What's New In Inventory Manager

Transcription

1 What's New In Inventory Manager November 17, 2014 Lifecycles: Who Am I Inheriting From? Inbound Feeds and Stale Inventory Feed Alert Consolidation September 22, 2014 New Override Event: Internet Price Drop September 3, 2014 Two New Features: Bulk Lock/Unlock Images and Send to Staging via Lifecycles August 25, 2014 Simplified Lifecycle Configuration July 21, 2014 Lifecycle Chart Changes, Featured Vehicles, Filters and More June 30, 2014 Bulk Delete and Restore June 23, 2014 Bulk Edit

2 April 28, 2014 Media View, Bulk Image Upload, and Lifecycles Chart Enhancements March 31, 2014 Edit Vehicle Information and Media in the New ControlCenter VDP March 11, 2014 Dealer.com Provided Image Overlays March 4, 2014 Internet Price Is Now Editable February 24, 2014 Inventory Lifecycles Update: Stock Number and CARFAX 1-owner Support Plus Overlay Scaling in Preview Area February 17, 2014 Inventory Lifecycles Update: Single Page Inventory Listing, Searching, Filtering, and a New Look and Feel for the ControlCenter Vehicle Details Page January 20, 2014 Inventory Lifecycles Display Ad Influence Settings

3 Lifecycles Who Am I Inheriting From? If your dealership is part of a group up until now you could not see where a child account of the group was getting their Lifecycles configuration settings from but this has changed. (As a reminder: Lifecycles can be used at the group level to apply changes to the Lifecycles at child accounts and a child account has the ability to opt out of group level Lifecycles. If they do, changes made at the group level will not affect the vehicles at the child account.) In a group scenario, if the child account is inheriting Lifecycles from a group account you will see the information on the child account's Inventory Manager dashboard.

4 Inbound Feed and Stale Feed Alert Consolidation We have made it much easier to configure stale feed alerts for your inbound inventory feeds. Stale feed alerts allow for configurable notifications based on outdated inventory feeds. Prior to this release the Inventory Alerts feature was located under it's own menu item, and on it's own page. To make things easier we have moved this functionality into the Inbound Feeds section so that when you are configuring the stale feed alerts you can reference the inventory feed history and settings. To get to the Inbound Feeds section go to Inventory and under the drop-down menu called Configure select Inbound Feeds.

5 New Override Event: Internet Price Drop Trigger If you have access to advanced Lifecycles features (which are part of the Inventory Merchandising Package) you can now trigger automated actions based off Internet Price changes. What this means is if your vehicle pricing typically changes with an inventory feed you can now configure Lifecycles to watch for price changes and based on them perform the actions you specify. Bulk Lock/Unlock Images and Send To Staging Bulk Lock/Unlock: Up until now there wasn't a convenient way to lock and/or unlock the images for multiple vehicles. (As a reminder, 'locking' will prevent an inventory feed from overwriting the changes you have made, unlocking will allow an inventory feed to overwrite the data/media that was entered in ControlCenter.) Now, to change the locked/unlocked status on a vehicle simply select the vehicles, select Edit and change the lock status as seen below.

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7 Send To Staging Via Lifecycles: 'Staging' is a vehicle status in ControlCenter. When a vehicle is in Staging it means that it will not show on your website. With Lifecycles you can now automatically trigger vehicles to go to Staging by adding the action. Simplified Lifecycle Configuration via The Wizard We have enhanced the way Lifecycles are created based on client feedback. The new approach uses a wizard-style interface and walks you through the steps in an intuitive way. When you click the Add Lifecycle button you will be stepped through the process of creating a Lifecycle but if you prefer, you can still access the older method by clicking the Advanced Mode link. For a very detailed look at how to create Lifecycles and what they can do to help you merchandise your inventory take a look at the Quick Start Guide. This guide is also available on the Inventory Manager dashboard in ControlCenter.

8 Here is what you can expect to see after clicking Add Lifecycle. Note that some of these steps are optional and can be skipped. Step 1: Choose the vehicles

9 Step 2: Perform actions on those vehicles as they arrive in inventory Step 3: Perform actions on those vehicles over time

10 Step 4: Trigger actions in real-time Step 5: Finish Up and Publish

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12 Lifecycle Chart Changes, Featured Vehicles, Filters and More... If you are using time-based actions in Lifecycles you can now click the Lifecycles chart time segments to view the vehicles in each segment. This is very handy when trying to locate aging vehicles. You can also click the consumer interest stats for each Lifecycle and see the vehicles that have contributed to them. Try it yourself, click Website Views, MyCars Saves, and Internet Leads. To see all the vehicles in a Lifecycle click the number of 'Matching vehicles'. The way Profit Potential is being calculated has also changed. Instead of basing profit potential off of all vehicles in a Lifecycle they are now calculated based off of the time segment they are in. This change helps provide a more meaningful profit potential statistic. Note: If there aren't any vehicles in a particular time segment you will see $0 profit potential.

13 Determining which vehicles are Featured and editing their Featured Vehicle statuses just got easier! Featured Vehicles are now highlighted on the ControlCenter vehicle listings page and you can change their statuses by clicking into the details page and editing it for each vehicle. You can also edit Featured Vehicle statuses in Bulk! We have added some convenient filters to the ControlCenter vehicle listings page. You can now filter by Featured, Has Views, Has MyCars Saves, and Has Leads are making much easier to find your most popular vehicles.

14 Based off popular feedback we have changed the way you access the Lifecycle configuration options. Previously you could click a Lifecycle row to access this area, now you can click the gear icon on the left side of a Lifecycle row.

15 Bulk Delete and Restore Deleting and restoring vehicles in ControlCenter just got more intuitive! To see your deleted inventory go to the Vehicles tab in Inventory Manager and click the 'Deleted' filter. You can view the details of each vehicle by clicking on a row and you can even access the History (audit trail) for each vehicle. Note: vehicles that have been deleted will not be accessible after 100 days. To restore a vehicle that has been deleted place a check mark in the box to the left of the vehicle row and hit the restore button. Alternately, you can restore individual vehicles by going to the ControlCenter vehicle details page (VDP) and hitting the Restore button. To delete an individual vehicle click the More Options button on the VDP and then hit Delete Vehicle.

16 Bulk Edit Vehicle Data If you need to update similar vehicle information for multiple vehicles, a new feature called Bulk Edit allows you to do just that. Bulk Edit allows you to update pricing and other vehicle information for multiple vehicles with only a few simple clicks. To use bulk edit, navigate to the Summary View. You will notice there are check boxes on the left of each vehicle listed. Checkmark all the vehicles you would like to update with the same information. Once you select vehicles to bulk edit, you will notice that a green Bulk Edit button appears near the top of the page. It also displays a count of the vehicles you have chosen to edit.

17 Clicking the Bulk Edit button will expose the fields that can be bulk edited and can be locked or unlocked. Select the fields you want to edit, enter the new data, lock or unlock the field(s) and hit the green checkmark to save your changes. That's all there is too it! Note that a locked field means that it will not be overwritten by any incoming Inventory Feeds or Lifecycles that affect the vehicles. Media View, Bulk Image Upload, and Lifecycle Chart Enhancements There is a new view in Inventory Manager designed to help you locate vehicles that need media and quickly upload image to a single vehicle or upload multiple vehicle images (in bulk) and assign them to vehicles. The Media View and Bulk Image Upload can be accessed as seen below:

18 You can simply drag images onto a vehicle row to upload or click the Bulk Image Upload button to upload images for multiple vehicles and assign them to cars. The Lifecycles chart has been enhanced making it much easier to understand where vehicles are in terms of Profit Potential and days in inventory. If you are using time-based actions to decrease/increase prices and you have configured the Profit Potential statistic any group of vehicles that are profitable shows a chart in green color, vehicles that are not profitable show in red.

19 Edit Vehicle Information and Media in the New ControlCenter VDP... You can now edit vehicle data and media on a per vehicle basis using the new and improved Vehicle Details page in ControlCenter. Just click on a vehicle in the new list view to open the VDP then click edit, make your changes and save. You will notice that the lock will automatically apply after you have edited vehicle information. When a field is locked it means that an incoming inventory feed will NOT overwrite the changes you made.

20 Dealer.com Provided Image Overlays... If you are using our Overlay* feature in Inventory Lifecycles you now have access to hundreds of overlays with various messages and in many different shapes, sizes and colors! Do you want to let potential buyers know that a vehicle just arrived in inventory? Slap a 'Just Arrived' badge on automatically when vehicles first arrive in Inventory Manager. Running a weekend sale? Setup the event in Lifecycles and apply a 'Weekend Sale' badge to the appropriate vehicles. Internet Price Is Now Editable... Do you want to edit the Internet Price for a single vehicle? Go to the new ControlCenter vehicle details page, click the Edit button in the Pricing section, edit the price and hit save! If you want to prevent any changes from happening to the Internet Price for the vehicle simply click the lock icon next to the price field. When the price is locked it will not be modified by any other source including inventory feeds, VIN scrubbing, pricing tools, or automated Lifecycle actions.

21 You can also tell which vehicles have a locked price in the listing view. Inventory Lifecycles Update: Stock Number and CARFAX 1Owner Support Plus Overlay Scaling in Preview Area Lifecycles now support stock number specific rules! You can create Lifecycles or use sub criteria within Lifecycles based on exact match, begins with..., or ends with... Do you want to merchandise your CARFAX 1-Owner vehicles differently from other vehicles? Well, now you can! You can based Lifecycles off of the 1-Owner status or use the status as sub criteria within a Lifecycle. If you are using our Overlay product you can apply the 1-Owner badge to the leading vehicle image automatically.

22 Scaling just got easier with overlays! You can now adjust the size of an overlay using a slider in the overlay preview area. Inventory Lifecycles Update: Single Page Inventory Listing, Searching, Filtering, and a Simplified Lifecycle Setup and A New Look and Feel We have listened to your feedback and have made some exciting changes! A Single Page Inventory Listing: Finding your vehicles just got easier! No longer do you need to click into a Lifecycle to search for a vehicle. Just select 'Vehicles' from the new menu and all of your inventory is accessible.

23 If you have access to our Craigslist or Window Stickers functionality using these tools just got a whole lot easier. From the single page inventory list page you can now access both of these tools with the click of a button. If you don't have Craigslist or Window Stickers and you want to find out more, contact us today. Search and Filtering: Search for vehicles by keyword or filter them using Advanced

24 Search for Lifecycles by name Simplified Lifecycle Setup: To configure an existing Lifecycle click Lifecycle row. The steps to create a new Lifecycle have also been simplified by consolidating all of the steps into a single page. To see the vehicles in a Lifecycle click the arrow to the left of the Lifecycle row.

25 New Look and Feel: We gave the ControlCenter vehicle details page an overhaul! The vehicle information has been reorganized, making it easier for you to focus on the information you are interested in. Note the additional tabs for Features and vehicle History. Inventory Lifecycles Display Ad Influence Settings If you are using our Display Advertising product you can now influence the priority of the vehicles that show in your remarketing campaigns. The two options that drive this influence can be found under the three main configuration sections (Initial Setup, Time-Based Actions and Override Events) for each Lifecycle, they allow you to prioritize or de-prioritize groups of vehicles on a per Lifecycle basis. Note: these setting will not impact your display budget.