Streamline Your Car Inventory Process with Dealership Management Tools

The automotive industry is always evolving. On one hand, that's a good thing; nobody who's driven a Ford Mustang would want to go back to a Model T and settling for seatbelts is something of a letdown when you've got access to collision avoidance and pedestrian detection. On the other hand, those changes pose challenges to car dealerships. After all, it's not just automotive technology that's evolving. There's an ever-expanding suite of tools to help with dealership management so you can identify and exploit areas of opportunity. That's why CarCasm is also evolving, rolling out Inventory Monitor -- a new inventory management tool to help car dealerships of all sizes.

How Inventory Monitor Works

In a sense, you could think of Inventory Monitor as a CRM for cars. In much the same way that a CRM like Salesforce, Dealer Socket, or DealerPeak helps you track the customer lifecycle, Inventory Monitor tracks the lifecycle of each vehicle from the moment it arrives at your dealership to the time it leaves. The code may be complicated, but the implementation and execution are every bit as simple as that.

What's in it For You?

Throughout the process, you won't just have full visibility of your pre-owned, CPO, and new inventory by numbers of vehicles. Team members with access -- management, sales staff, service writers, and techs -- can make notations of progress on key tasks so that everyone knows what needs to be done, what's been done, and what's outstanding. You can run detailed reports as well, so you're spending more time using the data than chasing it.

Whether you're making moves with dealer stock or nailing down the workflow in your body shop or service center, it's an invaluable tool. That's especially true with a higher number of leased vehicles changing how we do business, the challenges of longer sell-down periods, and the constant struggle to preserve our margins. As Dale Pollak recently pointed out, proper inventory management prevents backlogs of old inventory, balances dealership days supply and market days supply across models and trims, and helps you identify and pursue a pricing strategy that works. Those minor details can have major importance.

The Bottom Line

If you're looking for the TL;DR version of the above, we can boil it down as follows: running a successful car dealership relies on capitalizing on every opportunity that's available to you, and you can't take advantage of that which you can't find or don't understand.

Like practically everything else these days, data drives the auto industry, from the board rooms at the Big Three, to the dealership, to the driver's seat. Using the dealership management tools and analytics provided by CarCasm, your dealership will be better positioned to understand where the market's been and where it is right now so you're more capable of charting and shaping your future. Schedule a call to see how we can help keep your car dealership competitive!