Cox Automotive Integration Tricky But Progressing, Execs Say

NEW ORLEANS – With its multitude of brands and one-stop-shop software offerings that allow automobile dealers to manage everything from showroom sales to backlot inventory and repair base, Cox Automotive is the 800-lb. gorilla among retail service providers.

Its most recent acquisition, F&I-management software provider Dealertrack Technologies, joined the stable in October 2015, lining up with Cox’s other operations that include VinSolutions, Xtime, Manheim, Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, vAuto and NextGear Capital.

The ultimate goal is to string together the tools these groups offer, so personnel at a single dealership – or throughout an entire chain – easily can access and share information across departmental lines, exploiting the power of Big Data to boost efficiency, increase sales, improve the customer experience and pump up the bottom line.

But integrating all these systems and services into an interconnected line of products is no easy task. Insiders say that although some initial hurdles are cleared, there’s still a long way to go before all these disparate Cox Automotive products can come together into a single, seamless suite of technology services.

A big step was taken at the National Automobile Dealers Assn.’s convention here in January, where the company announced it now has single-sign-on capability across many of its software products, meaning data can be entered once and accessed across platforms without having to log in and out of a half-dozen different programs.

If it all works according to plan, it will mark a big step toward solving one of the biggest frustrations dealers have with their digital management tools.

WardsAuto sat down here in separate interviews at the NADA convention with executives at two of Cox Automotive’s brands: Xtime’s Jim Roche, senior vice president-marketing and managed services, and VinSolutions’ James Maynard, vice president-product, to talk about the state of integration and what lies ahead.

VinSolutions is focused on the showroom side with sales-management software, while Xtime offers service-management tools. Executives say thanks to the collaboration efforts under way, the two systems now work in concert.

Following is a combined, edited transcript of those interviews:

WardsAuto: How is the integration going? It has to be a difficult process, right?

Roche: It’s such a cool question, because I have been talking about this. Xtime became part of the Cox family in November 2014, so we’re over two years into it. And of course we acquired Dealertrack, and that was a big one, right? You go through these phases of what the heck is this, then you get acquainted with people and you figure out how to work together. And we’re well into the work-together phase now.

Maynard: Broadly, we’re a house of brands and the brands are great, but at the same time it’s just trying to figure out how to make all the people start to have good conversations. Then you have to start figuring out what things make sense and finding the intentional integrations that have the greatest value and focus on that.

You can’t do everything at once. We’ve got to kind of break it down and start doing small pieces. But it’s actually going really well. We’ve got both initiatives that connect between two brands, like us and vAuto or us and Dealertrack – so we’re very focused on those tactical items.

And then very strategic items at the same time – we’ve got bigger projects we’re working on, common vehicle and common elements that cross Cox Automotive.

WardsAuto: So that would be taking the technology another step?

Maynard: Yeah. At NADA here we just launched a single sign-on capability so that now all of our tools can be connected so that a dealer can have one user ID and password and can just flip between the products. That’s just the first step to getting a fully integrated platform. So we’ll continue with the brand activities, (and) it’s just going to take a while before it gets to where it’s fully integrated.

Roche: Let me be specific about Xtime. If you look across the aisle, there’s VinSolutions with the CRM (customer relation management software). If you buy a car from a Vin dealer, and you do the transaction through the CRM like you normally do, when you deliver the car…you can automatically set that first service appointment in Xtime. You can log into Xtime from inside Vin to set the first service appointment. So there’s a great example of a retention-driven process.

(And) now we will pass a file of service appointments to vAuto (dealership-management software) so the used-car manager can log in (and prepare a trade-in offer to service customers). We (also) have a host of integrations between Xtime and Dealertrack, and we’re building more and more.

So those are just three top of mind examples. I only want to talk about things that are actually out of the lab (and) in production. Because there’s all kinds of stuff happening.

I get excited about this. I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years, so to have a front-row seat to this evolution is just really exciting.

WardsAuto: Where do you think you are on that integration continuum?

Maynard: Just at the very start. I would say we’re just in the 10% of the 100% to get there. And it will be a combination of different (business units) and different solutions groups that will get to different points quicker than others. So it’s just time.

WardsAuto: You think it’s a 2-year process?

Maynard: It’s probably a 2- to 3-year process to get the entire company integrated, but there will be very specific things that will happen. I expect by the end of this year, as an example, my (customer-relationship management software) and the desking product inside my CRM and the F&I organization, where we also have deals and credit, will be fully integrated on the deal platform. So common fees, common taxes, common deal – those will all be elements we’ll have addressed by the end of the year and we’ll roll out next year.

Those kinds of things will happen pretty quickly. The bigger (task) of bringing everything together takes a longer time.

WardsAuto: Has dealer reception been positive so far?

Maynard: Absolutely. They would like us to go faster, and we’d love to go faster. But you’ve got to continue with your current business, you have to continue making sure the current products are effective. You can’t completely stop working on what we have and start working on something over here. There’s too much risk in that. We need to keep the dealers’ current products capable and just gradually move toward that point.

They know we’re making progress. They love the new single sign-on, they love the other integrations we’re doing and they love the value they get from that (individual) brand. Because the people that do Xtime are experts in service, right? And we’re experts in customer-relationship management and selling. So we’re keeping that unique part, which I think is great.

WardsAuto: What are the remaining big hurdles?

Maynard: Some of the biggest challenges are (that) we’re a bunch of different technologies. The people part of it, you would think that would be really hard. But amazingly, I think the people part of it we’ve got figured out. We’ve identified the domains where people have their core competency. I know what I’m good at and what somebody else is good at. We’re really at a good point where there’s very little (of a) competitive element.

Now it comes down to the technology. We have different technologies all the way across. Some products were built 10 or 12 years ago and maybe aren’t service-oriented, so they don’t even have the structure or capability of some of the things we want to do. We’re not going to rip the whole thing out. It’s figuring out how to get those point solutions taken care of, and that’s the short-term focus.

WardsAuto: Is the main frustration for dealers that their various systems don’t talk to each other?

Maynard: Yes, (or) it’s somebody does something that our system doesn’t do. We’re supporting over 4,000 small to medium businesses and somebody inevitably wants something different. And it’s the understanding that I can’t necessarily fix that for one person. We try to make it as configurable as we can, but inevitably there’s some element that’s not.

But mostly (the frustration is around) that setup piece, and the fact that I’ve got multiple sets of fees and multiple sets of taxes that I have to set up, because I have four or five…Cox Automotive tools.

Once we fix those we’ll be doing much, much better for our dealers.

[email protected] @DavidZoia