire cars across channels in a way that aligns with your inventory management strategy. As a result, we’ve seen many dealers end up buying the wrong cars for the wrong reasons and at the wrong prices — while missing cars that actually meet their inventory needs. All of this makes it hard to measure and manage how your acquisition strategy actually performs across channels. This lack of management oversight and strategic disconnect creates inefficiencies and results in less-than-ideal outcomes, especially in today’s multi-channel sourcing environment.

Our new innovation, ProfitTime^® GPS Global Search, solves these problems by helping you implement an acquisition strategy that aligns with your gross and volume goals. In fact, it’s the first-of-its-kind omnichannel sourcing platform tied to your inventory management strategy. Global Search builds on the capabilities of the ProfitTime GPS Global Acquisition System to bring the power of Variable Management’s investment-minded methodology across your acquisition process, and in the hands of your acquisition team.  

With Global Search, you can:

• Get access to nearly 1 million listings all in one place and you can easily filter them to view the vehicles that align (or don’t) with your inventory management strategy.
• Acquire inventory from up to seven sources: auction, off-lease, service drive, Kelley Blue Book^® Instant Cash Offer, private party listings via VAN, missed appraisals, and dealer trades.
• Prioritize and purchase vehicles more profitably.
• Establish the right exit strategy for every vehicle as part of your sourcing strategy.
• Manage your performance across multiple channels.

Plus, if you use Global Search with Stockwave to carry out your sourcing strategy at auction, you can reference vehicle-specific insights and get notifications for cars of interest to you during multi-lane live auction events. This information helps you acquire the right vehicle at the right price and avoid costly mistakes.

2. Promote the Hidden Value of Every Car You List

When searching for a car, 71% of shoppers only compare cars online. As a result, it’s more important than ever for you to highlight the unique aspects of the cars you list — but doing so requires time you don’t have.  

That’s why we’ve developed Vehicle Intelligence 360. This new automatically creates compelling, interactive VDPs that enable shoppers to discover high-value and often untold features and condition attributes of used vehicles to realize their full ROI potential.

With Vehicle Intelligence 360, you can:

• Automate the collection and curation of vehicle content using your existing processes.
• Surface condition attributes in Xtime repair order data or vAuto custom starred or checked features.
• Automatically generated story cards featuring expert content from Kelley Blue Book enable buyers to understand all the features, functions and value of the car
• Leverage flexible media integrations that use your existing processes to capture, import or stitch 360-degree spins.
• Optimize the experience for consumers with mobile-first design.

In August 2023 we asked 357 dealers across franchise, independent and wholesale channels what they thought of Vehicle Intelligence 360. Nearly 70% of dealers who have heard about Vehicle Intelligence 360 said it’ll help them better highlight vehicle features that matter most to customers and will differentiate their vehicles in the market. Further survey results show that:

• Nearly two-thirds of dealers feel the Vehicle Intelligence 360 VDPs are better than their current ones.
• 69% of dealers agree that Vehicle Intelligence 360 would help their dealership better highlight vehicle features that matter most to consumers.
• 68% of dealers agree that the solution would help their dealership better highlight features that help differentiate a vehicle in the marketplace.

ProfitTime GPS Global Search and Vehicle Intelligence 360 are just the latest in a long list of innovations vAuto has developed to help dealerships improve their processes and become more profitable.

To learn more about how vAuto’s new innovations can support your inventory management strategy and profitability, request a demo today.