360Converge Acquires Valuinsight, Marrying Data Analysis with Texting Automation to Best Serve Today’s Digital Consumer

360Converge, the leading provider of communication workflow automation in automotive, announced the acquisition of Valuinsight, the leading inventory analysis platform that enables automated equity mining for inventory acquisition. The addition of Valuinsight inventory management features to the existing 360Converge communication platform will increase dealership’s texting and emailing capabilities while decreasing the labor needed to effectively monetize the dealership’s existing customer base.

By combining deep vehicle inventory analytics with the 360Converge’s communication platform, dealerships will receive the benefit of pinpoint accurate information on which vehicles are moving from their lot, and perhaps more importantly, which vehicles are not. By leveraging this information, 360Converge’s SalesDrive solution will automatically target customers coming in for service with text to engage customers at the highest point of conversion during their service visit. The result is an
increase in vehicles being purchased directly from the service drive. Dealerships using this automation technology are already seeing a 20-23% increase in customer engagement and are purchasing 10-20 vehicles directly from their own service drive.

In addition, when paired with 360Converge’s communication tools, dealers will have more opportunities to sell warranties beyond the transaction, turn more inventory, and deliver the right message at the right time to each customer.

“This acquisition marries two of the most important elements needed for automotive sales success today, inventory acquisition and messaging, to give consumers the exact information they are looking for when they’re ready to buy,” said Todd Smith, CEO of 360Converge. “Dealerships are wasting human capital by targeting everyone with an equity/buyback message. Dealerships using our SalesDrive application will only be talking with interested customers while also building a deeper connection with their existing customers.”

The acquisition advances 360Converge’s growth strategy in the market by expanding the company’s capabilities in the multibillion dollar data acquisition arena. Data acquisition continues to be a hot spot across automotive and other industries as today’s digital consumer demands more personalized experiences and faster access to information.

“I am very pleased to announce the acquisition of the Valuinsight suite of products by the great team of talented people at 360Converge. Our core products will continue help dealership operations across the country to increase their bottom line. Precision Inventory Management has been my lifelong passion and will continue to live on coupled with the great team of 360Converge,” said Scott Dreisbach, Owner Valuinsight.

In addition to the benefits to 360Converge’s existing customers, the acquisition strengthens data modeling for the company and builds additional revenue streams, while greatly expanding the company’s personalization at scale communication capabilities.

For New Vehicles, this would tell which Model, Model #s, Colors, and Equipment Packages for which there are none in stock. For Used Vehicles, this would tell us which Makes, Models, Colors, Classes, Sale Cost Ranges, and Sales Price Ranges for which there are none in stock.

For both New Vehicles & Used Vehicles, knowing what sells most, and how many are currently in stock, will determine how many are needed.

For both New Vehicles & Used Vehicles, knowing what sells quickest, and how many are currently in stock, will determine how many are needed.

Ultimately, these questions together are able to tell how many specific types of vehicles are needed in order to have an available stock ready for them quickly to sell. At the same time these questions are also able to do the reverse, tell if there is too much stock of something in inventory that should be traded to another dealer or sold at wholesale sooner rather than later. 

Imagine three convenient stores located 1 block away from each other. Each of these stores sells the same basic products. Looking at the sales of inventory of these stores we may find that collectively they sell twice as much of Product A as they do Product B. Based on this then certainly all three stores should stock more Product A. Right? Not necessarily.

Maybe one or two of the three stores just sell so much of Product A that regionally it is a higher quantity seller than Product B. What if a single one of the stores sells almost no Product A and sells a lot more Product B?

If that store follows the market than that store will likely run out of Product B and have too much Product A on the shelves. But with Inventory Management the sales and inventory data of that single store are analyzed and finds that it needs to stock less Product A and more Product B. This increases the sales of that store, increasing profit while decreasing waste.

We know we cannot sell from an empty wagon. But the changing used car economics means we need to stay close to a 30 day supply, not the 60 day supply we’ve traditional run the department using. Having the right stuff on the shelf, but not stocking more than we can sell in a month will drive PROFITABILITY (not units) in the used car department. Otherwise, the prices change too quickly in a month to sell car profitability. We cannot manage used car inventory like we do our new cars.

We have changed to grocery store economics. Quick turnover, high volume, and very low margins. Keep this image in mind, treat your used car inventory just as a grocery store produce manager does. Think about the other green – lettuce. You cannot take a week to get lettuce on the shelf or it will already start to wilt. Once it goes on the shelf if it ages you will have spoilage. You also need to sell it at a discount before it rots. If you are only making a 6-8% margin on lettuce and throwing out 30% of your cost from spoilage, profitability will not be a pretty thing. The grocery store will find someone else to manage the department who understands high turn and strong inventory management to maximize margins and to avoid spoilage.

We cannot drive the used car market. Neither can the other 18,000 new car dealers and many more used car dealers in our industry. All we can do is react to the cards we are dealt with to maximize profitability and reduce our losses. We have done a great job of increasing the sales of used cars. Congratulations! Step #1 can be checked off.

Step #2 is to make more money on that volume. To do that, we need to maintain that turn, get inventory in and out of reconditioning quickly, and maintain the sales volume with fewer units in inventory to maximize margins and to minimize spoilage. You need to manage using the facts. You cannot drive this market. You can only manage your business to react to the changes in the market. In order to be successful in achieving step #2, great used car managers need to be able to get new products on the shelf sooner than we have ever done before in the industry while maintaining the 1-to-1 used to new car ratio and while having fewer used cars on the shelf than we have ever had before. Quality of inventory, not quantity, will drive how well we sell used cars.

This is our challenge moving forward is to achieve step #2. We cannot run a profitable used car department doing things as we have done in the past. The old way will not work, even selling more units. This goal cannot be achieved overnight, but we need a plan to do better every month with a 6-month goal of SIGNIFICANTLY decreasing the amount of inventory we carry on the shelf without negatively impacting volume as we find this balance.

While there are many websites and pieces of software that use the phrase inventory management, you must find one that actually can answer the three questions that MRP can answer. Your solution must be able to tell you:
 

• What Inventory is needed?
• How much Inventory is needed?
• When inventory is needed?