CAP has launched Black Book Live, a fully researched independent used car valuation system that publishes trade price changes as soon as they are identified.

Black Book Live solves the problem of uncertainty around changes in vehicle values between the publication dates of a ‘traditional' monthly price guide.

CAP believes this will enable Black Book Live users to be more confident in their trading decisions on a day-to-day basis and remove the ‘wait and see' caution that can emerge several days before publication of a monthly guide.

It will help car retailers and traders to improve profit per unit and enable fleet disposers to fine tune de-fleet activity to potentially maximise returns, says CAP.

As soon as an editor is satisfied that sufficient evidence is available to justify a price alteration, the new value is published - together with a brief editorial commentary explaining the rationale behind the price change.

The monthly version of Black Book continues in all its current formats.

However, accuracy and relevance will be enhanced for monthly Black Book customers due to a later production deadline. This has been enabled by new database systems and more efficient processes introduced to create Black Book Live.

CAP chief editor Chris Crow said: "We have introduced Black Book Live because today's market demands the most accurate and timely valuation information possible.

“The elephant in the room for the traditional monthly guides is that they are inevitably out of date as soon as the market moves in either direction and Black Book Live solves that problem.

"Analysis of ‘real world' trading conditions reveals that even where values change little on a month to month basis, the real time dynamic of the market can see variations in values of several percentage points at different stages in a given month. This can amount to several hundred pounds.

“Black Book Live offers genuine insight into those subtleties in a way which will enable dealers to improve their profit per unit and fleet disposers to maximise their returns.

"Real-time access to dynamic business-critical data is not a new experience for CAP customers. We have long recognised the importance of timeliness as well as accuracy, breadth and depth. That is why we moved several years ago to daily updates in New Vehicle Data. The principle is the same for pricing information.

"Nonetheless, it is necessary to also recognise that a fully independent monthly pricing benchmark will remain important to many operators across the automotive sector.

“The good news for those customers is that our launch of Black Book Live will enable a much later ‘snapshot' of the market to be taken for the regular Black Book publication than our previous deadlining process allowed."

Customers can register their interest in Black Book Live by visiting www.cap.co.uk/BBlive.
 

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