ASOTU CON's Most Interesting AI Discussion Wasn't Really About AI

The panel started with artificial intelligence. It ended with credit decisions, warranty stories, and a debate about what dealerships still don't understand.

By Gregory Arroyo

Most conference discussions about artificial intelligence follow a familiar script.

Someone predicts dramatic change. A vendor promises efficiency. The audience leaves with a vague sense that they should probably be doing something with AI before their competitors do.

That’s not what happened during a May 13 panel discussion at ASOTU CON 2026 in Hanover, Maryland, featuring Brian Kramer, executive vice president of Cars.com, StoneEagle Senior Vice President of Sales BreAnne McCready, and Daniel Kim of Barnes Crossing Automotive Group. The session was moderated by Nicolle Lamb, StoneEagle's Vice President of Marketing.

AI was the topic. But remarkably little time was spent talking about AI itself. Instead, the discussion kept circling back to a less glamorous problem: context.

AI Needs Context Kim introduced the idea while discussing what separates dealerships that adapt well from those still struggling. Dealers who control their data, he argued, will have an advantage as AI becomes more capable and more integrated into dealership operations.

“Imagine if you can just plug it into your data, and all of a sudden, this chat platform knows what your culture is. It knows how your salespeople work. It knows how they handle the leads or how to turn the store profitable,” Kim said. “Then they can actually cater that and make sure that they’re responding to customers in a way that is going to help better run the dealership.”

Across automotive retail, AI is already handling customer communications, responding to online leads, scheduling appointments, generating reports, and supporting marketing efforts. Increasingly, dealers are asking those systems to do more than automate tasks. They're asking them to help make decisions.

“I think in many ways it translates into worse decisions,” Kramer said. “When you plug in an AI tool to it, what I see happening the majority of the time is it just exacerbates the problems that already exist. Then people freak out and say, 'This AI thing isn't working. Turn it off,' because it's amplifying everything."

The problem, Kramer argued, isn't the technology itself. It's the lack of a trusted source of truth behind it.

"When I was in retail, we paid everybody off the StoneEagle report because it was a single source of truth. In many ways … it was more accurate and more timely than even our DMS was.

"Not everybody has a defined source of truth and a really clear understanding,” he added. “CRMs are a mess. The phone numbers, the duplicate leads, the not-rolling appointments in service — all of that is just a mess."

McCready said both observations pointed to the same issue. "To both of your points, context. How many dealers who own their own data are actually putting all of the data points together?" she said.

Profit Hides in the Gaps

The industry's push toward unified data platforms is built around that same idea. As software providers race to connect information across sales, service, marketing, and operations, the goal isn't necessarily to collect more data. It's to create a more complete picture of dealership performance.

McCready argued that creating a complete picture of dealership performance requires looking beyond the metrics most dealers traditionally monitor. Information such as lender approvals, funding outcomes, and deal structures often remains isolated within the transaction itself rather than being used to add context to broader performance discussions.

"What about your credit decisioning data?" McCready said. "Everybody gives me wide eyes like, 'What do you mean?' And it's exactly what I mean because it's a big part of it."

The challenge, McCready argued, is that dealerships often focus on the outcome without fully understanding the factors driving it. "There are a lot of words that we use and metrics we use to benchmark, and we use them as gut checks,” she said. “So, F&I PVR should be a gut check because it is a blended number and it has multiple components to it.

"Understanding how these numbers are composed and what they actually mean in real life when we're talking about salesperson A and salesperson B and finance manager A and finance manager B — that's when that data becomes truly operational."

The same principle extends beyond F&I. "I'd be remiss to not talk about warranty stories. Anybody here want to raise their hand and say their technicians are awesome at writing warranty stories?" McCready said.

"Yeah. No, they're not. And that's a lot of money that gets left on the table pretty regularly. It's understanding a lot of these areas to be able to connect them and figure out where that profit is that you are in fact leaving on the table."

The Year of the Human As the discussion drew to a close, Lamb posed one final question: What gives you optimism about the future of automotive retail?

The answers sounded different, but they all pointed in the same direction: humans.

Kim talked about the growing number of people in the industry who are no longer waiting for someone else to build the tools they need.

"We are an industry full of people who have a lot of great ideas," Kim said. "These idea people are now empowered to build."

Kramer said the rapid pace of technological change is creating opportunities that would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago.

"The ability to do that and enable that has never been more attainable and actionable than at any time in history," Kramer said. "So, it's scary and incredibly exciting at the same time."

McCready pointed to the people navigating those changes.

"The people of this business are what always gives me optimism and what will continue to give me optimism," McCready said. "This is the most innovative industry. It is full of entrepreneurs. And entrepreneurs solve problems."

StoneEagleDATA is part of StoneEagle’s broader suite of connected solutions — including StoneEagleMENU, StoneEagleMETRICS F&I, Pencilwrench, and StoneEagleMETRICS Service — helping dealers make smarter decisions across F&I, sales, and service.