CARSALES today launches a major reinvention of AutoGate, its long-standing online prospect and inventory management system.  

From today AutoGate transitions into Nexgate, a next-generation, single source, interconnected dealer platform which the company says is designed to help dealer and OEM retail teams make better and faster decisions.

Carsales says Nexgate is designed to replace its AutoGate system which has operated for 30 years. Eighty per cent of Carsales dealer clients log in and use AutoGate for more than 20 days a month.

The CEO of Carsales, Craig Fraser, told GoAutoNews Premium in an exclusive interview: “We’re investing significantly to really enhance the experience and make sure that we’re delivering the best possible solutions. 

“It’s the biggest investment in dealer technology in our 30-year history,” he said. 

Asked the size of the investment Mr Fraser said: “It’s a significant amount. This has been a very large project for Carsales. We are 18 months in and this is just the start. There is a very large team working on this behind the scenes.”

The company says Nexgate “uncovers vehicle sourcing, inventory management, pricing, customer engagement and insights and combines this data with AI-driven market intelligence into a single connected software solution for automotive dealerships to help teams identify opportunities sooner and focus on what matters most”.

“The key idea behind Nexgate is simple. The goal isn’t more information. It’s knowing the next best move,” Carsales says.

CEO of Carsales, Craig Fraser

Mr Fraser said: “About 24 months ago we ran a whole lot of dealer interviews to really hear from our customers about what are the challenges they’re facing, what are the tools that they’re using, and how can we help simplify that to make it more efficient for them in their day-to-day operations.

“We wanted to get a better understanding of how dealerships operate and where the biggest opportunities for improvement existed,” Mr Fraser said. 

A consistent theme emerged from the interviews:

• Dealerships are managing increasing complexity
• Teams rely on multiple systems, reports and tools every day
• Information is often fragmented across different platforms
• Valuable time is spent searching for answers rather than acting on opportunities.

“Our team designed Nexgate to address these challenges by bringing key workflows and decisions together in the one place – on one connected platform,” Mr Fraser said.

“Dealers told us they often need to use multiple systems to source inventory, manage stock, monitor performance, engage customers, respond to leads and review market data. Rather than creating additional tools, Nexgate brings these capabilities together into one platform and one login.

”One of the things that we really wanted to solve was creating a lot more automated flows and helping dealers with that next best action to take. For example, our tools will now help guide dealers on pricing. Is that vehicle priced to market? What’s average days online? And really helping with merchandising and turning stock faster. 

“It might mean acquisition, so really helping dealers with acquiring the right vehicles and overlaying that with consumer demand signals. It might mean inventory distribution, so helping with inventory flow not only within Carsales, but in broader marketplace websites, etc. 

“And then we overlay that with what we see as quite complex and varied rules from the OEMs. And so all of the tools are now trained to really make sure that they’re meeting the guidelines of the dealers, etc. 

“There are quite a lot of different features that we’re building into the one platform, but they’re not all separate tools. That’s probably the really key thing here that we’ve solved. It’s actually in one environment, so it really does help dealers drive a lot more efficiency and help with broader observations and insights to really guide how they operate on a daily basis.”

Mr Fraser said the objective wasn’t simply to build new tools, but to create a platform that helps dealers operate more efficiently from the one place and make more informed decisions every day.

“AutoGate has been around for nearly 30 years. Essentially AutoGate was designed as a basic inventory and lead management tool for dealers. Every dealer who advertises inventory on Carsales has access to AutoGate and while AutoGate has incredibly high usage, it really was designed for basic inventory management flow and lead management.

Importantly, Mr Fraser said, Nexgate has also been designed to integrate with existing DMS providers and dealership systems, allowing customers to continue using tools that are already important to their business.

“With Nexgate, we integrate with all DMS providers. That is not new now. AutoGate integrates with most DMSs, but one of the key things is that we wanted to make sure that we’re easy to do business with, that we’re integrating into other tools. Because one of the things with Nexgate is we can provide a lot of the services within the platform, but we’re mindful that dealers have other services they use now, and we can integrate into those flows.”

Mr Fraser said another key feature of the Nexgate launch was the pricing of the service. 

“We wanted to really simplify all of our pricing structures with all of the solutions we offer.  So we have now moved to three packages. 

“Every dealer with Carsales gets access to Nexgate on the first of September. They will pay the same subscription fee that they pay today for access to Nexgate, and they’ll transition over from AutoGate. 

“There are two other packages available and, as they increase their package tier, there are more inclusions and features. A dealer may want to have everything, so they will sign up to the Signature package, which gives them all of the features in Nexgate. 

“Alternatively, they may want to use Nexgate for base functionality for inventory and leads. So again there are options, but we have really simplified how we offer our packages; again off the back of feedback through all of the dealer interviews,” Mr Fraser said.“It’s designed to really help create efficiency and solve a whole range of challenges that dealers face today,” Mr Fraser said. “Saving time for dealers, for example, helping dealers prioritize and identify performance opportunities, which is a big one that we got in the feedback. 

“In summary, we wanted to bring sourcing, inventory, pricing, consumer engagement and insights into one connector platform because one of the key bits of feedback from dealers was that there’s multiple tools that they need to use every day to run their business, and so we’ve gone away and actually solved that. 

“And that was quite a complex challenge to solve because more broadly there isn’t or hasn’t been one platform that solves that. So Nexgate is designed to solve that, and we wanted to give the retailing teams the confidence on that next best action. 

“We have obviously utilized a lot of AI into our Nexgate platform, which really helps drive efficiency and guides our dealers and OEMs into the next best action to really drive the right outcomes. So that’s really the journey where we started and where we are heading.”

Mr Fraser said: “To support the transition, we have set up a hypercare unit within Carsales with developers working seven days a week and we have increased our call centre team to handle calls to make sure dealers aren’t waiting in a queue to have any questions answered. 

“They are not there to sell products; they are there to make sure our dealers and our OEMs are maximizing all of the options that are available within the platform. That seamless transition has been really important for us. We have a team focused on utilization because there are a number of different features and options within the platform and we want to make sure that the customers are actually maximizing those features and driving better efficiency and outcomes from them.

“So there’s a lot that we’re doing to make sure that that transition in September is as seamless as possible.

“We also made sure that there are certain experiences within Nexgate that are familiar to AutoGate users. For example, within inventory where it’s familiar today, we are not making dramatic shifts.

“But one of the things to really call out is that the first of September is not the end of the evolution. So, over the next four weeks, we will be implementing more and more features into Nexgate and there will also be a lot happening over the next 12 to 24 months as we build more and more features into the client experience on the platform,” Mr Fraser said.