(US and Canada) Colton Ray, FUSE Autotech CEO, speaks with Andy Park, TeamCentral VP and Co-Founder, in a video interview about his company’s products, its approach to enhancing car purchases, the challenges, and the driving business factors.

Ray has more than 17 years of experience in the retail automotive space. He says FUSE Autotech aims to simplify vehicle financing at the franchise or car dealership level. Buying a car takes more than three hours, he notes. The company’s products are designed to make the process faster and simpler by allowing digital signatures on most documentation.

Highlighting what made the company successful, Ray mentions the following factors:

• Location — the tech team is in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• Timing — the industry was ready to modernize the purchase process.
• Investors — they opened many doors.
• Partners — stores that have signed up.

He mentions the following "aha" moments:

• The product team must be very close to customers.
• Seamless integration with all of the legacy systems is critical.
• Understanding and listening to the customers is a must.

When asked how the company stays focused on the product roadmap while also addressing customer requests, Ray reveals that the company built a priority tool scoring system that considers multiple factors such as customer requests, competitive differentiation, product fixes, and table stakes. Regarding major hurdles, he mentions the complexity of integrations with legacy systems and dealership change management.

Next, Ray discusses implementation and notes it differs for each of the company’s three products — Dynamic Payments, Digital Retail (the lead gen service), and Transact, the point of sales system.

Sharing the organization’s approach to managing data quality, Ray says that the company sits at both the receiving and providing ends of the data. Being on both sides of the cycle creates clean data and aids understanding. It also helps ingest the data. Additionally, Ray mentions the technology factor, which makes it possible to pivot quickly and allow customers to utilize the platform in the case of data failures.

Ray states that the car business offers huge technology and automation opportunities. In conclusion, he shares the following predictions concerning streamlining the auto-buying experience:

• A franchise car dealership will have a radical level of transparency, starting with payments.
• The ability to complete an entire vehicle transaction online will be similar to any other retail experience.

CDO Magazine appreciates Colton Ray for sharing his insights and data success stories with our global community.