WRAL TechWire at the Auto Intel Summit
I’m happy to report that the inaugural Automotive Intelligence Summit made its debut without a hitch, and it was a wild success! People from all corners of the auto industry and beyond converged on the Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley and were wowed by the impressive speakers and presentations they witnessed over the three-day event.
The summit also attracted the attention of local journalists. WRAL TechWire, the tech-specific news publication for the Triangle’s NBC affiliate, had some reporters on the scene. They too were impressed with the discussions, insight and assembled wisdom the Auto Intel Summit offered.
As of today’s writing, WRAL TechWire has published two stories covering presentations at AIS, zooming in on the event’s focus on artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, fintech solutions and more. Rick Smith wrote about LotLinx co-founder Jason Knight’s session, discussing AI and machine learning’s evolving role in advertising, as well as the cybersec panel led by members of industry partners Carolina Fintech Hub. Mindy Hamlin trained her eye on IBM Global Automotive Center of Competence Digital Strategist Dennis Ephlin’s closing keynote address, “Disruption in the Auto Industry,” which outlined disruptors and the tech driving them: AI, the Cloud, the Internet of Things, blockchain and more.
Did you attend the first-ever Auto Intel Summit? If so, make sure to complete this quick post-event survey to let us know your thoughts. And if you happen to stumble across any more news coverage of the Automotive Intelligence Summit, send us a tip.
Predictive analytics will smooth over so many pain points throughout the automotive industry. Combining data, statistics, model simulations and artificial intelligence to make predictions about the future, predictive analytics can help foresee changes in vehicle supply, demand, financial markets and other seemingly chaotic systems. With predictive analytics, you aren’t just reacting to changes as they occur; the hope is to anticipate developments in finance or the auto industry and equip yourself with strategies to weather those changes or, even better, profit from them.
Wouldn’t you like to know which customers you can convert the second they enter your showroom? Artificial intelligence holds a key to that reality. LotLinx President Eric Brown insists machine-learning AI will open a new era of selling cars, and with his session, “How AI Can Identify Imminent Purchase Intent,” he’ll do his best to convince you of that, too. Artificial intelligence optimizes to the dealer’s marketing and promotional environment against their available inventory. Furthermore, by flipping the paradigm on digital marketing strategies, Brown contends you can more easily pinpoint “needles in the haystack” and sell them the car they want and need. This optimization results in significant increased levels of marketing proficiency, which equals less spend for the dealer and higher returns on capital. Furthermore, with AI, you have little to lose and a lot to gain — Brown suggests a hike in sales velocity by as much as 78% and 80% cost reduction when AI correctly identifies buyer intent.
Along similar lines as Brown, Amy Hughes and Matthew Kolodziej — both of Experian’s dealer intelligence team — contend that knowing the online activities of “high-value users” can help you sell more cars with just a bit of additional tweaking. In their joint presentation, “Unlocking the Mystery: How Sales-Based Attribution Transforms a Dealer’s Bottom Line,” Hughes and Kolodziej will divulge the findings of a study observing how analytics can improve dealership performance, as well as point out which marketing activities most effectively lead directly to more sales.
Consumers are not one-dimensional, and neither are their credit profiles. As such, auto applicants should not be viewed only through traditional credit data but also alternative data. In a nutshell, that represents the crux of Equifax Vice President of Auto Data & Analytics Peter Oburu’s argument in his presentation, “How to Use Alternative Data to Impact Profitability.” Oburu will discuss why alternative credit-data sources, such as phone and cable TV payment histories, are gaining greater acceptance among automotive lenders to improve everyday decision-making, increase profitability by maximizing opportunity in the auto lending market and make better risk assessment and improve decision-making and lending.
Some dealers and lenders may ask themselves, “Can vehicle information help assess the creditworthiness of borrowers? What vehicle types are associated with better credit performance? How economically significant is vehicle information?” If you find yourself wondering about similar issues, you can’t miss Moody’s Analytics Lead Auto Economist Michael Vogan present “How Vehicle Information Informs Credit Risk Measures.” In this session, Vogan will describe how vehicle information, including residual price forecasts, lifts the ability of traditional credit scores to classify borrowers from most likely to default to least likely.
Like those old Nationwide Insurance commercials stated, “Life comes at you fast.” It’s never been as true as it is now. But with predictive analytics, you can better prepare for shifts in the automotive world.
As you likely know (or could at least guess), “fintech” is simply the portmanteau of “financial technology;” with the advent of technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, fintech solutions are necessary to improve and protect this new mode of financial services, especially in auto finance.
With the ongoing approach of automated vehicles, electric/hybrid cars and transport, ride-sharing and other innovations, transportation research must accompany these disruptions before and as they occur in order to make these revelatory advances safer, more efficient and more effective. Data points that might be discussed in transportation research could include rates of use for mass transit, the state of ownership of personal vehicles and other emerging technologies that could impact the way we approach driving, shipping and more.
Money rules the world. It especially rules the world of the automotive future. With so many fresh disruptors and startups arriving on the scene in recent years, the need for investment capital will only increase as we move forward.
The vehicle of the future depends upon connected mobility. Whether that means your Tesla receives remote software updates or an autonomous vehicle can link up with the upcoming 5G network, connected mobility will play an enormous role in the next decade and has already become a major talking point in the auto industry. For example, all the major operating systems of the autonomous vehicle, from GPS to its AI, depend fully on the concept of connected mobility.
These days, mergers and acquisitions might seem as natural as death and taxes. It plays into the concepts connected with investment capital — Company A likes Company B’s big idea, and they’ve got the capital for it, they’re going to get in on it… except a bit further than just plugging money into the company. As a relatively recent example, 
Who doesn’t want to know how financial markets will behave in the future? With help from predictive analytics, economic forecasts are a highly helpful resource, impacting confidence in auto finance and other AIS core topics.
Boring? Maybe. But we won’t shame you if you’re a policy wonk — quite the opposite, in fact. Knowledge of compliance and regulations is of paramount importance when considering all the changes coming to the auto industry.