Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Earlier this year, our friends at Cox Automotive observed that the used-vehicle market is “beginning to feel normal again.” While the new car market continues to struggle with inventory shortages, the used-vehicle market has rebounded with a strong supply in recent months.
And when the used-vehicle market is running at full speed, auction houses do, too.
With demand high, it’s more advantageous than ever for auctions to fast-track vehicles through their processes. Here are four proven solutions to get your vehicles to auction faster.
Location Is Everything
For auctions, inventory view is everything.
And despite being early adopters of technology, securing an accurate inventory view takes time and effort. It’s not uncommon to be handcuffed by a manual process of scanning and entering data, a tracking solution that doesn’t cover the entire inventory across different zones and locations, or a workforce plagued by time-intensive audits and inventory reconciliation.
In other words, vehicle tracking can only be efficient and effective with the proper support. But without the right solution for large lots with multiple zones and thousands of units, the inventory tracking process can lead to chaos.
Solution 1
Implement a tracking technology that empowers your staff to easily track the movement of your vehicles in real-time, whether on a lot, in a service bay, or in a parking garage.
A Healthy Dose of DTCs
Finding the right vehicles for your auction is only the first step; making sure they run and are ready for sale is a whole different ballgame. Whether it’s a simple dead battery or a more complex malfunction, anything that compromises a vehicle’s health affects your ability to sell it.
Being able to monitor a vehicle’s health proactively with remote access to diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) and get alerts when issues arise means you can move it through repair and on to staging promptly.
Solution 2
Connect tracking sensors to the onboard diagnostics (OBD) as soon as a vehicle enters the lot. The sensors can trigger alerts whenever a vehicle needs mechanical attention. The VIN-specific data verifies the vehicle systems and provides insight into 7,000+ DTCs.
Data-Driven
If you want intelligent lot management, your system needs to be, well, intelligent. It’s in the name, after all.
Intelligent tracking means staff can locate the right – and well-maintained! – vehicle more quickly. It also means auction houses like yours have a wealth of other data at their fingertips to monitor and improve operational efficiencies. These actionable insights, of course, lead to a more productive and profitable business.
Solution 3
Align your tracking solution’s output with your business priorities to quickly spot and resolve issues or bottlenecks in moving your inventory. Use your data to focus on how to improve these three areas:
- Increasing staff productivity
- Optimizing workflows
- Mapping efficient vehicle pathways
4 – Decision maker, decision made
Know how to make a sale move faster? Make buying faster.
The buying process is nothing, after all, without a buyer. Staging and preview sessions are key steps in an auction house’s playbook for turning a prospective customer into an active buyer.
An intelligent lot management system can provide you with the data you need to better prep for these sessions to make them more successful – which means a quicker and smoother transaction process for your auction.
Solution 4
Prepping for an upcoming customer preview or staging session is easy with custom settings that alert you when a specific vehicle enters or exits a specific zone, spends too long in a single location, or has a health-related issue that requires attention. By the time it enters staging, it should be ready for sale. Additionally, by sharing this vehicle history with the buyer, they have all the information they need to make an informed decision, expediting the inspection to sale process.
Smarter Inventory Management
Auction houses are essential to helping meet demand in today’s automotive market, and with greater visibility into your inventory, you’re better prepared to move cars through to sale quicker than ever before.
Technologies, such as sensors, monitoring applications, and lot management platforms, work in unison to provide the intelligence and insights to improve efficiencies, eliminate costly delays, streamline operations, and enhance the buying experience. By tapping into this data, auction houses are not only improving their processes but, in turn, increasing their profitability.
With LotVision, see how you can shorten your time to sale by 7 days. Learn More