The Cobalt Group Upgrades Nitra Inventory Solution
SEATTLE--Jan. 2, 20056, 2005--| Enhanced, interactive online inventory presentation motivates shoppers to spend more time on auto dealers' websites and submit high quality leads |
The Cobalt Group, the leading provider of retailing solutions for the automotive market, today announced the launch of Cobalt Nitra(TM) Inventory Services 3.0, a significant upgrade to the industry's leading inventory management and presentation solution. Nitra Inventory Services provides a richly detailed, merchandised presentation of dealership inventory that meets automobile manufacturer (OEM) requirements. The enhanced Inventory Services 3.0, built on Cobalt's Nitra online retailing platform, will begin rolling out to Cobalt customers this March.
"Cobalt currently manages nearly half of the nation's vehicle inventory data with 1.8 million live records, and we offer an industry-leading display that outperforms other solutions' load times," said Max Steckler, The Cobalt Group's director of product management and marketing. "The Nitra Inventory Services upgrade will make it even easier for customers to find exactly what they are looking for on a dealer's website -- improving customer satisfaction and driving more online leads to dealerships."
Cobalt added a number of new features to its Nitra inventory solution to provide dealers with a more powerful, integrated inventory management and presentation tool:
-- Inventory Display 3.0 - The new Inventory Display features a highly configurable search application that supports up to 24 search attributes, five price fields and up to 14 images per vehicle. Inventory Display 3.0 helps move consumers towards a vehicle purchase by enabling them to submit an email inquiry at every step during their inventory search process. It returns close vehicle matches when there is no exact match for the consumer's search, and has new browsing functionality that is optimized to showcase dealers with a large vehicle inventory. New inventory is fully integrated with Vehicle Media Gallery, offering interior and exterior vehicle photos, 360-degree views and colorization where customers can virtually "paint" their vehicles with chosen colors.
-- AutoShow(TM) 3.0 -- Using the AutoShow tool, dealers have the opportunity to make up for certain limitations of their dealer management systems (DMS) by editing and adding information that results in a richer presentation of inventory data on their website. AutoShow provides a friendly user interface for editing vehicle data, adding custom descriptions, and uploading multiple photos and can be securely accessed from any computer with a web browser.
-- Inventory Services 3.0 -- The back end of the solution enables dealers to display the most accurate and complete vehicle descriptions. Designed to work with a Web Services Interface, the Inventory Services platform allows OEMs to customize and optimize inventory presentation across their dealer networks, while still taking advantage of ongoing enhancements to the platform. Inventory Services accepts data received from the DMS and other sources and then enhances it with stock photos, standard equipment reference data, color, option and package code information.
"Providing a detailed and interactive online inventory presentation motivates shoppers to stay on a dealer's site and submit quality leads," said Steckler. "Combined with Cobalt's other online retailing solutions, the new Nitra Inventory Services tools will help customers narrow their vehicle choice and build confidence in their chosen dealership."
For more information about Cobalt's industry-leading products and services, contact Cobalt at 866-439-2258 or email sales@cobaltgroup.com.
About The Cobalt Group
The Cobalt Group is North America's leading provider of automotive retailing solutions. For a decade, Cobalt's exclusive mission has been to help automobile dealers and manufacturers leverage online retailing and customer relationship management (CRM) technology to increase their effectiveness and profits and to enhance the car-buying and ownership experience for their customers. Cobalt provides automotive retailing products and services to more than half the automotive dealerships in the United States, Canada and Mexico and is endorsed by more than two-thirds of the world's major automotive manufacturers. Cobalt has also received six consecutive annual endorsements from the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA(R)).