Written by: Douglas Grimaldi, COO
The average car on the road is approximately 10 years old. With ever-increasing improvements in modern technology and vehicle designs, the useful life of any given vehicle is significant. Due to these improvements, consumers often times want to purchase a new vehicle while their old vehicle still has a significant amount of useful life remaining. This creates a large market for used vehicles that many car dealerships and similar entities are eager to take part in. Particularly over the past 15-20 years, this market has reached a notable size.
A commonly known problem faced by any vehicle owners is that vehicles essentially depreciate in value every day. This problem causes particular frustration to dealerships who may wish to buy and sell used vehicles in that a purchased used vehicle almost always must be reconditioned by the dealership by at least some degree before it is sold in order to maximize its sales value. The reconditioning process, on average, takes 7-10 days and involves around 7-10 departments at the dealership and/or external service vendors. During that time period, the purchased vehicle continues to decrease in value, and therefore the estimated sale price of the car calculated by a sales manager on the day it was purchased by the dealership may be higher than what it is on the day the car is actually offered for sale, resulting in the dealership obtaining a lower profit on the sale of the vehicle than expected. Additionally, vehicles that leave the dealership for reconditioning services may be difficult to keep track of.
Attempts have been made to try to increase the speed of the reconditioning process. Systems have been designed to monitor vehicle reconditioning and make the process faster; however, these systems are not well liked in the industry because they are difficult to understand, unnecessarily complex in use, do not include every aspect of the reconditioning process, are not well suited for professional use, and/or do not keep a vehicle accessible by the system during the entire reconditioning process.
Given the foregoing, what is needed are systems, methods, and computer program products which facilitate the efficient management of the vehicle reconditioning process at a dealership or similar entity. Additionally, systems, methods, and computer program products are desired that are easy to use and understand, are comprehensive of the entire reconditioning process, are professional in functionality, and serve to increase the rate of the reconditioning process.
