Hello!

We are an advertising/marketing agency that specializes in Retail Automotive. We've seen the worst and the (almost) best in dealer websites and we are out to change the world of on-line marketing.

We have seen consumers being beat over the head with prices, special apr's, newest, latest and greatest. It's tantamount to shouting at them, and nobody likes to be shouted at.

We are in the process of creating the "Ultimate Dealer Website" which is actually the consumer's ultimate auto website. We are needing to find out how to pull inventory from a dealers DMS. Used cars are normally handled by companies like Dealer Specialties, correct? Are there others? Do we need to register with them? What about New vehicles? Is it the same approach?

Once we can find out how to do this, we can rearrange how the vehicles are posted online. We would actually use real photos' of new vehicles too instead of stock photo's that may or may not represent the actual vehicle in stock.

Any and all input is greatly appreciated!

HLF Brandtailers

Does your "Ultimate Dealer Website" incorporate an unnecessary amount of Flash? I hope not

There are several companies out there that specialize in DMS data polling. Check out Authenticom, SelectQu, DMI, and HomeNet. All of them can gather data from pretty much any dealer DMS or third party, clean it, vin decode it, append photos, etc. and send it to just about anywhere. Some of them, like HomeNet also offer an online interface to the inventory.

Dealer Specialties is one of the leaders in taking photos of cars on the lot and sending out to services. Not all dealers use them, however. VIN solutions, Auction123, and AutoUplink are some others.

Hope this helps.

you can checkout this post on our blog... AutoJini.com Dealer Website Blog: Automatically downloading data in XML format from ADP and ReyRey systems thru dial-up

It is better to do it over telnet and obtain the IP address... if the dealership fuses about firewalls tell them to give you limited access from a dedicated IP. If you are going to do Virtual Tunnels then beware of dealing with Viruses...

Lot of dealers will also have in house team that can FTP the data to your server every night some might email also... so plan for that.

used cars are not always sent from DSI, AutoBase, CDMData and the likes... some times dealers will have you pull the inventory and upload the images them self.

it is novel idea to do the images for each new car but I have doubts about it really working out... for larger dealerships... having over 2500 vehicles and 200 car turn over a month. It be just too time consuming to do this.

also keep in mind that 95% of the time... data in the DMS will have errors... only few dealers really pay attention to what they have in DMS... don't be surprised if you get new cars from 2006 in your pull.

if I can be of any further assistance... then plz pm me.