J.D. Power has purchased finance and insurance menu and reporting programs from the auto retail software company Tail Light.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed in J.D. Power’s Thursday announcement of the acquisition.
“The pace of digital transformation in auto dealerships has been staggering, and the F&I department has been leading that charge with growing demand for digital menu solutions that clearly and consistently display financing details and special offers to consumers whether they are in the showroom or buying online,” Phil Battista, J.D. Power’s dealership technologies president, said in a statement.
“Similarly, demand has grown for analytics and reporting solutions that allow dealers to optimize their F&I offerings. By augmenting our rapidly growing suite of dealer-focused F&I solutions with Tail Light’s F&I technology and resources, we are solidifying our role as an end-to-end data analytics and software solutions provider to all facets of the automobile industry.”
J.D. Power said it bought the Tail Light Showcase software, which offers consumers — in dealerships and online — the ability to pick F&I products and choose a means of financing the vehicle. J.D. Power also purchased Tail Light’s reporting analytics software, allowing auto retailers to examine their performance and compare it with industry metrics.
J.D. Power will also keep the staffers and customers associated with the two pieces of software, Battista told Automotive News.
Battista said about 2,000 dealerships, nearly all of which are franchise operations, use at least one of the two Tail Light products. He estimated roughly 60 percent of that customer base use the Showcase menu software, and about 40 percent have adopted the reporting tool.
“Today’s F&I department is fundamentally different from even a few years ago,” Tail Light CEO Matt Twyman said in the statement. “Dealerships have become sophisticated, data-driven enterprises that rely on real-time analytics, competitive benchmarking, and powerful software to deliver the optimal customer experience while maximizing profitability. We have been committed to driving the technology transformation with the industry’s best software and analytics.”
Tail Light’s technology will be folded into Battista’s dealership technologies division, which J.D. Power created after it bought the parent company of major F&I software provider Darwin Automotive last summer.
Showcase is similar to J.D. Power’s own Darwin F&I shopping software. Battista told Automotive News J.D. Power would maintain Showcase for six months and then switch the users inherited from Tail Light over to Darwin’s menu product.
The reporting tool will endure. Darwin has an analytics system, but”this is much more advanced,” Battista said of Tail Light’s software.
J.D. Power had been developing a new reporting engine in-house, and “this gets us there much quicker,” he said.