Ford has tapped two technology platforms created by Vehlo, a Knoxville-based producer of software and financial tools for auto dealers’ service departments and independent repair shops, for use in its Preferred Partner program.
The fixed-operations software and communications solutions, Total Customer Connect and Dealerlogix, will be integrated into the Ford Commitment Program to support Video Multi-Point Inspections, or MPI. As such, they will be used to facilitate digital inspections, text-based communications and service-lane efficiency for Ford dealers. This is the second major OEM deal in a year for Dealerlogix was approved as a certified provider in Volkswagen’s eConnect Program in June 2025.
Total Customer Connect and Dealerlogix allow dealerships to stay in contact with their customers through video text messaging and a cloud-based system designed to streamline the service lane. That, in turn, will help make the adviser’s and technician’s jobs easier and more efficient, explains Euwart Anderson, executive vice president, who heads up the Vehlo Dealership Software portfolio.
Once in use, they will provide Ford dealers with expanded capacity for digital inspections, mobile and/or contactless payments, automated SMS (text) updates and e-approvals for work. All told, he says the platforms will enhance service-department productivity and improve the customer experience through a more digital workflow.
“We want to drive great experiences between auto-service providers and their customers,” Anderson says. “That means powering everything from ongoing interactions with consumers through texts and phone calls about things like recalls all the way to getting your car serviced, painted and everything in between.”
The Ford partnership is the result of five years’ worth of ongoing engagement with the manufacturer, he says. Vehlo’s reconditioning platform, Rapid Recon, and Velocity Automotive, which provides several types of vehicle information instantly, were entry points to raise awareness with the automotive giant. Service Lane eAdvisor, a check-in tool for service providers, was another technology that caught Ford’s eye.
“We were building good rapport,” Anderson says. “And are in many Ford dealerships, but there’s only so much you can do as an outside vendor. When Ford decided to put together a program oriented toward service and the customer experience, that leveled the game up for their dealers on the service side. We got wind of the program as it began to materialize and asked for a seat at the table. We got that seat and eventually secured our position in the program with Dealerlogix, which handles scheduling, inspections and billing for fixed operations.”
Vehlo already has a tech presence in almost 1,000 auto dealers, many of them Ford-branded, with at least one of its products. The new engagement provides fairly robust and rapid growth potential on top of that, Anderson says.
“We’re in more than half of franchise dealers overall in the nation, from GM and Toyota to larger luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz. We have a strong footprint, which shows how well we understand the market,” he says. “When you think about Ford being one of the top three original equipment manufacturers [OEMs] in the nation, even just expanding to their dealers that we don’t have today is pretty substantial.
“Then you look at the ‘green space,’ the new dealers we’ll have on our platform, and the ones with one of our products, and get them using Dealerlogix,” Anderson continues. “There are a lot of new opportunities for us there as well.”
IT, AI evolution spurs growth
Vehlo’s success is the result of a widening ecosystem of automobile companies that have grown up in the wake of large-scale manufacturing operations coming to the state, says Paul Jennings, executive director of the Center for Industrial Services, an agency of the University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service.
The center works with small- and medium-size manufacturers, economic developers and other groups to understand and then solve performance challenges. And while manufacturers and software developers might look different on the surface, the two now are merging in new ways, especially in and around all things automotive, Jennings says.
“I would say that the boundaries between manufacturers and companies who provide them with software and other technologies are increasingly blurred in some areas,” Jennings says. “You’re seeing the convergence, the integration, continue between the physical world and the digital one. It’s why basic IT skills and AI skills are becoming increasingly important for manufacturers, for suppliers, for service industries and for auto dealers. They are all becoming interconnected in that way.”
While someone working on an assembly line in the past may have had one set of skills, he suggests, training for those positions is being augmented with those softer, digital components. Those who can bring a more broadened skill set to the table will be more attractive to manufacturers, and there will be a premium on producing those kinds of potential employees in workforce-readiness programs going forward, he predicts.
“The blend of physical and digital skills has been happening for a long time, but it’s really accelerating,” he says. “The demand for some kind of AI preparedness is growing rapidly because manufacturers want to not just understand how to best optimize their processes and production with AI, they want to be able to execute those changes with the workforce they have in place.”
The state has tried to move quickly to address the coming needs, and to pivot toward meeting it even in these early, formative stages, he adds.
“Tennessee is very well positioned because it has grown a solid ecosystem across the automotive spectrum,” Jennings says. “We have the right combination of physical location, workforce and a broad and deep understanding of how the automotive sectors works – what its needs are, how it operates. The companies that have been here for decades laid the foundation for building vehicles, and they have grown in the tech space as well. They have been joined by all kinds of suppliers, from actual parts to software and technology, thanks to the support we’ve seen from the state and other partners in the automotive sector here. A lot of relationships have been built, and those continue to pay off.”
Vehlo leverages its Knoxville location
Vehlo shares an address with Greater Sum Ventures (GSV), its private equity sponsor, in the Lakeside Centre office park in West Knoxville. GSV owns several holding companies in a variety of industries, including automotive, where Vehlo serves as their automotive services, fixed operations and payment company, according to Anderson. That proximity, along with Tennessee’s decades of auto-industry manufacturing activity, make Knoxville a sensible anchor for its business operations, he adds.
“Tennessee has a really strong footprint when it comes to franchise auto dealerships, and almost every one of those has a fixed-operations or service component,” he says. “Our being here means we can connect with those local dealerships which is very important to us. We use our Knoxville location in particular, and Tennessee location in general, as a spidering mechanism for new-tech pilots. Since we have access to so many strong local markets here, we are able to lean in very effectively with those pilots.”
He adds that Tennessee offers a strong talent pool both in terms of educational centers and a trained workforce in the automotive industry – even newer elements of it, such as AI and higher IT functions. That, too, makes it worth staying put.
“We have a synergistic relationship with dealerships in that a lot of their people have come to work for us,” he says. “And we’re also able to partner with other tech companies here to bring nonautomotive tech best practices into what we’re doing. Tennessee has a pretty diverse ecosystem when it comes to the overall SaaS [software as a service] footprint, which is another reason for us to see Knoxville as a strategic location with a lot of value.”
Growth continues in Knoxville, where 30 or so of Vehlo’s 800 employees are based. More may come as the company pursues aggressive growth.
“We’re looking to create an excellent experience between service providers and their customers,” Anderson says. “We’re going to continue attacking the market and acquire best-in-class solutions that add to our playbook and how we execute on that goal.”
Ford deal to spur additional market penetration
With the Ford deal being stood up, Anderson says Velho is looking ahead to see where and how future growth can be achieved. From new product development to continued relationship growth, he says very little is off the table, especially in a world becoming more bullish on AI and other advanced tech being leveraged from inside vehicles.
“Our larger service-lane technology offerings have really strong penetration, and we’re going to continue to expand that footprint,” he says. “In addition to the OEMs where we are now, we’re reaching out with secondary, tertiary and even peripheral products that can be added to that service tech stack. The more options we have inside our platforms, the more we can drive actional insights for our dealerships and, eventually, their customers. That’s where we are headed.”
“We touch more than 65 million repair orders between shop customers and dealerships annually,” Anderson continues. “That provides a lot of data for advising, consulting and providing actionable insights that a lot of our competitors can’t. We’re looking to use AI in many ways to further that. For instance, when they use our RapidRecon platform, it generates a vehicle summary for that used car, so they can see what reconditioning work has been done and provide full transparency for potential buyers. We’ll always be looking to expand that footprint so we can do more for dealers, shops and their customers.”