THE Covid-19 pandemic has pushed more business online with more than £1.3bn of online and showroom vehicle sales have been processed through iVendi’s platform during the 12 months of the pandemic – an increase of £200m over the previous year.
This figure – starting in March 2020 – represented actual sales of more than 120,000 cars, vans and motorcycles, rather than being an estimate.
Chief Executive James Tew said: “The fact that more business went through the platform during the pandemic than the previous 12 months shows the extent to which technology has sustained dealers through the crisis.
“Car retailers have spent more than half of the last year being able to only sell online and there is widespread recognition that the market has markedly fallen but dealers using our technology have been able to buck that trend.”
Tew said that iVendi had made a decision at the very outset of the pandemic to be as proactive as possible with dealers, giving them the tools and support they needed to be able to not just survive but, as far as possible, to thrive.
“Especially, we made the Digital Deal feature of iVendi Transact free to dealers from its launch last April through to the end of the first lockdown and it was widely adopted across our retailer customer base.
“The key benefit of the Digital Deal during the pandemic is that it works equally well in a showroom or online situation, reflecting our ‘connected retailing’ approach, which is all about technology that is equally effective in both environments.
“In a world where dealers have needed to be absolutely flexible in this regard, having complete mobility between these two channels has been crucial. Too many retailers have been stuck with dated ‘online retail 1.0’ systems that locked them into doing business in a manner that no longer fitted with what was happening in the real world.
“What we have enabled them to do, we believe, is to respond immediately to each lockdown and each easing of restrictions, so that their business was optimised to take advantage of the market at each point in time.
“Our £1.3bn of sales are genuinely omni-channel in this respect, and are an indication of how our technology has allowed seamless switching between the showroom and online sales for both consumer and dealer.”
Tew added that the figure also showed how resilient the industry had been over the pandemic year and the high degree of adaptability shown by dealers.
“What we’ve seen over the last 12 months is that when lockdowns have forced dealers into online sales, they’ve moved very quickly to embrace new and effective digitisation that has proven highly effective for them and for their customers.
“All of this shows, we believe, that the right technology can potentially protect dealers from uncertainty and that digital transformation isn’t only necessary but also profitable. We certainly have many dealers whose bottom line has remained solid and grown.
“Assuming that trading conditions in the used vehicle market continue to improve as lockdowns and the pandemic come to an end, the same technology should allow them to fully maximise future opportunities by meeting a wider range of needs, as well as creating a situation where dealers should remain more receptive to embracing change.
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