One customer. Six stages. One agent carrying the thread.
Each stage has a system that does the work and a moment where a person has to be the one talking. Genie is what makes the border between two stages an event instead of somebody retyping a name and a VIN.
Discover & consult
Finds the store at 11pm, asks about trims and price, gets an answer with the number in it.
DS
Book & drive
A real slot in the real calendar, a car assigned, and a drive that can come to the customer.
TDS
Quote & contract
The quote is built from the same price book that answered the first question. A person signs.
DNP · gate
Deliver
Preparation, transport and hand-over scheduled together, with the first service already on the calendar.
DNP
Service, for years
Intake, triage, repair order, and the declined work re-offered when it is worth re-offering.
DWS · gate
The next car
Service history becomes residual value, becomes a trade-in worth offering, becomes the next purchase.
Back to 01Stage 06 is not the end of the journey — it is the beginning of the next one. Because the repair history lives on the VIN and the VIN lives next to the customer, the store knows what that car is worth before the customer asks. No single module can see that loop; only an agent sitting above all of them can.
It sits on top of what you already run.
You are not replacing a DMS. EPIKAR installs above it through a middleware layer, which is why a first module can be live in weeks and why adding the second one does not restart the project.
Three layers, and only the top one is new.
The bottom layer is the dealer management system you already pay for and your people already know. The middle layer is middleware that reads from it and writes back to it. The top layer is EPIKAR — the blocks you choose, in the order you choose them.
Nothing about that requires a migration, a data freeze or a six-month project plan. It requires one integration, once.
Start in service. Expand across the store.
You do not hand your whole floor to a vendor you met last quarter, and we would not ask you to. Almost every dealer begins with the service lane, because that is where the pain is loudest and the arithmetic is cleanest.
What EPIKAR brings back there is revenue you were already losing, so there is no margin argument to have. When it works, the rest of the store is the same system.
A technician shortage and advisor turnover mean the phone rings all day with nobody free to answer it. Every unanswered call is a bay you did not fill.
Dealers already buy service-focused AI. You do not need convincing that the category exists — only that ours runs the work instead of routing it.
Recovered calls, re-offered declined work, closed recalls. Countable events, not an attribution model.
One system. One customer record. Five business lines.
A dealership is five businesses under one roof, and they are connected — a well-serviced car is worth more on trade, a lease ending is a new car conversation. In most stores those connections leak, because each line runs on its own system and its own people.
Sales
Greeting, consultation, test drive, quote, contract, delivery. Humans step in where trust is decisive.
Service & parts
Calls answered, intake, triage, repair order, declined-work follow-up, recall recovery, fitment and back-order.
Used, trade-in & finance
Appraisal supported by the car's own service history, disclosure, product presentation, application flow, expiry pipeline.
Service data becomes residual value. Residual value becomes a trade-in offer worth making. A trade-in becomes a new car deal, which becomes a finance product, which becomes the next service appointment. EPIKAR keeps one record per customer and one per VIN so that loop closes instead of leaking.
A marketing brain is not a sales body.
The dealership AI category has been built almost entirely around the lead and the inbound call. Both matter. Neither is the place where deals and repair orders are actually lost.
| Point tools | EPIKAR |
|---|---|
| Answers one channel — usually calls or web leads | Runs the work across five business lines in the store |
| Routes the customer to a person who is already busy | Does the routine part, then hands over a customer who has stopped asking and started deciding |
| Each tool keeps its own slice of the customer | One record per customer, one per VIN, shared across every line |
| Customer data moves to a vendor cloud | Runs on-premise; raw PII never leaves the store |
| Proven in customer pilots | Proven by operating a flagship store, with the P&L in our name |
Straight answers.
What is EPIKAR?
An AI-powered Digital Retail Operating System for automotive dealerships and OEMs, founded in 2016. We operated a Renault flagship dealership in Seoul on our own platform and now license it to dealer groups in the United States.
Where do I start?
In service, in almost every case. It is the shortest path to a number you can check, and the rest of the store is the same system once it is proven in your building.
Do I have to replace my DMS or CRM?
No. EPIKAR runs on top of what you already have. Replacing a DMS is a six-month project and no dealer should start there.
Where does my customer data go?
It can stay in your building. Inference runs on an appliance inside the dealership and raw personally identifiable information does not leave it.
Does EPIKAR support OEM-specific data?
Yes. EPIKAR is built around OEM-specific data models, with a per-OEM pipeline architecture and OEM-tailored configuration.
How long until it is live?
Weeks, not quarters. The platform was designed to be handed to a dealer's own team — that is the business model, not a convenience.