The Customer Data Platform will connect customer information across rooftops and systems to support a more unified view of the customer relationship

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DriveCentric today announced the Customer Data Platform (CDP), a new data foundation designed to help dealership groups bring customer information together across rooftops, systems, and interactions.

Dealer groups have grown more connected, but the systems underneath them often still organize customer information in silos. A customer may purchase a vehicle at one rooftop, service at another, submit a lead through a different store, and communicate with multiple teams over the course of the relationship. Yet those interactions remain separated across CRM, DMS, and third-party systems.

For dealer groups, that makes it difficult to see the complete customer relationship.

DriveCentric developed its CDP to create a shared data foundation across the group, bringing customer, vehicle, transactional, service, communication, and interaction data together into a more complete customer record. CDP builds on the integrations DriveCentric already maintains, so unified data stays clean, compliant, and inside one platform.

“Dealer groups increasingly operate as connected businesses, but customer data is still too often fragmented by store and by system,” said Matt Leone, Chief Executive Officer at DriveCentric. “We believe the next generation of dealership engagement has to understand the customer across the entire relationship, not just the most recent lead or the store where that record happens to live.”

The first major component of the platform is an Enterprise Customer Profile designed to bring together customer identity, deal history, service history, communications, and activity across rooftops while maintaining the permissions and store-level attribution required inside a dealer group.

“Our customers don’t think of themselves as belonging to one store. They buy at one rooftop, service at another, and expect us to know them at every one,” said Dennis Gingrich, Sales and Finance Director, The Niello Company. “The hardest part of running a group is seeing that complete relationship, and that is exactly the problem DriveCentric is solving with their new CDP. They have been a true partner to Niello, and this is where dealership technology needs to go.”

Over time, DriveCentric plans to expand that foundation with additional capabilities that allow unified customer information to power engagement, reporting, and AI across the DriveCentric platform.

The larger opportunity, according to DriveCentric, is not simply consolidating records.

As dealership technology becomes more dependent on AI, automation, and real-time reporting, the quality of the underlying customer information becomes increasingly important. AI and engagement systems can only work with the context available to them. When customer history is fragmented across systems, the intelligence built on top of that data can be incomplete as well.

DriveCentric sees CDP as the data layer that will support a consistent understanding of the customer across engagement, reporting, AI, and other platform experiences.

“AI gets a lot of attention, but the data underneath it matters just as much,” said Michael Affronti, Chief Product and Business Officer at DriveCentric. “If a system only understands one interaction or one rooftop, it only understands part of the customer. We are building the foundation so that future intelligence across the platform can start with better context.”

Identity resolution will be an important part of that foundation. DriveCentric is developing technology designed to determine when customer information stored across different systems or rooftops belongs to the same person, helping reconcile fragmented or duplicate records into a more consistent customer profile.

Through Early Access, DriveCentric will work with dealership groups to understand how unified customer data affects visibility across rooftops, data quality, customer engagement, and future AI-driven experiences.

The initiative also represents a broader evolution in how DriveCentric views the role of the engagement platform within dealership operations.

Rather than treating engagement software solely as a system for managing leads and follow-up, DriveCentric believes the platform of the future must also help dealerships understand customer relationships across stores, departments, and interactions.

“CDP is not about giving dealership teams another place to manage data,” said Affronti. “It is about creating a stronger foundation underneath the tools they already use and the intelligence we are building for what comes next.”

Dealer groups interested in joining the Early Access program can learn more and request a conversation at www.drivecentric.com. DriveCentric will share broader availability details as development progresses.

About DriveCentric

DriveCentric is the AI Engagement Platform built for automotive dealerships. The platform helps teams manage customer relationships, improve follow-up, automate key workflows, and engage customers across the ownership lifecycle. With deep automotive expertise, purpose-built AI, and tools designed around real dealership processes, DriveCentric helps teams move faster, stay accountable, and create better customer experiences.

Media Contact

Audrey Fusz
DriveCentric, LLC
afusz@drivecentric.com
12900 Maurer Industrial Dr.
St. Louis, MO 63127

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/drivecentric-builds-new-data-foundation-for-group-level-customer-intelligence-302910157.html

SOURCE DriveCentric