Your New Best Friend in Car Dealer Inventory Management
Who are we kidding? Car dealer inventory management isn’t sexy at all. In fact, it’s quite boring.
It actually brings me back to early in my career when I worked as an inventory marketer and merchandiser at the North Shore Auto mall in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
For three days each week I’d hop on the skytrain, make my way downtown Vancouver, get on the sea bus (water taxi) and eventually end up at the Auto mall. With my Fuji Finepix digital camera in hand, I’d proceed to take 32 to 34 photos of nearly 200+ vehicles.
The process for uploading the vehicles to each dealer’s website was excruciating. I had to download the photos from the memory cards (yes, I needed multiple cards), organize them by dealership, and then by vehicle type. That task alone took hours.
STICK WITH ME! There’s a point here…
Once that was complete, I then had the painstaking task of renaming each photo by it’s stock number. Whichever photo I wanted to appear first had to be [stock number]0, then [stock number]_1 then 2 and 3 all the way up to 34. You get the idea.
As if that wasn’t enough. I then had to upload each vehicle one by one. That’s not all! I then had to make sure that each feature was selected for every vehicle. One. Checkbox. At. A. Time.
“THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY!” I’d lament.
There wasn’t. Not until…
Car Dealer Inventory Management, Reimagined
Dan and I reimagined what inventory management software could look like.
It started simple.
Bulk uploading photos without needed to rename them. Time saver unlock achieved.
Then we added VIN decoding, and then bulk price adjustments.
With each feature, our car dealer inventory management software became more and more efficient.
Eventually we opened our software up to dealers, and gathered real feedback. Not just what we could dream up to make the job faster and easier, but ideas from real every-day car dealers.
Incentives. Rebates. Color-matched vehicle photos. Window stickers and unlimited inventory data feeds. At one point we even built a custom desking tool that only one dealer ended up using (yes, we’ve learned our lesson).
With each new dealership partner, we learned more and more about how complex and BOOOORING inventory management is.
But also how incredibly necessary it is!
We all get it: traditional inventory management is a drag.
It can feel like you’re juggling with one hand tied behind your back. Keeping track of stock levels, updating vehicle info, keeping track of budgets, and age, and feeds — it’s time consuming and definitely a snooze-fest.
That’s why we decided to lean in.
Enter ARIA: A Breath of Fresh AI(R)
ARIA (Automated Response Inventory Algorithm) is the next step in our mission to streamlining dealership inventory management. It's like having a super-smart robot buddy who takes care of the grunt work, so you can focus on the fun stuff (like interdepartmental drama). ARIA combines all of the robust inventory data that we’ve built over the last decade and then uses AI to automate all those tedious tasks you shouldn’t have to do. It's a win-win: you get more time, and your inventory management gets a whole lot smarter.
Cool Stuff ARIA Can Do For You
Smart Data Analysis: Picture this: ARIA dives into your inventory data and surfaces with nuggets of gold – insights about pricing, what vehicles are hot and what vehicles are not, and can even tell you what turning inventory has in common so that you can make smarter aquisitions at auction or off the street. It's like having your own data whiz while simultaneously saving you from building yet another spreadsheet (yes, we’re looking at you Colby!)
No More Oops Moments: Missing photos? Incomplete car descriptions? This issue may not seem like a lot, but what if I told you it would save you thousands on wasted opportunities and ad spend? You see, vehicles without photos won’t get sent in your vehicle ads feeds, which means they won’t be advertised, which means a percentage of your vehicles aren’t getting eyeballs, which means you’re also spending more to advertise a limited inventory. Oof!
We built ARIA to have your back. It spots these merchandising discrepancies and fixes them on autopilot. You’ll never have to worry about it again and will save hundreds of hours per year just not having to do this one task ever again.
The Inside Scoop on Your Cars: Want to know which cars are the stars of your lot? ARIA tracks which vehicles are getting the most love, so you can make smart decisions on what to stock.
Unlimited, Bi-directional Data Feeds: ARIA simplifies life by handling the nitty-gritty. Not only can you have it send your inventory to 3rd parties, it can also send inventory data back to your original inventory source.
Follow me for a sec: It’s Thursday morning and you notice the prices on some of your vehicles are incorrect. You also notice other vehicles are missing photos. The only option: Log into vAuto, update the information and then cross your fingers that the new data will overwrite at 2am when the feed pushes again.
You’ve now had to wait 17 hours for the information to update on your website. Big OOF!
With ARIA, you can update the price, get the missing photos taken care of and then feed the data out to all third parties immediately, and also feed the updated information back to vAuto. That way, the next time the feed runs, all of your information remains accurate. You solved the speed to market issue and the data accuracy issue. Thanks, ARIA!
I know what you’re probably thinking… Nobody has solved any of this yet?
Nope. Crazy, right? Until now that is…
And this is only the tippy tippy top of the iceberg. The possibilities are limitless with ARIA. It’s not just a tool; it’s your partner in making car dealership inventory management a breeze. It can handle all the tasks that should’ve never been on your plate to begin with.
It removes the absolute mind-boggling suck from inventory management.
That’s the mission we’re on. ARIA is the solution.
Wanna give ARIA a try? Join the list to kick things off!
