Online Auction Platform

Dealer Trade® — Overview

- Dealer Trade is an online auction platform (web & mobile apps) for the motor industry, exclusive to motor dealers and their suppliers. Dealer Trade provides digital vehicle wholesale, remarketing and disposal services.

- Allows motor dealers to load vehicles to sell, bid on auctions and buy vehicles anytime and anywhere with our mobile app or desktop portal.

- Provides a platform for motor dealers to load and auction vehicles in a matter of minutes to the national network of dealers or to a network of dealers created by the individual motor dealer.

- Lets the motor dealer choose the makes and models of vehicles they are interested in and to always be alerted when vehicles of their choice become available.

- Permits motor dealers to auction vehicles to the growing national Dealer Trade network OR their own exclusive dealer network (ideal for manufacturers & automotive groups).

Application Walk Through

A walk through of the latest version of the Dealer Trade software. Completed in late 2019, the front-end was rebuilt from the ground up, in addition to substantial back-end changes to accommodate new features and future data modelling opportunities.

The core software was a web application (accompanied by Google Play and Apple App store mobile applications) built with MeteorJS.

Being a real-time auction platform, low-latency (no lag) was key. This was provided by persistent WebSocket connections between the servers and clients, enabling data to be pushed to a client’s device in near real time.

The front-facing application however, was just the tip of the iceberg. The service relied on a vast array of back-end systems to keep the engine running.

Data Pipelines:

  • Periodically (and automatically) ingesting (and cleaning) vehicle, market, and industry data from 3rd party providers for use by internal systems.

Backend system overview dashboard for staff & management:

  • Manage the customer on-boarding and relationship process.
  • Multi-way syncing of customer data into Microsoft Dynamics & Salesforce, so that wherever staff edited the data – it was always consistent.
  • Monitor & manage live auctions.
  • View countless reporting metrics.
  • Billing & invoicing integrations with Xero accounting software.

Integrations with motor dealer management systems:

  • Motor dealers use a variety of different software solutions to manage their inventory in-house.
  • Reduced friction for customers to get involved with Dealer Trade was crucial, therefore, integrations were built for these 3rd party systems, to automate the listing of vehicles in Dealer Trade from that dealer’s in-house software.

Dealer Trade were innovators, constantly taking on board customer feedback and finding ways to improve the experience they provided. Suffice to say the JIRA backlog featured thousands of tickets for improvements, fixes, and updates. (JIRA is a software project management and task tracking tool.)

Members of the Lumin8 AI team were involved from day one. Designing, building, and launching the software needed to disrupt the automotive industry.

Some specific features of the Dealer Trade System

  • Web & Mobile Apps from a single code base
  • Instant app updates. Mobile apps can be updated without the user updating from the app store.
  • Automated push & email notification, with fine tunable preferences.
  • Automated billing & invoicing through a highly secure, PCI compliant payment gateway.
  • Bulk upload vehicle/listing data via CSV file.
  • Image / Asset storage and lifecycle management.
  • Multiple, segmented hosting environments (production, beta, development).
  • Internationalization and different runtime parameters for operation of the software in different countries.

DT as a Buyer

The Dealer Trade software from a buyer's perspective.

DT as a Seller

The Dealer Trade software from a seller's perspective.