PARKWAY Motor Group is reporting a 20 per cent year-on-year increase in used car sales to July since installing eDynamix StockMaster.
Used vehicle profits in this period also rose by almost £750,000, while average days in stock across the group fell by nearly 40 per cent to 42 days.
Mark Barrow, group head of retail sales at Parkway, which represents Volkswagen across four dealerships in Derby, Leicester, Kettering and Northampton, said: ‘StockMaster has helped keep myself and my team focused on the key metrics any business should be looking at, including the days in stock trends and the stock mix.
‘Both are crucial elements to a successful used car business. However, these figures aren’t readily available for most DMS systems on the market and can easily be overlooked or ignored without it.
‘What we are now able to do is manage the process a lot closer and react in real time during the month if we have concerns over vehicle run rates or margin/stock mix trends. As a business that holds over 800 used vehicles on stock, this is invaluable.’
StockMaster uses data from DMS systems to provide a consolidated group view of vehicles available for sale. With tight integration with Auto Trader’s iControl software, the system alerts users to price movements, ad view shifts and desirability changes for vehicles in market, nationally and regionally, on a daily basis.
This allows dealers to actively monitor and adjust their selling prices to ensure all stock is competitively priced.
Barrow added: ‘We are set a specific target by Volkswagen to achieve our used car target, and year-to-date we are currently at 115 per cent of that objective, with some huge momentum behind us to hopefully end the year even stronger.’
Iain Nickalls, pictured, eDynamix director, said: ‘Pricing used cars can sometimes be seen as a dark art, with a lot of how people have previously priced to market or price checked been on “gut” feel. With StockMaster and Auto Trader iControl integration, dealers can use a much more scientific and measured approach.
‘StockMaster actively alerts users that there are certain cars that aren’t performing to market, allowing them to act accordingly to positively affect vehicle turnover and profitability.’
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