This has never happened before since the company’s history began back in 1992: From January to April 2024, i.e. in just four months, AURES Holdings sold over 35,000 vehicles through its network of AAA AUTO and Mototechna dealerships in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia and Poland. April 2024 in particular was the strongest month in terms of sales in the 32-years history of Europe’s largest independent used car dealer: The Prague-based company sold 9,463 vehicles just last month. Given the historically strong first quarter of 2024, it is no wonder that AURES has already sold a total of around 100,000 cars in the 12 months since the beginning of March 2024.
"In addition to the high demand, we see our increasingly intensive use of technological innovations as the main reason for this success," says Karolína Topolová, Co-CEO of AURES Holdings, explaining the record figures. In particular, the use of generative AI in marketing and customer communication as well as the intelligent use of data in the purchasing and sales processes should be mentioned here.
Over the last five years in particular, AURES has invested hundreds of millions of crowns (the equivalent to around 10 million euros) in the development of software and the implementation of machine learning. A wide range of applications have been developed, which are now fully integrated and used in all areas of the company. Not only in purchasing, but also in sales, warehouse management, marketing and the contact centre. Thanks to all these innovations, the Group has already reached more than 3.1 million customers.
"Our technology for buying cars, for example, is based on machine learning. We have developed it over the last ten years and invested hundreds of millions of crowns," explains AURES Co-CEO Petr Vaněček, who is responsible for innovation at the Group. "Last year, we also worked on generative artificial intelligence. Our software basically monitors the market every minute and evaluates all opportunities that arise. This is not possible with human employees alone," continues Vaněček. The technology determines which is the best market in which AURES Holdings is active for the respective car, the Co-CEO assures. "We move some cars between countries, that's about ten per cent. But more than 70 per cent of the vehicles are sold somewhere other than where they are bought. And that's quite remarkable."
The most revolutionary innovation in the field of digital technology at AURES is the use of an AI agent developed by ScaleVoice Inc. in collaboration with AURES. The main objective is to further advance AURES in the customer acquisition process.“
Hundreds of people work in the call centres of AURES Holdings. According to Vaněček, the company used to believe that people are the Alpha and Omega of success, that they are creative and that only they can react correctly when talking to a customer on the phone. But the advent of artificial intelligence last year has changed the company's perspective considerably. Initial tests showed that AI performs at the level of the best humans. "The results of AI are above average. Only a certain proportion of AI-driven calls, up to around 4 per cent, end up with a real telephone operator. This is the case when the caller has specific requirements and questions. An autonomous AI agent using generative AI models for natural language helps us significantly in communicating with the customer and planning the next steps without the use of a live operator. This frees up employee capacity for more complex tasks and at the same time, thanks to AI, we reach more customers and buy more cars," says Petr Vaněček. The AI agent product, which was developed over the last eight months when AURES' high sales figures made it an ideal environment for testing, is now being offered by ScaleVoice to other companies in the automotive industry. Implementation is already underway at several other companies, including major dealers in the US.
ScaleVoice, having raised 3 million EUR in its pre-seed round, is now seeking additional investors in the automotive VC sector for its seed fundraising in Q3 to support its significant U.S. expansion plans.
ScaleVoice's AI agent has bought cars worth four million euros in the last month alone. AURES plans to use it to buy and sell cars worth up to 100 million Euros every year. The AI agent successfully re-establishes contact with potential customers who had previously dropped out of the deal before it was finalised. It contacts sellers who advertise their used cars online and arranges their purchase according to the dealer's buying strategy. It integrates seamlessly with customer relationship management systems (CRM) and is able to independently arrange appointments with customers at specific locations and times. It can also process enquiries via web forms and communicate with website visitors via chat. By using internal AI models, the AI agent can independently sort and evaluate cars according to rules that the retailer can adapt to the current market situation on a daily basis.
"The AI agent utilises the latest advances in large language models from companies such as OpenAI and Meta. Based on this, we have developed a platform that breaks down complex workflows into tasks that are performed by multiple AI agents. These agents fundamentally change the dynamics of the workplace by acting as natural extensions of organisations and performing routine tasks like other 'real' employees. "We expect our AI agents tailored to the automotive market to handle hundreds of thousands of leads annually, significantly increasing the overall productivity of dealerships," says Ondřej Kuchta, CEO of ScaleVoice.
Another area in which AURES uses advanced AI technology is the marketing of vehicles from its own range, which has already reached more than 15,000 cars in the Central European region at almost 60 locations in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia and in Poland. Since the beginning of this year, AURES has been using AI in the descriptions of the vehicles on offer in its adverts. The idea behind this project is to convince customers by better explaining what characterises the individual cars and where their strengths lie. "We expect this innovation to improve interaction with customers and increase the number of reservations for vehicle purchases. Due to the large number of vehicles that are purchased every day, it is not possible to create such texts manually, as this would be very cost-intensive. Fortunately, thanks to recent improvements and better availability of large language and transformation models, we can create these texts based on the attributes of the vehicles directly from the ERP system in which we manage them," explains Petr Vaněček. Of course, the sales department has the option to approve, create new or manually edit texts for all vehicles. The vehicles are also continuously monitored for changes to their attributes so that the text can be regenerated and re-approved. The main goal of this project is to create unique and creative descriptions of cars based on their attributes retrieved from the ERP system.
The project utilises advanced technologies such as the GPT-4 Turbo Large Language Model. The AI model enables the generation of natural language so that the system can create easily readable and appealing vehicle descriptions. The system enables the quick and efficient creation of summaries for a large number of vehicle models. "This ensures that potential customers receive accurate and compelling information about the vehicle, increasing the chances of a successful sale. Unique and creative vehicle summaries are an advantage over competitors who rely on more generic descriptions. The automated process also saves time and resources, allowing the marketing team to focus on other project areas," Vaněček believes. The use of advanced technology ensures that the vehicle descriptions are easy to read and appealing, while the automated process saves time and resources. "The result is better product promotion and ultimately higher sales," Vaněček continues. AURES also measured the project's impact on the conversion rate from its web traffic to web leads – the stunning results: plus 7%, which is very significant given AURES´s web traffic volumes.
The development of electromobility is also an important area of modern technology that AURES is working on. 2023 was a successful year in terms of AURES' sales results in this field of modern mobility. The company exceeded its target of achieving a 10% share of the Czech secondary market by almost 3 percentage points, reaching a share of 12.3%. The aim is to increase this share to 15% by 2024. "We are also continuing our innovation course in the long term and plan to expand our website with new specialised information on electric vehicles, particularly in the area of charging and recharging technology. In the near future, we will be using further technological innovations on our website by utilising diagnostic data and displaying information on car maps. And our customers will soon see a new so-called "charging module" focussing on the topic of charging electric vehicles," explained Petr Vaněček.
Another innovation is the completely transparent display of the actual range of certain electric vehicles in the AURES range based on battery health diagnostics, where the client can choose different conditions such as summer or winter traffic, in the city or outside the city, or choose the average temperature and the website will calculate the real range according to the selected conditions.
AURES Holdings Group has been in business for 32 years now. It operates a network of more than 60 branches, customer and service centres in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Germany. The Group sells nearly 100,000 vehicles annually and is thus the largest used car dealer in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2022, AURES had sales of approximately €1.13 billion. It also sells used cars under the Mototechna brand and provides short- and medium-term car rentals under the Mototechna Drive brand. It operates in Western markets through Driverama. The group is owned by the British-Polish investment fund Abris Capital Partners. However, thanks to the committed use of innovative technologies, the company’s best days certainly are yet to come.
