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From gut instinct to data insights: How modern dealerships are transforming car shopping
Featuring Aharon Horwitz, Fullpath, and Brad Title, Gubagoo
Welcome to another edition of expert insights from the Car Dealership Guy Podcast, an episode recap that breaks down the high-level takeaways from the conversation.
In this episode, Aharon Horwitz, founder and CEO of Fullpath, and Brad Title, the founder and CEO of Gubagoo, discuss how dealers are transforming car shopping experiences with data, AI’s mainstream adoption in dealerships, 2025 predictions for data integration in automotive, and much more.
1. Dealers recognize the power of data.
Over the last 11 months, dealers have come to understand that their data architecture is critical to their businesses’ health. This is leading retailers to search for ways to merge their data sources into one central location, like a Customer Data Platform (CDP), making it easily accessible and more useful. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has also become more mainstream, with dealerships around the world adopting new software platforms for a variety of purposes.
Aharon notes that 83% of auto retailers are looking to spend even more money on A.I. going forward.
2. Connecting A.I. and data.
This new understanding of data and A.I. has created opportunities for dealerships, who can now connect a variety of backhouse platforms to the same information source. This will allow them to take more advantage of their data while enhancing the performance of everything from chatbots to omnichannel tools.
3. The advantages of connectivity.
Connecting all of the tools at a dealer’s disposal requires data segmentation, a process that categorizes information and makes it easier to share with different platforms as needed. Brad believes this will have a massive impact on the day-to-day of the dealership. For example, dealers will be able to know critical details about leads as soon as they arrive or pull up how many payments a customer has left on their vehicle when they dial their number. A.I.-powered analytics software will also be able to deliver deep insights with little effort on the user’s part, boosting efficiency.
4. Car buyers will see benefits too.
On the customer side, car buyers will benefit from a faster transaction process. Since dealers will have better access to data and the ability to pull information as needed regardless of where they’re interacting with the consumer, they’ll be able to form a better idea of what the shopper needs and connect them to the right options as quickly as possible.
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5. How current systems fall short.
Aharon explains that modern A.I. and data systems have yet to reach their full potential.
“Dealers really struggle today with getting everything that they need brought into a single place so that you can do stuff with it…What you want is one place where you can do actions, activities, and audiences supporting salespeople that both brings the best of everything into one spot and tries to resolve it all.” — Aharon
The reason this is so difficult is because data is spread across a multitude of sources, many of which are difficult to obtain information or insights from in a timely manner.
6. Partnering up to solve problems.
Fixing these challenges requires the right players at the right time. Up till now, vendors for the car industry have been held back by limited access to data. Since the tech sector is so fragmented, dealers have often been forced to rely on multiple competing providers, each of whom offers different tools while operating off different databases.
Uniting these platforms will require someone who has access to a massive amount of data along with all the APIs used for the different programs dealers use on a daily basis. Thankfully, the industry has now evolved to the point where major DMS providers have access to the resources and information they need to bridge the gap between A.I. and data.
7. The real-world applications.
Increased connectivity will allow dealers to make sales faster and more efficiently. Thanks to better data access across multiple tools, dealers can create hyper-segmented audiences and develop the perfect campaigns for each group. Then, through automation, retailers can send auto-generated marketing messages directly to these customers and allow their platforms to handle the process of setting up appointments.
“What’s going to happen ultimately is that dealers who connect these systems together…are going to have a very strong data strategy that will outcompete their peers who don’t, and they will be able to start predicting revenue in a way they’ve never been able to before because they can almost engineer sales out of their data.” — Aharon
8. Ensuring data simplicity and accessibility.
One of the biggest benefits to be gained from connecting different platforms through A.I. is the ability to automatically curate information in one single dashboard. Juggling different logins for a variety of programs while attempting to analyze data across non-integrated platforms can be frustrating and time-consuming for managers.
Now, however, Dealers can access insights from a variety of sources on a single screen without having to scour through different programs or generate multiple reports. Everything dealers need can be found in one place, giving them a perfect bird’s-eye view of their data.
9. What’s next?
Brad explains that the evolution of A.I. and data connectivity is just beginning. Dealers will soon have access to more improvements and increased functionalities across their tool kit thanks to A.I. integrations. As this happens, the amount of information collected from consumers will continue to grow while also being consolidated into a central location that retailers can easily access.
“It’s only going to make our platforms more intelligent, and when I say more intelligent I mean from the marketing automation, from conversational commerce, from the retailing, from the penciling of deals to one-day-deal finds or save-a-deal.” — Brad
10. Closing thoughts.
Aharon is excited that more vendors are coming together to solve problems that dealers face. Now that A.I. and data technology have become more commonplace, companies can continue to partner to enhance and improve their products and make them even more accessible to retailers. Soon, these innovations will become so widespread, that they simply become a normal, everyday component of dealership operations.
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