COX Automotive Australia, after years of adding innovative services and brands to its business portfolio, has moved to integrate and centralise its diverse offerings to dealers,OEMs and the fleet, leasing and insurance industries.

The company has acquired, imported or locally-developed so many services under so many brands since the US auto giant first launched under the Cox name in Australia that it decided it needed to streamline the way that it presented its offerings to its core auto industry customers as well as eliminate the duplication of sales staff fronting dealers, OEMs and others for each of the services it sells.

The main brands have been Dealer Auction, Dealer Solutions, DealerCell, Digipurple, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, Sell My Car and Xtime. Within these brands were further sub-brands and activities.

The brands are no longer the focus with their activities now folded logically into various service streams.

These are now grouped under digital marketing, data and valuations, sales and finance, customer retention, remarketing, vehicle services and car buying.

Living within data and valuations, for example, are services such as AutoRadar market intelligence, leads management, photography, Smart Publisher (advertising-driven inventory control) and Kelley Blue Book including MarketLens and Price Advisor.

As part of the consolidation four different websites have been integrated into a single site which is showcasing the diversity of the company’s services and how they fit together.

In a briefing for GoAutoNews Premium, the company said that, by merging these diverse activities into a new single enterprise, it was seeking to “make it really simple for customers, predominantly dealers and OEMs, to understand that we’ve got products and services throughout the whole ownership lifecycle, from lead management through to aftersales. We are just making it really easy for customers to work with us.

“As we align under Cox Automotive, we can say: This is what we can help you with and break it down into things we can draw from the portfolio like lead generation, lead management, sales optimization and aftersales, for example.

“We can ask, what are you trying to solve? We probably have a way we can work with you. So it becomes a simpler conversation. And that’s the essence – simplifying our interactions with our customers.”

The company said that on the wholesale side the Manheim brand would remain, because it’s so well known.

“There’s a lot of equity in that brand. But there will be a stronger connection to Cox Automotive – especially with our dealers and our OEM customers – but even fleet and lease customers will understand that, by working with Manheim, they are going to have access to our retail and data products, including insights and analysis, to maximise the sale of their fleet or the management of their fleet.

“So it just becomes a stronger integrated offering where we can go out and talk on the retail ecosystem and on the wholesale ecosystem. We have services and solutions, but we’re connected and, now, even more seamless.”

The CEO of Cox Automotive Australia and New Zealand, David Colwell, told GoAutoNews Premium: “When people come into contact with our business, they are just amazed at the breadth of the products and services that we offer.

“This is about grouping them into complementary products and services so that we can tell our story which is all about being able to provide an end-to-end solution and show the full range of our capabilities.”

Mr Colwell said that Cox Automotive was “fully invested” in helping its customers navigate their way through industry transformation.

“We’re helping to drive the digital transformation of defleet, remarketing, wholesale and retail operations for our manufacturer, fleet, dealer and insurance customers throughout Australia and New Zealand.

“We work in partnership with our customers across the entire vehicle lifecycle, helping them to maximise the potential of their vehicles, deliver efficiencies and provide compelling propositions to their own customers.

“From buying to disposal, to sales and marketing, via in-life and end-of-contract services, we have a unique ability to both see the bigger picture and be hands-on with the details.

Mr Colwell said: “We have been for some time now making sure that we’ve got all of our different products on to similar technology platforms so that they can easily integrate so that we can provide our customers with a seamless set of products.

“We are now in a great position where our customers can either take one product, or they can take multiple products.”

Mr Colwell said that Cox Automotive would no longer have representatives selling each individual product but the company’s representatives would be offering customers options from the total portfolio of services.

“These acquisitions that we’ve made and these new products that we bought to market had been done in isolation and we’ve now organised ourselves so in the customer’s eyes it’s quite simple to understand. So we’ll have a single sales team and they will be able to therefore serve any part of the end-to-end lifecycle.”

He said that from a dealer’s point of view, it is less disruptive because there will no longer be sales staff each selling a different Cox service but a single member of the Cox sales team presenting the full range of services for dealers to choose.

But he said that it was one thing to get all of Cox Automotive’s different offerings together but it was important to think about “how we also integrate with other suppliers as well.”

“At the end of the day, I think we have a responsibility as suppliers to the industry to provide a seamless friction-free product for the end consumer. I think that’s one of the challenges that dealers have today; there’s lots of great products and technology out there, but they don’t all join up.

“Customers get frustrated by having to put data into their system multiple times, or the dealer is very inefficient because of the need to enter things multiple times. So I think it’s not just an opportunity for us to have our products seamlessly integrated but to do that with the other suppliers in the industry as well.

“If you can get the data to flow from one product to the next; that could be vehicle data, it could be customer data, you still have the power of each of the tools, because they all do something different, but you’re not reentering. If you can do that then you’re creating a very efficient way for dealers to be able to operate.

“It’s a really exciting time in the industry. There is so much change going on; customer expectations and buyer behaviour is evolving at a rapid rate. We’re seeing the merging of physical and digital and the increase in the migration to mobility and other ownership models, like rideshare and subscription.

“We’ve got new retail models that are being trialled and the whole wholesale ecosystem is being disrupted. There is so much going on and Cox has so many products that are available today to be able to help the automotive industry work their way through these changes.

“They are just not as well known as what they should be in totality so these changes are about people having an understanding of what Cox offers. That enables us then to have a conversation of how we can help the industry be able to solve some of these problems.

“But it’s not just about integration of our products, it’s also about how we integrate as an industry.

“We play a role in that and if the current players don’t do a good job of integrating all of our various technologies and products for the benefit of the end consumer, then the industry, arguably, is ripe for disruption and someone else will come and do it.

“So I think it’s in the best interest of the current players to work together,” he said.

By John Mellor