vAuto Launches ProfitTime™ 2.0 Recommended Pricing at NADA 2021

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill., Jan. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- vAuto announces next generation functionality with the release of ProfitTime™ 2.0 at the Cox Automotive Experience and NADA 2021. Building upon ProfitTime's industry-first introduction of investment value-based used vehicle management, ProfitTime 2.0 provides the real-time pricing guidance that dealerships need to ensure they maximize the investment return each vehicle offers.

"Two years ago, we introduced ProfitTime to help dealers reverse the skid of net profit declines in used vehicles. For the first time, dealers could know the investment value of every used vehicle and use it to propel gross profits and sales volumes," said Dale Pollak, vAuto founder and Cox Automotive Executive Vice President. "Today, we are excited to share the next evolution in investment value management-- ProfitTime 2.0, which gives dealers recommended pricing guidance that makes it easier to implement an investment value-based strategy across their entire used vehicle inventories."  

ProfitTime 2.0's recommended pricing guidance marks an industry first. The pricing guidance flows from data science that predicts a vehicle's investment quality and accounts for the vehicle's regional market performance, a dealer's past performance, current stocking levels and current pricing of similar vehicles. The system weighs these variables to offer a pricing range appropriate to each vehicle and its investment value. The guidance makes investment value-based pricing more accurate, consistent and faster for dealers and managers.

"Before ProfitTime 2.0, you'd go to price a car and spend time looking at competitive sets, certified versus non-certified vehicles, and other factors. You really had to think your way through it," says Tim Nelson, general manager of Beaverton (OR) Honda. "ProfitTime 2.0 takes all the things you used to have to think through and it's already done for you. It tells you what you need to do with a vehicle's price."

In addition to pricing guidance, ProfitTime 2.0 features all-new investment value summaries for individual vehicles and a dealer's overall inventory. The summary views give dealers and managers a deeper understanding of their used vehicle department's investment management performance—a significant time-saver for those who oversee used vehicle operations and teams across a dealership group.

As Nelson notes, "ProfitTime 2.0 saves me time. I'm able to trust the software and have another person do the tasks. I have four stores to watch, and now I just watch and oversee."

With ProfitTime 2.0's recommended pricing guidance, dealers can now be sure their used vehicles are consistently priced to reflect their investment value. The system's new look and feel also makes investment value-based used vehicle pricing easier and more efficient. Key features include:

• Recommended Pricing: Originally, ProfitTime gave dealers the ability to understand the investment value of their inventory. The system, which ranks vehicles by Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze investment values, helped dealers move away from the Velocity Method of Management, which encouraged the rapid retail sale of every used vehicle. ProfitTime 2.0 helps dealers properly price vehicles that need to be retailed quickly and others that can be retailed more slowly to achieve higher gross and net profit performance.
• Data-driven Insights: Backed by expansive industry-leading data science, ProfitTime 2.0 employs profit-predictive machine learning and modeling to determine each vehicle's intrinsic investment value and its optimal investment value-based price position in the market.
• Improved user experience. ProfitTime 2.0 is built with efficient dealer workflows in mind. The at-a-glance pricing recommendations and investment summary pages help dealers price their used vehicles with greater accuracy and time-saving efficiency.

"At vAuto, we remain committed to helping dealers by providing them with the live market insights they need to make data-driven decisions that will help their businesses," added Randy Kobat, vice president, Inventory Management Solutions at Cox Automotive. "ProfitTime 2.0 does something no other system or individual can do. It accounts for all the factors that affect a vehicle's investment value and optimal price position. The system falls squarely in this mission to help dealers use investment value-based management to improve their used vehicle department profitability and sales volume."

For more information on ProfitTime 2.0, visit www.vauto.com/profittimepricing.  For information on all Cox Automotive's 2021 new offerings, visit www.coxautoinc.com/experience.

About vAuto
vAuto® provides innovative technology, tools and business intelligence to thousands of dealerships across the United States and Canada, helping them compete more effectively and increase new/used vehicle sales volumes and profits. Founded in 2005, vAuto revolutionized dealers' used vehicle operations with the groundbreaking Provision® suite of tools. Leveraging The Velocity Method of Management®, pioneered by vAuto founder, Dale Pollak, Provision helped dealers adopt a more transparent- and turn-focused approach to used vehicle acquisition, appraising, pricing and merchandising based on real-time, local market supply-and-demand data. vAuto's solutions also include Conquest, a new vehicle inventory management and pricing system, and Stockwave, which enables dealers to efficiently find and purchase vehicles from leading wholesale sources via a single platform. In 2018, vAuto released the Provision ProfitTime metric and methodology to help dealers maximize inventory turn and gross profit based on the investment value or profit potential of each vehicle. In 2020, the company debuted an all new iRecon solution, integrated with Provision, to help dealers recondition vehicles and get them retail ready faster.

Headquartered near Chicago, Illinois, vAuto is a Cox Automotive™ brand.

About Cox Automotive
 Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using vehicles easier for everyone. The global company's more than 27,000 team members and family of brands, including Autotrader^®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com^®, Dealertrack^®, Kelley Blue Book^®, Manheim^®, NextGear Capital^®, VinSolutions^®, vAuto^® and Xtime^®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with annual revenues of $21 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

SOURCE vAuto