OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2018. vAuto is announcing another industry first—Nexi, the automotive industry's first Digital Assistant for dealerships. Nexi will debut at the 2018 NADA Show in Las Vegas.

Through a skill for Amazon Alexa, available on Echo Devices, Nexi helps dealers access their inventory, sell cars and generate profit. The cloud-based service is capable of answering a full range of questions on inventory, local market data, operations and more.

"Dealers are incredibly busy and we've arrived at a time when voice-enabled assistance can help them multi-task and make the right decisions more efficiently and effectively," said Dale Pollak, founder of vAuto and Executive Vice President of Cox Automotive. "Nexi is the industry's first skill that helps dealers know the critical conditions and tasks that need their attention now. Nexi provides this information in the most efficient manner possible—by voice through the Amazon Alexa skill, as well as emails, text messages and notices within vAuto applications."

The Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review published a study of more than 3,000 business executives, managers, and analysts in 112 countries and 21 industries, called Reshaping Business With Artificial Intelligence.   Of the findings:

"Retail automotive is ripe for AI," Pollak said. "Thanks to margin compression, dealers are working harder than ever while making less money. The answer to this problem is increased operational efficiencies, and Nexi helps dealers take a significant step in this direction."

The Nexi AI-enhanced service will be offered at no additional cost to all vAuto customers who use Stockwave, vAuto's proprietary solution to help dealers analyze their current inventory.

About vAuto
vAuto® provides innovative technology, tools and business intelligence to thousands of dealerships across the United States and Canada, helping them compete more effectively and increase new/used vehicle sales volumes and profits. Founded in 2005, vAuto revolutionized dealers' used vehicle operations with the groundbreaking Provision® suite of tools. Leveraging The Velocity Method of Management®, pioneered by vAuto's visionary founder, Dale Pollak, the Provision suite guides used vehicle acquisition, appraisals, pricing, merchandising and more based on real-time, local market supply-and-demand data. In 2014, vAuto combined the Velocity method with the power of incentive management to create the Conquest™ new vehicle inventory management and pricing tool. In 2016, vAuto launched Stockwave to serve as the foundation for a suite of wholesale inventory acquisition solutions. Headquartered near Chicago, Illinois, vAuto is a Cox Automotive™ brand.