DealerSocket ‘excited’ to enter inventory space

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – DealerSocket chief and co-founder Jonathon Ord spoke with a noticeable air of happiness on the final day of the company’s 6th annual user summit.

After a successful two-day conference in San Diego with thousands of dealership staff and reps, Ord may have saved his best news for the closing speech.

“Have any of you seen the press release from this morning? What do you think?” he asks the crowd on the final day, referring to the $55-million deal his company inked with Dealertrack Technologies for its Inventory+ business.

The move, seen on one side as a regulatory requirement that removes a sticking point in the merger of Dealertrack and Cox Automotive, provides an exciting boost to DealerSocket’s product portfolio and 3,388 new customers to whom it may sell its existing offerings.

“There is some of that that is overlap with our existing customer base, but much of that is greenfield for us and white space where we can help all those customers use better CRM technologies and website technologies and then we can have our own customers… using better inventory management features and functions,” he says.

The all-cash transaction is expected to close by the end of Q3. Under the terms of the agreement, DealerSocket will acquire Dealertrack’s Inventory+ suite of solutions including its AAX product in the U.S. and Canada as well as its eCarlist websites.

Inventory+ helps dealers centralize and standardize the inventory management process, gain data-driven insights and works to maximize profitability.

Tradetracker and Central Dispatch are not part of the transaction.

The deal is contingent upon approval by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in connection with its anti-trust review of the pending acquisition of Dealertrack by Cox Automotive.

Moving Inventory+ should help expedite approval as Cox also owns vAuto, a software company offering a similar inventory management product called Provision in the U.S., labelled as Toptimizer in Canada.