An Emphasis On Efficiency, Innovation at NADA

I’m ready for NADA. Are you?

I’ve been asking that question, along with a follow-up—what are you ready for?

The answers I’ve gleaned from dealers all boil down to essentially the same thing: Dealers are hungry for ways they can become better, more efficient, and more profitable.

It’s the right answer, particularly as you consider new and used vehicle sales volumes in the early months of 2018, and the profit these transactions deliver.

I can’t get past a couple recent stats from NADA. On average, dealers reported a -$2 net profit per used vehicle retailed in 2017, and -$421 net profit per new vehicle retailed.

To be sure, the averages don’t apply to every dealer. In particular, the net profit average for used vehicles seems to owe more to factory influence and intervention on import dealers than true-blue market forces.

Nonetheless, you can’t deny that we’re in an era of margin compressed profitability, which is why some dealers are making NADA a stepping stone to get better, be more efficient and make more money.

At vAuto, we’re answering this important call by bringing two key product innovations, and an enhancement, to NADA this year.

Nexi: We began this product development with a simple goal: Let’s find a way to help dealers manage their businesses without having to bury themselves in a software application. Say hello to Nexi, the automotive industry’s first digital assistant for dealers. It’s built to proactively provide the operational and inventory insights you need to do your job more efficiently. Nexi notifies you through Alexa Echo devices, as well as email, in-application alerts and text messages.

Stockwave Offers: It made the most sense to apply Nexi’s artificial intelligence (AI) architecture to one of the most energy- and time-intensive tasks that happens at every dealership, every day—finding and acquiring wholesale inventory. Enter Stockwave Offers, which tells you when the units that meet your profit and acquisition criteria can be purchased.

Provision Enterprise: It’s become ever-more important for dealer groups to maximize the innate advantages their scale and size offers. There’s growing recognition that you can’t achieve these advantages without a more cohesive, comprehensive and efficient approach to managing your rooftops. Enter Provision Enterprise, which features a tell-all dashboard, centralized appraising and inventory transfer options.

For each of these efficiency-focused innovations, I’ve insisted that they cannot carry an additional cost for dealers. It’s my view that now is simply not the time to be asking dealers, who are operating in an unprecedented era of margin compression, for more money.

Thankfully, the leadership at vAuto and Cox Automotive agreed. As a result, we will be offering all of these products at no additional cost at NADA—an outcome that makes me proud.

I’m off to pack my bags. As usual, I will be spending the majority of my NADA time at the vAuto and Stockwave booths (3016C and 3038C, respectively).

I look forward to seeing many of you there. Safe travels!