Shift Magazine - June 3, 2019 - 13

DEALERS

Thinknum is a company that specializes
in gathering what's "left behind when
companies do business online," said
Justin Zhen, the company's president.
Thinknum got its start about five
years ago and soon began tracking vehicle transactions. It has a tool that can
scan or scrape websites to see when
VINs were added or removed from
the Web pages. The general practice
is known as Web crawling, but Zhen
said Thinknum's system is more complex than that, as it organizes data and
accounts for if a customer buys a vehicle and quickly returns it.
The company, specializing in used
vehicles, can scrape data from the Web,
analyze the trends and send email alerts
to dealer clients - letting them know,
for example, that a competitor is trying
to sell more BMWs. Thinknum charges
$9,600 a year for such services.
"The car market is extremely competitive, so to know that a competitor has
lowered pricing or increased pricing -
it's really powerful," Zhen said.
He said Thinknum tracks a few million

vehicles per day in dealer inventory. But
the system works only when dealers list
vehicles online. "If they don't list their
data on the Internet our powers are rendered useless," he said.
Feinstein, of Planet Honda, feeds data
to Urban Science, and in exchange he
can see where his store is winning and
losing business in real time by ZIP code
and by vehicle make and model, he said.
He cannot identify specific customers,
but he said he can spot patterns, "which
certainly helps marketing."

DATA STRATEGY

Some dealers use such data to determine their progress toward goals from
automakers, said Mark Colosimo, vice
president of data and analytics for Urban
Science. If a dealer expected to sell 50
vehicles during the month but sold only
30, data should illustrate whether the
market softened or whether the store
is behind and should consider spending
more on marketing, he said.
"It's really a matter of trying to accumulate more detail as much as possible,"

Colosimo said.
Most dealership groups have sufficient
data, but "it's what you do with it," said
Holman's Bates. "I think some of the
larger groups will have the wherewithal
to be able to really use that data for the
benefit of the customer in the long run,"
he said.
As auto retail evolves and the vehicle
ownership model changes, savvy dealers will use data to add value for the customer and determine what they need in
whichever transportation environment
they fit into, Bates said.
"They're going to have access to mobility [that] we may not even think about
today," he said. "We need to be able to
understand what they need and then be
able to provide them with a service that
truly adds value for what they're paying
for. It's that fundamental."
Feinstein boils down data use this way:
If it can be measured, it can be improved.
"The data has always been there,"
Feinstein said. "What hasn't been there
are the tools available to you to take concrete action with the data." ■

june 2019 * shift

Shift Magazine - June 3, 2019

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