Modern Technologies in the Automotive Retail Sector

The retail experience of today is miles away from what it was even a couple of years before. The waves of innovation across sectors like artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things, virtual and augmented reality, and such, have seeped into this industry as they have so many others.

 

CDK Global, in providing solutions catering to the automotive and equipment manufacturing industries, is intimately acquainted with how technology brought about a change in the automotive retail sector. In this interview, Mr Nitin Pande, Senior Manager at CDK Global, shares his unique insights on the matter.

 

 

Technological Innovation at CDK Global

 

CDK Global is a leading multinational corporation providing integrated data and technology solutions in the automotive, heavy truck, recreation, and heavy equipment industries.

 

“Focused on enabling end-to-end, omnichannel retail commerce through open, agnostic technology, CDK Global provides solutions to dealers and original equipment manufacturers, serving 15000 retail locations in North America,” Pande describes. “CDK solutions connect people with technology by automating and integrating all parts of the dealership and buying process, including the acquisition, sale, financing, insuring, parts supply, repair and maintenance of vehicles.”

 

Speaking of his role as Senior Manager, Mr. Nitin Pande says his position as a leader needs him to “empower the teams to achieve business goals to help CDK’s customers win in the marketplace.” 

 

He speaks fondly of his team and describes it as a fun-loving, diverse, and distributed team and enjoys the fact that he “gets to do challenging work, with opportunities to own, collaborate and learn.”

 

In technical terms, Pande oversees building full-stack web and mobile applications and services using the latest technologies in a dynamic and agile environment. In this role, he also has opportunities for mentorship, career growth, and work on high-business impact areas.

 

He also has more than 18 years of IT experience and can offer a unique view of CDK Global’s workings. This includes their adoption of Microservice architecture, which is an architectural style that organizes services around business capabilities.

 

Adoption of microservice architecture leads to “a creation of small, autonomous services that are self-contained within a bounded context.” He lists the key advantages that microservices architectural style and native cloud have over monolithic design-

 

• When you build using microservices architecture you get an opportunity to scale your application functionally, vertically as well as horizontally. This is made possible by the fact that each microservice focuses on one business capability and can run autonomously. When the requests for your microservice increases all you need to do is to add more resources to the one that is affected by the increased demand.   

 

• It is easier to build and deploy apps. One of the greatest benefits is the simplicity that microservices bring, when done right. When applications are split into smaller pieces, they are easier to build, maintain, manage the code, refactor and reduce technical debt, as each microservice is a separate line of code.  

 

• Microservices offer better delivery speed and productivity: This is a rather understated benefit of microservices. By decomposing apps into smaller business focused services, we can have multiple teams working on different portions of an app without depending on each other. As you can independently test each of the microservices, it can speed up your quality assurance process as well. 

 

• Microservice architecture is agnostic as you can run each of your services in containers that can be deployed on your existing hardware or the cloud.

 

Recommended blog - A Beginner’s Guide to Cloud Computing

 

 

Growth of Technology in the Retail Sector

 

There is no doubt that cutting-edge technology has always been at the centre of CDK Global.

 

Pande says that the company has a diverse technology stack with cutting-edge technologies like Cloud, Big Data, AI/ML etc. 

 

“Our platform technology stack enables us to transform automotive industry data into valuable insights for dealers and OEMs. CDK is heavily focused on leveraging modern architectural practices like micro services and event-based patterns, continuous integration and delivery methodologies too. This helps us to create world-class products for the business and enhance the digital experience for our customers.“

 

This also makes them well-positioned to comment on how technology is changing the way business is done in the retail industry.

 

Talking in particular about the automotive industry, where CDK Global’s solutions are focused, he says that there has been a lot going on in that space.

 

“The dealerships are evolving in tune with the changing customer expectations. More and more dealers are looking to derive benefits from insights generated from data to better plan their operations like customer management, service delivery and inventory management.”

 

The effects of technological advancements are seen acutely at the level of individual physical dealerships, and he says these effects are “positive and profound.”

 

“With the help of these technology products, dealerships have been able to take their automobile service operations to the next level with more speed and accuracy for both customers and their employees.  Dealers also benefit from a full suite of integrations that helps their growth and profitability.”

 

In addition to this, technology-driven products also help dealers by reducing paperwork, simplifying the payment experience and helping them serve more customers efficiently, he says.

 

 

AI/ML and IoT in the Automotive Retail Sector

 

Modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence are being widely adopted with roots spreading almost everywhere, and very much so in retail and manufacturing. Pande considers these to have wide applications in the automotive industry. The applications in manufacturing and driving experience- like driverless vehicles- aside, the retail side of the industry finds several integrations of AI and ML.

 

“From a retail perspective, AI, ML can help convert industry information to actionable insights that can be acted upon by dealers and OEMs. For example, predictive insights can help dealers sell and service more vehicles by creating more personalized experiences.”

 

Recommended blog - 6 Applications of AI in Retail Sector

 

CDK has recently unveiled a big data platform called Neuron that caters to this segment. 

 

Another technology gaining traction is the Internet of Things. Pande comments that IoT is in many ways embodied by the connected vehicle concept. “In fact, IoT like functionality has always been there for some time in cars with the ability to connect to your smartphone, use of GPS for navigation and locating the automobile,” he describes. “Going forward the manufacturers can use data generated by IoT, create insights from it and build vehicles with a better understanding of customer preferences, driving characteristics and vehicle performance.”

 

“On the retail side IoT can enable sophisticated revenue models such as pay-per-use for in-vehicle services. You can expect a much more precise and personalized vehicle servicing with IoT generated data.“

  

Then there are the technological advancements in digital retailing. Digital retailing allows consumers and retailers to complete the shopping and buying processes online. Pande says that CDK has solutions that cater to all of these and more. 

 

 

The Future- VR/AR in Retail

 

The latest innovations in the industry include novelties like VR showrooms creating waves. Technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality are becoming part of the retail landscape, and as Pande says, the innovations in this space have very real applications for automotive retail.

 

“Virtual reality can enable dealers to literally become a virtual showroom where a car buyer can walk in and experience the product without ever getting behind the wheel. What that means is that customers will have an enhanced experience and dealers can reduce some of the annual spend on interest to keep new vehicles on the lot.”

 

“Use of VR/AR will have a direct impact on test drive and buying behaviour,” he explains. “Digitization, vehicle connectivity and electrification will drive the changes in retail experience too. Digital retailing is a big step to enable consumers to research all aspects of vehicle financing, purchase, and shop online.”

 

From the perspective of the manufacturers, Pande thinks they will be using more robotics-driven automation, intelligent connected car platforms, and also intelligent design and manufacturing processes using real-time data.

 

In the coming times, technology will only be more and more integrated into retail, especially in industries like automotive and equipment manufacturing, growing to support dealers and manufacturers.