Lotlinx, a VIN-specific data company for dealership inventory management, recently launched Lotlinx Sentinel – a vehicle risk mitigation platform.

Sentinel protects dealers by forecasting risks and implementing targeted corrective actions at the VIN level to reduce the time vehicles spend on lots, earn higher profit margins and enhance competitive market performance. It uses advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence and data-mining technologies to monitor a proprietary data set of real-time market factors that drive VIN outcomes. Sentinel pinpoints risk, automatically allocating marketing resources to offset aging and markdowns, ultimately improving dealer performance and profits.

The Lotlinx VIN Management Platform is powered by Lexaca, the company’s new AI-assisted chatbot. Lexaca offers comprehensive, market and competitive data for every vehicle on a dealer’s lot, enabling dealerships to inform strategy and decision-making for each VIN or vehicle segment.

Lexaca can answer questions about a dealer’s inventory down to the VIN level to help it make strategic decisions and seize new opportunities. The bot’s feedback is based on more than a decade of historical data tracking more than 160 market factors impacting every VIN that has traveled every dealer lot in America. Lexaca also:

• Functions as a sophisticated, large language model-powered chatbot, born from Lotlinx’s proprietary data to serve as a tool in a dealer’s arsenal

• Understands dealership inventory and was built to transform complex information into clear, actionable insights

• Serves as a digital assistant that can communicate with precision, understand complex queries and deliver insights tailored to the specific needs and strategies of dealers

• Uncovers opportunities to streamline operations and enhance decision-making, offering a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market

“At Lotlinx, we build proprietary data mining and machine learning technologies with the sole purpose of helping car dealerships sell cars faster and more profitably,” said Lotlinx Chairm and CEO Len Short. “In the world of automotive retail, every dealership operates an evolved digital marketing stack to meet their monthly sales targets. Yet, VINs fall through the cracks, not getting the attention necessary to sell them profitably and on time. Sentinel stands apart as the only platform designed to solve this problem, ensuring every vehicle in a dealers’ inventory garners the shopping engagement necessary to achieve a dealer’s volume and gross objectives.”

Equipped with Lotlinx’s propriety dataset of more than 24 billion data points, Sentinel leverages the Lotlinx Automotive Network, a VIN-level omnichannel platform that uses a Shopper Intensity Score to create a predictive scoring methodology that works with digital advertising platforms to drive the best-fit shoppers to vehicles that meet their needs. Through the advanced approach, Lotlinx machine learning determines which individuals are active and ready to buy, driving advertising dollars to the right shoppers at the right time.

Based on real-world testing, Lotlinx says Sentinel empowers its dealer partners to achieve:

• A 300% increase in VIN coverage on digital advertising platforms

• An almost 200% decrease in cost per shopping session, doubling shopping sessions

• A 300% surge in goal conversions

• A 130% increase in new-to-franchise shoppers

In the Pacific Northwest, the company says Kia of Everett has experienced the Lotlinx Effect by reducing days on lot by nearly 43%. By using Lotlinx data, the dealership has taken better control of its inventory by targeting and marketing hard-to-sell units, leading to an increase in sales.

“Year-over-year, we’re up almost 30 percent. That’s the kind of growth we want to see,” said Erik Butler, general manager at Kia of Everett, a Lotlinx customer. “Lotlinx helps me with strategy for my brand, my market and my team. Because of this partnership, we’re selling more cars. It’s a lights-out success for all our five stores.”

Sentinel and Lexaca are powered by the Lotlinx VMP, delivering customized business tools to dealers to help them reduce inventory risk, increase profits and better serve customers. Lotlinx VMP also helps dealers target customers who live and work in local markets. By allowing dealers to identify the number of active shoppers within their local area, dealers can determine how many potential buyers they are reaching.

For more information, visit the company's website.