Phillip Battista, President of Dealership Technologies, JD Power

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00This is In the Dirt with ASOTU. Alright, I'm standing here with Phillip Battista at the JD Power at the JD Power Auto Summit. You just came off a mainstage keynote and panel and have been kind of a part of the day. What's the general energy and conversation been like for you today?

‍Phillip Battista: 0:20

It's been fantastic. The vibe of the room was fantastic. People were applauding, clapping engaged, so really successful and the room was packed, not a not an empty seat or room. So

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

yeah, it's a really, I mean, just the energy. And we're in the networking part. But one of the primary conversations and the conversation that you actually got to have was all centered around modern retailing. And not just modern retailing, but powering a retailing experience across the dealership, you talked a little bit about the idea of JD Power, really being the underbelly of a lot of the data and enabling these retailing experiences. Can you tell us a little bit about how JD Power is currently doing that and the vision forward of how to support that?

Phillip Battista: 1:01

Sure. So our strategy going forward for modern retailing is to take all the assets within JD Power, and make them available to anybody who wants to consume them. So if a manufacturer say wants to design their own website, like Audi for America, for instance, we'll power that underneath and let them use services from us. If somebody wants to take a white label of an existing application, we'll do that for people can take any or all of the parts, right. So we're an enabler of the industry. And we view this as we want to be able to do business with anybody who wants to do business with us, even if they're a competitor. So today, we had Andy from CarNow on stage, he competes directly with us in our digital retailing application, but yet we integrate him, and we provide technology to him to make his application more powerful. So that's our go forward strategy.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:47

I love it. And I think I key especially over the last two years of the Auto Industry has just been how collaboration is absolutely key that like you said, whether it's a competitor or your own product, or anyone across the industry, where have you seen collaboration enable change within the retail industry? And what collaborations Do you see necessary to continue moving that change.

Phillip Battista: 2:09

So for the foreseeable future, the DMS is still going to be the system of record where cars get delivered. So the DMS providers today need to be extremely open, and they seem to be going that direction now, to be able to share data, so consumers can have an experience from the web in store, etc. And ultimately let that data reside back into DMS. So the more data sharing that goes on from an industry perspective, the better it's going to be for not only dealers, but consumers and OEMs.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:34

Yeah, I love it. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us and congratulations on a great event. Phil, have a great day. And thanks for the conversation. Thanks very much. Thank you for listening to In the Dirt with ASOTU. We love the automotive industry and the people who make it run day in and day out. We would love to connect with you more through our daily dose of fun, a free email that you can sign up for at ASOTU.com That's a s o t u.com. We put our heart and soul into it every day. Thanks again for listening. Join us next time for more Conversations in the dirt with ASOTU.

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