The group, which operates 16 franchises representing Audi, Bentley, Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin, sends about 60 vehicles a week to BCA’s physical auction in Enfield. They are processed via BCA’s ‘Smart Sell’ system, which sees every incoming non-retail part-exchange vehicle remotely entered for sale while about 20% are purchased by online bidders at the auction.

Merricks said: “We wanted to move away from a fragmented approach to a coherent remarketing policy for a number of reasons, but mainly for transparency and to potentially increase our income from trade vehicles. We are trading out of cars that are worth anywhere between £100 and £50,000, so we needed the bigger platform which BCA provides both on- and off-line.”

While the physical auction may be the final destination, the process relies on an online strategy and has also netted other benefits for the group, including the repatriation of vehicles. Merricks estimates that the group retails two or three vehicles a week that otherwise would have ended up in the hands of local traders because sales managers can purchase from each other prior to auction by checking uploaded stock on the BCA system.

“We are now more integrated as a group and there’s more cooperation between our dealerships,” he said.

Vines of Guildford BMW

Remarketing partner – Cooper Solutions

Vines’ switch to Cooper Solutions was prompted by the unhappiness of dealer principal Mark Hollands at being dictated to by local traders, who he felt had too much influence on determining part-exchange prices.

“It has transformed our remarketing process and is making us more money,” he said.

By remarketing all their non-retail part-exchange vehicles online through Cooper Solutions, Vines of Guildford has added a staggering £250,000 to its bottom line in just nine months compared with the £30,000 the business made in 2012 by using four or five local traders.

“I have all sorts of people buying our cars, coming as far away as Scotland,” said Hollands. “It is probably the best initiative we have implemented in a very long time. We are now in total control of our part-exchange pricing and have removed the huge influence a few local traders were exerting.”