A new partnership aims to increase dealerships’ service department efficiency by eliminating bottlenecks.
Reynolds and Reynolds has invested in and collaborated with Skaivision, a startup with artificial intelligence software that analyzes dealership camera feeds to improve service department flow. It can even help dealerships acquire more vehicles out of the service lane.
Skaivision “gives service managers a tool to determine any areas where they may have been missing opportunities and losing efficiencies,” Greg Uland, vice president of marketing at Reynolds and Reynolds, tells WardsAuto. “We are really excited to tie that into everything else we do to give dealers the opportunity to sell as many hours (in the service lane) as possible.”
Start with a dealership’s express service, which is the highest volume of service transactions a dealership performs daily, Skaivision CEO Mark Queen tells WardsAuto.
Customers are very sensitive to getting in and out in 60 minutes, but with multi-point inspections and other actions, a vehicle or customer can easily get “lost in the sauce,” says Queen.
Analyzing video from multiple cameras, Skaivision identifies where the holdup occurred if a change takes longer.
The partnership with Reynolds gives Skaivision access to Reynolds’ data “with probably 60 or 70 data points to marry up the actual event occurrences with the expectation in the software,” says Queen.
So, suppose the inspection discovered the car needed new brakes, and the customer agrees. Skaivision can see in the Reynolds data that the code changed and will adjust the time threshold, he says.
Reynolds and Reynolds’ Spark AI is the AI data layer that ties tools such as Skaivision together with additional Reynolds AI offerings. With so much more data, the AI tools are much more powerful, says Uland.
Better Than Taking Notes
Skaivision’s ability to tie into existing cameras is key, he says. “It is essentially the same thing as a person sitting there and taking notes.”
But a person isn’t likely to take notes for hours and hours in the service lane and would likely miss some of the finer points caught by a video camera.
A dealership may be open 12 hours a day, says Queen. “Who has time to comb through 12 hours of video and spot the patterns that aren’t one-offs but are true patterns? They’re true inconsistencies,” he says.
Buying More Cars Out of the Service Lane
The service lane can be an important source of used-car inventory, but service lane technicians have, at best, “mixed feelings” about going through the process of acquiring service lane inventory, says Queen. Skaivision can help.
First, it reduces friction by letting the technician know who the customer is so they can greet the customer by name, he says.
Skaivision also uses the video from a camera behind the vehicle in the service area to see if the vehicle is one the dealership needs. “No human even has to evaluate it,” says Queen.
Skaivision then sends a text to the customer asking if they are interested in selling the vehicle. If not, the customer opts out. If so, Skaivision does an appraisal and sends the customer a range of quotes. It’s an efficient and less intrusive way to handle a service lane acquisition, says Queen.
“The customer says: ‘You know what? If I’m here already, and I don’t have to deal with a human and go through a nine-step process for an hour of pressure, then maybe I will do it,’” he says.
Dealerships using Skaivision have in the first week boosted by 10% the number of vehicles they acquire out of the service lane, says Queen.
Dealership Idea of the Month
Founded in 2022, Skaivision is now in use in 112 dealerships, says Queen. That includes 12 added in November alone, he says.
Dealers are discovering new ways to use its technology almost monthly, he says. For example, a Mercedes-Benz dealer considered buying a second EV charger. The dealer asked Skaivision if it could evaluate video from a camera on the existing charger to see how it might be used more efficiently.
Skaivision could, and by finding a way to use that charger more efficiently, the dealership avoided the expense of adding another, says Queen.
Skaivision integrates with most dealer management systems and third-party vendors, such as UVeye, and is available for $17.95 a month after a “nominal” integration fee. The average dealer using Skaivision has its AI triggers connected to 32 cameras, says Queen.
Queen declines to say how much Reynolds invested in Skaivision but says that for Reynolds, it was “a junior investment.”
He sees the Reynolds collaboration as part of a long-term strategy. Access to the Reynolds “data lake” through Spark AI will allow both Skaivision and Reynolds to find new ways to use Skaivision’s technology, say both Queen and Uland.
“One thing exciting for us is, Reynolds and Reynolds has a great long-term strategy with Spark AI,” says Queen. “Building a data layer to hook other AI apps in, that will make the experience so much more seamless for dealerships who use the Reynolds DMS and that is forward thinking,” says Queen.
Reynolds sees long-term benefits, as well.
“We see this as an opportunity for (dealerships) to become more efficient,” says Uland. “What’s in it for us will probably come down the road.”
