When Ken Geddes founded CarsVansAndBikes.com he set out to disrupt the online vehicle advertising space. How? By maximising dealer revenue AND providing the best user experience.
CEO Ken shares:
“We have helped dealers maximise revenue by reducing their advertising cost compared to other vehicle sales platforms by 85%. And for private sellers wanting to advertise their vehicle, there is no charge at all.”
Not content with just reducing costs for vehicle sellers, the innovative use of technology delivers a smooth experience for dealers, private sellers, and buyers too. Ken continues:
“To provide the best experience, our platform needed to be easy for both dealers and private sellers to list their vehicles for sale, and user-friendly for buyers to find the right vehicle for them. We need to know that all the dealer locations are accurate to confidently filter and display only vehicles within a buyer’s maximum travel distance. If the location is wrong the journey is wasted and the sale probably lost. This disappoints the potential buyer and the dealer.
The first step for online dealer registration is to enter the address of each branch in the dealer network. AFD’s address lookup solution makes this process very quick… and accurate.”
When private sellers advertise their vehicles, the precise location must also be accurate to make plans for collection and avoid unnecessary delays.
Ken continues: “This service couldn’t have been considered without an accurate, robust addressing
solution. We have dealers all over the country bidding for vehicles owned by private motorists, they need to know (almost to the pound) the transportation costs, due to the tight margins. It could be a disaster if there was a mistake in the address entered and the dealership had issues collecting a vehicle. Our credibility would be questioned and reputation-wise, it’s not where we would ever want to be.”
Ken is no stranger to using disruptive online innovation to help the consumer: “Twenty years ago I pioneered energy price comparison for household energy bills by founding Energylinx. It was then I first partnered with AFD Software for data validation. Our comparison system enabled
households to save billions of pounds by showing better energy deals and making it easy for them to switch suppliers.
Most energy bills are paid via Direct Debit. The slightest mistake in a bank account number or sort code would make the collection of the monthly payments impossible. AFD’s bank validation solution helped prevent these errors by highlighting them at the point of data entry – enabling immediate correction.
We also integrated address validation, which cut user entry time by up to 90% AND helped ensure each address was error-free. Of course, this is vital if energy suppliers are to match new customers to meter points successfully. ”
Setting up his next business, at least one decision was easy, as Ken relates: “Twenty years of genuine experience gives a solid amount of time to review a supplier fairly. When building the CarsVansAndBikes.com platform we asked, ‘Is it better to build this or license it?’ With address validation, there was no debate. The team wanted AFD – why would we go and look for something else?
We view data accuracy as a critical service and therefore it must first be a dependable service. We have always had issues with other software, updates would break a process or make it work differently. With AFD Software we don’t have that anxiety, we have confidence.
Part of this confidence is that the Postcode People at AFD do what they say they are going to do. That’s not just the tech, it is every person I’ve met. They’re a bunch of straightforward real people and that’s good to deal with. We’re all tight for time and can’t do things quickly if we don’t have the support behind us.
We want all users of CarsVansAndBikes.com to have a positive experience from registration through to vehicle sales or purchases. To achieve this, we need all elements of the system to work in harmony, and central to this are partners we trust – like AFD Software.”
Does your organisation have absolute confidence in its address, bank, and contact data? AFD Software is on hand to help with all your data quality needs. Contact Joel Miller on 01624 811709 or email joel.miller@afd.co.uk.
We serve thousands of organisations and a network of hundreds of partners across multiple industry sectors, enabling them to have full confidence in their contact data.