Overview

Founded in 1996, AutoTrader.com is one of the most popular sources for market data on new and used automobiles for sale. Not just a single website, the Auto Trader Group of companies is a $1-billion operation that includes AutoTrader.com, Kelley Blue Book, and automotive data management subsidiary VinSolutions, among others.

Challenges

VinSolutions bears the brunt of the data integration challenges for Auto Trader and other websites that dealers use to advertise their vehicles. For each car, there are more than 100 individual pieces of data that need to be updated on a daily basis. This includes critical data such as the list price, along with various other pieces of metadata that determine how the vehicle should be listed.

With listings on more than a million cars requiring updates every day, plus other value-added solutions for marketing, finance, search optimization, mobile, and social media, the scale of the challenge for VinSolutions approaches big-data territory.

Many of the biggest dealers in the country have standardized a handful of dealership management system (DMS) applications, the core software applications that automate car dealerships, such as those from ADP, DealerTrack, and Reynolds. Unfortunately, just about every ADP, DealerTrack, and Reynolds customer uses their DMS in different ways. In addition, VinSolutions works with another 60 to 80 smaller DMSs as well as custom-built DMSs.

Business Needs

VinSolutions is the data service middleman between car dealerships and Internet car marketing companies like AutoTrader.com and Cars.com. The company not only manages the data integration, but it is also responsible for integrating its software into the dealership management system (DMS), the core software applications that automate car dealerships. VinSolutions works with another 60 to 80 smaller DMSs as well as custom-built DMSs and it required an integration software that could enable integrating its software into its DMS.

Astera Solution

Astera Data Pipeline offered comprehensive solutions to address these challenges. The platform’s data extraction capabilities allowed VinSolutions to seamlessly extract data from various DMSs, regardless of their customized configurations. This ensured that VinSolutions could efficiently access and integrate data from different sources without manual intervention.

Data transformation and mapping features provided by Astera Data Pipeline played a crucial role in standardizing the extracted data. VinSolutions could easily transform and map the data to a unified format, ensuring consistency and compatibility across systems. This allowed VinSolutions to overcome the complexities arising from variations in data structures and usage patterns among different DMS applications.

Automation and scheduling capabilities offered by Astera Data Pipeline further streamlined VinSolutions’ data integration processes. VinSolutions could automate the workflow of extracting, transforming, and loading data, reducing manual efforts and improving operational efficiency. Data scheduling capabilities enabled VinSolutions to set up regular and automated data transfers, ensuring that the integrated data remained up-to-date and synchronized.

Additionally, Astera Data Pipeline provided robust data quality functionalities. VinSolutions could validate, cleanse, and enhance the integrated data, ensuring its accuracy and integrity. This allowed VinSolutions to deliver high-quality, reliable data to their customers and partners.

The scalability and flexibility of Astera Data Pipeline proved to be instrumental in handling large volumes of data and accommodating the evolving needs of the automotive industry. VinSolutions could scale their data integration processes as their business grew, ensuring a seamless flow of data between dealerships and marketing platforms.

I unexpectedly inherited an ETL process that was integrated with Centerprise with very little transition time. It is user friendly enough that I am able to maintain the system with minimal experience. For most data flows I am able to make adjustments as needed. The prior admin set up alerts when there are errors which is helpful for me. Centerprise has been very reliable.  – Mike Ethertton, Development Team Lead, VIN Solutions/AutoTrader

Key Results

According to VinSolutions senior programmer Mike Ethetton, it could take up to two months for a developer to do the custom-coding to ensure the accurate capture of data from a new client’s DMS into the VinSolutions network. With Astera, that has been cut to about an hour’s worth of work. With 70 to 100 car dealers going online with VinSolutions every month, the company has eliminated a lot of custom data mapping work on the part of its development team.

Moreover, the data mapping provided by Astera proved to be 100% accurate, helping VinSolution maintain data integrity so much so that Doug Mashkil, the director of integration, had the following remarks:

“One of the big advantages in using Astera is it allowed us in development to build the core data flows, which then allows non-developers in our implementation department to use Astera to build sub-flows to connect into those core data flows. That enabled us to create an environment where we don’t have developers doing the actual configuration for every single independent dealer. It allows the variances from dealer to dealer to be configured in Astera by our implementation team building data sub-flows. Trying to write code to do all that–that’s a lot of heavy lifting.” – Doug Mashkil, Director of Integration, VinSolution/ Auto Trader