Ever bought a brand-new car only to wait to get the keys for the new set of wheels because it wasn’t ready to drive off the lot?
Calgary-based Hoodo, a 2024 People’s Choice Winner during Innovation Week YYC, wants to streamline the inefficiencies in car dealerships to improve client satisfaction, and save everyone a little extra time and money.
Mary Llaneta, along with co-founder Brandon Potts, said they recognized the problem when they both went to buy their first cars.
“We bought our car from a dealership, and got some underlay added to it and a bed liner, and had to schedule before pick up,” Llaneta told LWC.
“When we went to pick up our car, nothing was done. To top it off, the car battery was dead, and the tires were flat. We were like, how does this happen?”
Llaneta said Potts worked in the car dealership industry and saw in real time how these problems happen.
“It’s an industry that doesn’t really innovate very quickly, so a lot of their workflows are run by spreadsheets and emails,” she said.
“When you get down to the nitty gritty, to even deliver one car when somebody buys it, they have to send 10 to 20 emails per car. The average high-volume dealership delivers about 150 to 500 cars per month.”
She said the basic math means tens of thousands of emails or spreadsheet entries per month. That’s when details get missed, she said.
Their platform is a one-stop shop for dealerships and their staff. Llaneta leaned into her background as a nurse where patient care is coordinated among nurses, doctors, aides, and other professionals to deliver health goals.
“Every one of these dealerships logs on into Hoodo every single day. They’ll see what cars need to be delivered, what needs to be done, what tasks are pending, and it basically brings complete transparency from the dealer owner,” she said.
There’s one source of truth for where a car is, Llaneta said. It’s a collaboration to get the cars delivered promptly.
Dealerships are calling
Llaneta said they launched their first pilot in March 2024, so they’ve been around for nearly a year. Dealerships have reached out to them.
They enrolled in the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program and Llaneta said the experience was incredible. It was something very new to her coming from a healthcare background.
“I don’t think there’s many places where you get access to such knowledge and experience and support,” she said.
The environment was collaborative, a place where everyone wants to see each other succeed. Llaneta said that when you see others succeed, it gives you the confidence that you can do it, too.
She learned that successful entrepreneurship is 90 per cent planning and then execution.
“Execution is so important, but you can’t really execute well without doing all that research, talking to learning about data rooms, learning about the financial options that you have available,” she said.
As they continue to build out and grow their product for car dealerships, Llaneta said they’re exploring other areas where workflow needs a tweak. There thoughts of white labelling their platform for applications in other areas.
“At the end of the day, everybody working for a company is working on a team, and that they’re either working to deliver a service or deliver a product,” she said.
“It’s a mission critical environment, so everybody needs to be on the same page.”
For now, they’re hoping to help area car dealerships rev up their customer service.
“It’s just ensuring that the customer is getting what they want and what they paid for, and ensuring that the experience is good for them,” she said.
“Dealerships do make money on cars, but they also make money on service. They want the people that they sell cars to you to come back to them, and the way that you typically do that is by providing stellar customer service.”
Join Alberta Catalyzer to fast-track your startup with know-how and expert guidance. Alberta Catalyzer offers merit-based, pre-accelerator programs for early-stage tech entrepreneurs in Alberta at no cost. These programs are developed and delivered by Platform Calgary and Edmonton Unlimited, with support from partners and organizations across the Alberta Innovation Network. They are made possible by the generous support of the Alberta Scaleup and Growth Accelerator Program, run by a consortium led by Alberta Innovates. The consortium includes the Government of Alberta, Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), The City of Edmonton through Edmonton Unlimited, and the City of Calgary’s Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund allocated $35 million over three years to retain business accelerators. It’s part of the Alberta government’s goal to help create 20,000 jobs and increase technology firm revenue to $5 billion by 2030.
