DealerInt said:

@Brad Burlingham This is still a relevant question in 2026. For 12 stores on Elead, the switching cost isn't just the software — it's the 6-12 months of retraining your BDC and losing institutional knowledge baked into your templates and workflows.

VinSolutions has the widest adoption so finding staff who already know it is easier. DriveCentric has a genuinely better UI but thinner support infrastructure for larger groups. DealerSocket has struggled with stability post-merger.

For a 12-store group the real question is whether your variable ops leadership can enforce a consistent process across all stores in the new system — most CRM migrations fail on adoption, not technology.

Click to expand...

@DealerInt don't take this the wrong way, but that is a very narrow world-view of CRM changes in today's automotive retail world. We went from VinSolutions to DriveCentric years ago because I knew we NEEDED TO LOSE INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE, TEMPLATES, and WORKFLOWS. They have a completely different view of what automotive CRM and process look like, and it's refreshing. We only have 7 rooftops but the change was great, adoption from all was the fastest thing we'd ever seen and accountability for all, even those that were hanging on to the "comfortable" previous system, was key is a smooth transition. DriveCentric is by far our best adopted and engaged tool within our dealership software and tools lineup. New hires take to it immediately whereas it did take someone 6 months or more to get used to VinSolutions, eLead, and before that DealerSocket.

Your comment of "...but thinner support infrastructure for larger groups." is based off what? They have the best and most responsive support team and channel we have ever seen. Basic users have direct and immediate access to their support team in St. Louis for issues.

Oh, and your comment here is spot on. Drive's adoption is crazy high with sales teams. Like I said, best I've ever seen in my 25 years in auto.

most CRM migrations fail on adoption

Click to expand...

Our only issue is the Tekion pairing is limited with the DMS integration compared to if we still had a CDK, Reynolds, etc. They're working on expanding that so we can get our Service integrations and desking push perfected. More than happy to give you a tour from a dealer view if you want.

We're in the process of adding Impel to our "team". There are some grumbles from at least one person here. His concern isn't unjust.
We are a family owned & operated small Chevy dealership, and have been doing business on a more personal level since the beginning. Where our larger competitors treat customers like cattle with dollar bills stuck to them, we treat them with respect and dignity. Ok, not to step on any toes out there, but it's true. We are slow paced where it matters, and face paced where it matters. We value time and do a great job of not holding customers hostage for hours.

Click to expand...

I think it's going to become common that different AI tools will become part of company teams. I think everyone right now is trying to figure out the tuning; what sort of intro's do we want the agent making vs salespeople, what sort of redundant things can we delegate to those tools, and then having a way to keep everyone in the loop on all the customer interactions. You can definitely do a lot more with less, and offer a richer experience by adopting these tools. But I think right now everyone's in figure it out mode while it changes so fast...

douglaskarr said:

I've done some additional research and come up with my own... is this current?

Click to expand...

Douglas, amazing list. Would love to see how they claim what makes them different, or, what their strengths are.

p.s. I'm a merchandising zealot, and I am a fan of Ovefuel

Burt Lewis said:

==========================

View attachment 9802

Click to expand...

Oh man - I thought I responded to this, but I never hit the "Post Reply" button.

Anyway - Love it!

Max_Fullpath said:

I think the conversation around CDPs is as relevant today as it was 2 years ago. All I suggested is that you might want to take a look for yourself. All good if it's no longer of interest to you. I started posting here again because of a recent post that hit my inbox this morning.

Click to expand...

I agree the CDP conversation is still alive and well. What I took some offense to was being called out after 2 years of silence. Normally, people who bump a thread add to the conversation with new information rather than picking at old things that have been quiet for a long time.

Welcome back. Hopefully, in the future, you will check the dates on things before jumping back in.

Ummmm.... welcome back to the conversation from 2 years ago

I’ve used their link-building and audit combo before, and it helped patch up some weak spots on my site without any guesswork. If you want to see the same setup I tried, you can check the details, since it covers their services and how they handle reporting in a pretty straightforward way.

ryanlucia said:

You're building an Ai experience on the website so when Ai comes to your website it interacts with it?

Click to expand...

Yes.
Websites are build for humans. AI is an intelligent machine that has a mission (created by its user). AI acts on behalf of it's user's mission.

DJ nailed the spec:

DjSec said:

he real strategy now is topic gaps, not keyword gaps. You create a knowledge network that is designed to feed the AI's.

Click to expand...

MattCopley said:

@Brad Burlingham based on what we saw with a few of the Audi stores on our platform the move to the new OADD site was an existential disaster. The CMS is puposefully painful to operate (far worse than DDC) and EXTREMELY limited in it's structure. You also roll up as a subdomain of the OEM giving you very limited ability to differentiate from on or off brand competitors. Our flagship Audi store saw close to 80% collapse in traffic overnight, had their worst 3 weeks in store history before going back to dealer.com, and later moving to an out-of-program website provider. Here's the daily performance story A) - Before Google indexed the OADD site
View attachment 9770

Here's after OADD site indexing (audi would not allow a programmatic migration of all of their SEO content)
View attachment 9771

And Here's where they are now on an off program site and with all their migrated content infrastructure
View attachment 9773
Added Average position in search trend for context as well . 3.6 across 205k impressions ain't too shabby for one day.


Proceed with caution. Have a contingency plan to bail out and bury that OEM site in the darkest corners of the internet if you need to.

Click to expand...

So doesnt that mean you give up all of your coop? we were forced to move to the new site.

JK,
I'm building a twist to this theme, hopefully beta soon. Love to ping you and talk about this to run a test on your site when we're ready.

My Take:

Jeff Kershner said:

The main goal of the LLM.TXT files is to assist with content discovery. Similar to the website's sitemap showing Google different pages, we are mapping all your content to LLM tools to help improve placement and rankings in AI and SEO simultaneously.

Click to expand...

JK,
Ahhh... you can pass on that offer. it's a moneygrab.

@Ryan Everson Is all over this concept. He was 1st to break news about this right here on DR, it's called WebMCP. Ryans Post
Structured Data is Critical for Dealers To Get Into AI Search Results

Brother Ryan also posted another where CloudFlare customers can buy a "LLM.txt" like replicate for AI bots to navigate your site.

jackcarlson said:

We are seeing so far an average of 39% increase in engaged time/session & 30% increase in session duration when our information is front and center, and legacy VDP bits are pushed below.

Click to expand...

As a fellow merchandiser, our clients with the shittiest VDPs see the highest lifts

Once your product shows that level of lift, then, they...

RESPECT YOUR AUTHORITAH!

jackcarlson said:

@joe.pistell Yeah, it's not great...I'll bring it up with them today in our sync.

Click to expand...

Jack,
lobby hard for a review of this. Shoppers LOVE to look at gallery photos. Make sure the spinny-clunky-video-thingy improves shopper engagement and interactions.

Why? Because your product's ROI is tied to the entire VDP UX. EXAMPLE: If the shoppers don't get hooked on the photos, they wont read your helpful content.

You will find that when sales slow and dealers tighten up, they cut vendors. IMO, your product is 1000x better than that clunky-carvana-copy-cat widget.

OPINION:
@jackcarlson LOVE what your building. If u have any ppl in this store that listens to you, the spinning video is a choppy mess.
2025 Buick Enclave Preferred Alliance OH | Lavery Automotive Sales and Service 5GAERARS7SJ304088

joe.pistell said:

How long before Claude announces a car shopping plug-in?
#Short CARS, CARG, TRUE, etc
#Long AN, SAH, GPI, PAG, etc.

@Eric Miltsch I bought long dated OTM puts on CARS and CARG. lol

Click to expand...

I think we will see more ecommerce solutions before anything for cars. But yes, something is coming that nobody can anticipate.

I like the short plays for sure!

What products would you all like us to add to the list?