2:17 pm, July 28, 2020
A new product provided free by online motor retail technology specialist iVendi has helped coronavirus crisis-hit dealers to £63m of digital deals over the past 10 weeks.
Transact develops online consumer interest in a particular vehicle through to a final transaction while managing the sales process complexities online or in the showroom.
Development on it began last autumn with a view to bringing it to market later this year. However, the launch was speeded up as iVendi saw how even more useful it would be for dealers during the pandemic, and it was made available to dealers for free in April.
Chief executive James Tew said: ‘Transact seemed to us like very much the right solution for the moment and these results show that belief to have been correct.
‘By launching our very latest technology during this time, we’ve allowed dealers to maximise and progress sales as far as possible during lockdown and the current, still-compromised conditions that have followed. In total, it has been used to manage and negotiate an impressive £63m of digital deals.
‘We worked very hard to make Transact both results-driven and easy to use, and the fact that a wide range of dealers have adopted it, even during a period when many were effectively non-operational, is very pleasing.
‘It can now credibly claim to be the most significant online motor retailing platform in the UK today.’
And he added: ‘We will continue to waive any charges to our dealer customers until we feel the car retail sector is out of the woods, however long that turns out to be.’
James said that one of the key elements that had made Transact suitable for the crisis was how it enabled digital deals to be built by the retailer and pushed online into a dedicated customer account area. This had the effect of digitally emulating a traditional face-to-face conversation.
‘We’re claiming this kind of digital deal as an industry first. The product enables flexible negotiation over price and other key factors, the sale of value-added products and the ability to present multiple finance offers with instant decisioning.’
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