F&I and Showroom, May 2018

www fi magazine com 18 F I and Showroom May 2018 Daniel Yuabov was in the midst of his two year old startups transformation when he stepped onto the NADA show floor this year having made the switch from a New York broker site to software provider in February with the launch of Carvoy Ignite a SaaS platform that turns a dealers website into a car buying portal The new offering includes a digital dashboard offering realtime analytics inventory tracking automated desking F I package options trade in valuation tools and customer credit approvals So we have very cool technology that we built with our own money that we think consumers really enjoy he said To scale that properly we needed to own the inventory But were not allowed to because were not a franchised dealer So we thought how can we really make this technology this experience at scale So we packaged it into a plugin dealerships can then deploy on their websites so this entire checkout experience rests native on their websites Within a year of launching its marketplace Carvoy had attracted 300 dealers a network the startup is now leveraging under its new strategy Now were in the trenches because we are not free he said Were no longer performancebased were an engagement platform a Software as a Service type subscription which requires a lot more effort But Yuabov feels Carvoy has a competitive advantage given the companys roots it facilitated the deals and handled the customer service vehicle deliveries and trade ins From that experience the company collected data on how consumers actually shop for cars online I actually went and delivered cars which Im always proud to say he said I picked up the customer service calls saw where the customer pain points were At the same time I saw where the dealers paint points were And Carvoy was able to build that bridge very quickly because we had that data and that advantage Carvoy Ignite is currently being used by a handful of dealers in New York Yuabov revealing that the startup is also beginning to pick up more dealers in Florida California is the next target The only thing the platform cant do from a compliance standpoint is accept digital signatures Yuabov said the startup experimented with RouteOnes eSign technology which allows for remote signature capture on an iPad and other solutions Ultimately the company opted to let dealers process the paperwork Yeah they dont want to change that but they need to In fact they need to change their F I department and they need to change all the accounting he said Signing documents is not a pain point The pain point is transparency THE CLOSER Flexible was the word technology vendors used to describe their systems Some went so far as to say their digital retailing solutions empower dealers to rethink their business models All agreed that finance needs to move upstream in the digital environment What that means for the F I profession is anyones guess Listen F I is a critical profit center for the dealership To use tools to enable that whether its docuPAD Maxim Trak Dealertrack Darwin or whatever it may be its a tool that enables Its not a robot Dealertracks Barrie said Are there organizations consolidating F I Yes Are there organizations getting rid of a dedicated F I person Yes Do I see value in the F I manager Yes 100 This is an evolution and the user the F I manager is such an important part of that process Even ELEAD1ONEs Wittenmyer seemed to walk back his comments about the future of the F I manager saying an F I professionals expertise in compliance finance and deal structuring will be critical on the road to the digital deal F I managers are the highest part of our compensation and theyre certainly duly worth it But the reality is youve got three people right now in the process that with technology will only require a one person process With that said if I had a showroom full of strong F I people doing everything I know the deal would be set up all the way through to be right and profitable Whatever the future holds Protectives Karchunas believes the franchise system will win out over online retailing firms like Carvana In fact he believes dealers with their inherent built in advantage will just adopt their model once its proven particularly the larger organizations that have the infrastructure to do so One thing hes sure of however is the evolution isnt going away and neither is the thinning margin situation Were going to have to evolve Its scary because you open the door and its dark in there You can kind of see the shadows but you dont know whats gonna happen he said But dealers are going to adjust Were adjusting Agents are adjusting And in the end the outcome is more highly professionalized agents super rationalized companies in our part of the business And all of that is eventually going to drive up value to the consumer NADA PHOTO COURTESY OF ELEAD1ONE PHOTO BY GREGORY ARROYO Pictured is a screenshot of ELEAD1ONEs new digital retailing platform which the CRM provider debuted at NADA 2018 Company executive Bill Wittenmyer said the tool is currently installed at Floridas Wesley Chapel Lexus the first new Lexus point awarded in 12 years Dent Wizards Lindsey Bird said the story of NADA 2018 is all the consolidation taking place in the agent space and F I product provider realm He believes its a sign of things to come as the digital retailing push continues to cloud the F I industrys future