"Inventory as a Catalyst" — Why Inventory Is Still Your Most Overlooked Lever | Dan Collingridge, CTO At FlexDealer
Are you still relying on outdated inventory practices that drain your profits and time? Many general managers and dealer principals dismiss inventory operations as "not super exciting problems," yet these foundational issues are costing your dealership hundreds of thousands in wasted ad spend and lost sales opportunities. It's time to stop the bleed and optimize where it matters most.
Here's what you'll get from this episode:
Understand why focusing on "unsexy" inventory problems is critical for dealer growth and profitability.
Learn how clean, accurate data flows directly impact your advertising effectiveness and bottom line.
Discover how modern tools, including AI, integrate with, rather than replace, the human element in automotive retail.
Identify how to verify and merchandise your inventory more efficiently to sell more cars.
Dan Collingridge, CTO at FlexDealer and LiftKit, brings decades of experience developing technology solutions to optimize inventory management in automotive sales.
Follow The Dealer Playbook so you never miss an episode.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
00:40 CTO Take on AI
02:51 AI Plateau Outlook
05:28 Discernment and Youth
06:54 Inventory as Catalyst
08:14 Solving Dealer Data Flow
08:47 Why Inventory Matters
10:22 AI for Inventory Analysis
12:12 Wrap Up and Subscribe
Episode Brought To You By FlexDealer
Need Better Quality Leads? FLX helps car dealers generate better quality leads through localized organic search and highly-targeted digital ads that convert. Not only that, they work tirelessly to ensure car dealers integrate marketing and operations for a robust and functional growth strategy.
Watch The Full Episode
Prefer to watch episodes? Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and turn on notifications to get full access to our content.
Episode Transcript
[0:13] Intro
Michael Cirillo: For those of you who have been following the Dealer Playbook for a while, you might recognize this guy right here — Dan Collingridge, my CTO at FlexDealer and LiftKit. How's it going? How many NADAs is this for you?
Dan Collingridge: I started counting probably like three years ago when I actually started coming consistently. I think the first one was more than a decade ago, and I didn't even have a pass. I was just kind of here hanging out with you from time to time.
Michael Cirillo: I remember that. We've come a long way.
Dan Collingridge: Yes, we have.
[0:40] The CTO's Take on AI
Michael Cirillo: What the heck are we doing? What is happening here? I want to ask you — from a technical perspective, while we're getting ready for our next panel — all this talk about AI. What's your take? What are you specifically looking for that's around the corner? What is Dan Collingridge watching from the lens of a CTO?
Dan Collingridge: Wow, that's a loaded question. I'll start with what I'm seeing right now with AI. I'm using it a lot for a lot of different things. And as everyone knows by this point, AI is good up to a certain point. I've been using it for coding. AI is great at coding. It's great at writing, great at interpreting writing, great at translation — all of that. But it can only get you so far. If you are focused entirely on getting something done with AI and not focused on your own skills and abilities, you're going to get 80% of the way there — maybe. That last 20% is always a grind. My first word of advice is make sure you're still brushing up on your own skills. I'm a developer. I've done a lot of software development, and I still can't fully trust AI to do it all. I have to rely on my own skills to know that it's doing it the right way — because it gets you to the point where you feel pretty good about it, and then everything just falls apart at the end.
Michael Cirillo: Is that the intersection of technology and earned wisdom? Experience, empathy — gut checking? Knowing whether something won't work because it's not factoring in the mindset of the person on the other end? I see this big spider web that I have a hard time articulating. Is there a time where the job of a software programmer becomes that of an overseer only?
Dan Collingridge: That's exactly the caution. If you relegate yourself to being an overseer only, you're going to be greatly disappointed.
[2:53] The AI Plateau
Dan Collingridge: Looking around the corner — what we're starting to see is that if you look back at technology from the 1970s onward, you've seen it grow at this exponential rate. AI has been different. We saw this huge boom about four years ago, and then it feels like it's kind of plateaued since then. Where all the innovation is coming from now is just throwing more computing power at it, more training data at it. But we're not really seeing the kind of leaps we expected. So it's the use of AI that is the novel use case — not AI in and of itself. Programmers are not going away. You need a good programmer. What we've seen in our technology division is that the people using AI effectively have become much stronger developers than they ever were before — but they're still essential. We still need them.
Michael Cirillo: We talk about this all the time because we're developing products right now — some really cool stuff, wink wink nudge nudge. You're going to hear about a lot of it soon. But our fundamental position is: scale the human. As long as human beings are integral to the success of this planet, humans have to have a seat at the table. I can't reconcile a different path.
Dan Collingridge: AI is there — and I think that was the intention from the very beginning. It's there to make our lives better. It's not there to replace us.
Michael Cirillo: Scale the human. Keep using it — by all means — just use it smartly.
Dan Collingridge: Exactly. The innovation is going to come. AI is going to keep evolving and getting better. But I think it's going to happen slower than we all think. We got really excited, and we're like, "This came out of nowhere" — but I've been studying computer science for 25 years, and they were talking about this stuff 25 years ago. We finally got there. The future is now-ish. But the human element is still the most important piece.
[5:28] Discernment and the Next Generation
Dan Collingridge: My greatest fear is that we turn it all over to AI and then our lives fall apart.
Michael Cirillo: For some people, you do see that thread — where they become so consumed with it. Our human nature is to get so excited about something that it consumes our life. Discernment is going to be a really big thing for people to develop — the ability to discern what is real, what is authentic, what will actually enhance your life. A lot of people don't know that they started playing with AI concepts about 80 years ago. Somebody fact-check me on that. When did they actually start developing artificial intelligence?
Dan Collingridge: The beginnings were that far back. It really started exploding in the '60s and '70s when they started figuring out what it was all supposed to mean — but even then, they had no idea. The greatest thing the younger generation needs to learn is not just how to use AI, but the discernment — knowing when it's lying to you, when it's making things up, when what it's telling you is a good idea or not. That still has to come from within.
[6:56] Inventory as a Catalyst
Michael Cirillo: You and I play a lot with inventory. We see inventory as the needle — the thread goes through it. Inventory is a critical pivot point for so many operations. We see it as a catalyst, specifically through the lens of getting vehicles to market cleanly, efficiently, with full, accurate information. From your perspective — we've been developing inventory products for clean data flows, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted ad spend for clients — what has your experience been from 15 to 20 years ago to now? Why are we still so passionate about the inventory conversation?
Dan Collingridge: I think this has been a problem that has existed from the beginning that no one has really solved yet. And it's not one of those exciting problems that everyone wants to solve. But if you're a dealer involved at all in the sales and inventory side of things, you have this headache every single day. Where's my data? Is it accurate? Where is it coming from? Where is it going? If there was a problem, what happened? How do we finally solve that?
Michael Cirillo: Guys, we get it — it's not sexy to talk about. Except for the fact that there are hundreds of millions of dollars in this exhibit hall of companies all coming together to help you sell one thing. They're not helping you sell yourself. They're helping you sell your inventory. Every marketing company, every wholesale platform, every advertising marketplace — the Rokus, the Hulus, the Comcasts, the Univisions — all of it exists for one reason: to sell your cars. And why does that matter? Because selling a car equals empowerment for a family. Flexibility. Freedom. That equals contributing positively to society, community growth — everything we care about. Inventory is the thread sewn through all of it.
[10:22] AI and Inventory Analysis
Dan Collingridge: These are the same problems we've been dealing with for 20 years. It's just a more high-tech version of them. And if we can solve this — take the headache out of managing inventory, merchandising it, verifying it — AI is actually great at that. Data analysis is where AI genuinely earns its place. Let it do that work for you so you can focus on what you're here to do: sell more cars and change people's lives.
[10:52] Wrap-Up
Michael Cirillo: You heard it from the man — Dan Collingridge. This guy has known me since I was seven years old. Summers at his house, sleeping bags on the trampoline, gallivanting around Vernon, British Columbia at 3:00 AM getting scared by a cat in an alleyway. Playing guitar on the balcony. Learning to pronounce words backwards. And there was always Mr. Hooper critiquing our guitar playing from next door.
Dan Collingridge: Rest in peace, Mr. Hooper.
Michael Cirillo: What business did we have blasting guitars into that park thinking we were famous? We're here having fun at NADA 2026, hosted at the AutoMedia Marketplace booth with iHeartMedia. You just heard Dan Collingridge, CTO at FlexDealer and LiftKit, on inventory, artificial intelligence, and the caution that I think is so poignant: keep developing your skill sets. Thanks for listening to the Dealer Playbook. If you enjoyed tuning in, please subscribe, share, and hit that like button. Check back next week for a new episode.
