Car Dealer Lot Management

What to check before you buy

The choice of technology decides the recurring costs. You pay for a tag or module on every vehicle, readers or gateways around the property, a monthly software fee and battery replacement.

Get an answer on what accuracy to expect in a row of cars: to the vehicle, or only to the row, and how long a tag's battery lasts. Find out what happens to tags when a car is sold or moves between stores.

Ask how the location data reaches the inventory system and the service department. Then ask for a pilot on one lot, with a daily audit that compares the tool to a physical count.

Think about adoption by the people who walk the lot. If staff must scan or tag every vehicle by hand, the data decays within weeks, so ask how tags are assigned, who moves vehicles and how an unscanned move is detected, and pilot the tool with the porters and salespeople who will use it. A location system that the lot staff dislike will be quietly ignored, and an inaccurate map is worse than none.

Ask about the accuracy you can verify on your own lot. Park test vehicles in known spots, including a dense row, a corner and a service area, and check what the tool reports after an hour and after a day, noting how often it is correct to the vehicle, correct to the row or wrong.

Run the same test in rain and after cars have been moved by porters. A location system that is accurate on the demo lot but drifts on yours should not be bought.

Also consider the connection to inventory. A vehicle sent to recon, photography or a customer's test drive should change status in the same system so that staff are not looking at two answers. Ask what happens when a tag battery dies and how you will know.

Questions to put to every car dealer lot management vendor

• Is the connection read-only or bi-directional?
• Who pays each integration fee?
• What breaks when either product changes?

Other categories dealers compare alongside Lot management & logistics: Virtual marketing manager services, Social media & reputation, Analytics & attribution, Dealer intelligence & BI, Data integration & middleware, and Service scheduling.