The Inside Scoop on the CDK Automotive Commerce Collab

The rise of point-and-click car buying pioneered by Tesla has traditional brands working hard to deliver a similar online experience to sell cars. Yet, even after pandemic shutdowns that fueled online shopping, the majority of buyers don’t want to make this very large purchase remotely. 

CDK tracks how people buy new cars each month from every automaker and historically very few, often just 1%, buy completely online. Approximately two-thirds of shoppers reported completing the entire purchase at the dealership, while a quarter took a hybrid online-to-in-store approach. 

It’s fair to assume that in-market shoppers go online to research vehicles, but many don’t provide personal information because they don’t want to be bombarded with sales calls and emails. Instead, they gather information, narrow down a vehicle choice, check their local dealer’s inventory, and then head to the showroom. So, it’s the combination of online convenience and in-person experience that shoppers want, which is where our industry is headed.

The problem is that the sales and service journey from an automaker website to a dealer’s showroom has always been clunky. Competing systems create duplicate records, there’s confusion over vehicle inventory status, payment calculations don’t match, and the list goes on. This broken experience is frustrating and it erodes the consumer trust in automakers and dealers. To solve these problems, CDK created the Automotive Commerce Collab.

What’s the Automotive Commerce Collab?

It’s an initiative developed to better connect automaker and dealer software using open, universal technology and application programming interfaces. CDK has long offered the technology to connect a Tier 1 automaker to dealers via a marketplace of APIs open to all. The Automotive Commerce Collab is a more direct path between the two using similar time-tested technology. It’s truly a one-to-one exchange between automaker and dealer, delivered by CDK technology that still gives the dealer flexibility to use their own software. That’s right, even if it isn’t CDK. 

CDK Leads the Way to a Collaborative Future

Unlike new entrants to the industry who are still learning how to connect automakers, dealers and consumers, CDK is well-established at the heart of the industry. We have 50 years of experience helping all parties achieve higher levels of satisfaction through hundreds of thousands of integrations. 

Simply put, we’ve been doing this for a long time, and we have deep knowledge of how automakers and dealers operate. Our goal continues to be to disrupt our industry from the inside using our expertise to create a simplified and more collaborative future. 

Putting Vehicle Buyers First

This initiative benefits the whole industry — and especially car buyers. Like the rest of what's now omnichannel retail, buyers want options. And they want the same thing they get in the rest of retail today: a frictionless online-to-offline buying experience. The Automotive Commerce Collab delivers on both points. 

Whether buyers begin their journey on an automaker website, through an inventory portal, on a dealer website, or in person at the showroom, there’s a seamless delivery of buyer information from a laptop or smartphone to the showroom. 

This is an opportunity to truly put buyers first with functionality that includes penny-perfect pricing, transactional tools aligned with consumer expectations, and the flexibility to support nonlinear, highly individual paths to purchase. 

It’s worth noting that a better buying experience also empowers automakers and dealers to have more control over their brand. They can now provide a singular, branded and seamless buying and service experience — across all retail touch points. 

Unifying the Industry

Rapid advances in technology have moved the retail automotive industry forward. Now it’s time to take another big step. The Automotive Commerce Collab bridges the longstanding gap between automaker and dealer shopping experiences to deliver a single, branded journey for consumers. Eighty-four percent of dealers recognize the need to focus on the customer experience, according to a recent CDK survey, and the Automotive Commerce Collab is a game changer for the customer journey. 

And since it’s open and universal, the Automotive Commerce Collab is compatible with any combination of automaker and dealer software platforms. Deeper levels of brand integration can be achieved when paired at the dealer level with the CDK Dealership Xperience. It’s time to unify our industry. CDK is leading the way.