Patent ID: 8478665
Filing Date: 2013-07-02
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method for a vehicle ordering computing system to recommend to a dealership one or more vehicles to be ordered from a manufacturer, the method comprising: a) receiving information at the vehicle ordering system via an electronic communication from a computing system of the manufacturer, the information comprising: various vehicle configurations which can be ordered from the manufacturer; past sales of the manufacturer's vehicles by the dealership, a district in which the dealership resides and a region in which the dealership's district resides; and current inventory of the manufacturer's vehicles by the dealership, the district and the region; b) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, time factors based on the received past sales information; c) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a size of the dealership based on the received past sales information and the received current inventory information; d) obtaining metric factors, sizing factors, order bank delivery factors and pipeline delivery factors based on the calculated dealership size; e) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a factored dealership inventory percentage for each vehicle model; f) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a factored sales stock gap metric by, for each of the short sales time period, the medium sales time period and the long sales time period, for each of the current model year and the past model year, subtracting the factored inventory percentage for each vehicle model from the sales percentage of that vehicle model and multiplying the result by a metric factor, a sizing factor and a time factor, and summing the total of each; g) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a factored dealership inventory percentage versus area sales percentage metric; h) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a factored total sales percentage metric; i) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a factored days to turn metric; j) calculating, in the vehicle ordering computing system, a factored days on lot metric; k) recommending a vehicle configuration to order based on the factored sales stock gap metric, the factored dealership inventory percentage versus area sales percentage metric, the factored total sales percentage metric, the factored days to turn metric and the factored days on lot metric; l) placing the recommended vehicle configuration into an order bank of the dealership; m) repeating steps (e) through (l) to recommend another vehicle to order from the manufacturer.