Southeast Asia's online used car trading platform, Carsome Group, is consolidating cloud infrastructure and shifting towards a unified cloud operating model.
This will help improve operations, enhance car transactions and ownership experience for consumers and used car dealers.
It has selected Google Cloud.
Cloud consultancy company Searce is helping the car trading platform move to Google Cloud and set up new AI tools.
Carsome is expected to optimise cloud spending by 30 percent.
Carsome Group’s chief technology officer, Kjetil Rohde Jakobsen, said, shifting from a multicloud environment to Google Cloud will help in cost savings and allow access to full stack capabilities across data analytics and AI.
This will enable teams to deliver better solutions and experiences for customers and partners, from car listings and discovery to financing and transacting to after-sales support, Jakobsen added.
Enhance AI offerings
Carsome warehouses first-party data on Google Cloud’s BigQuery platform and integrates with Google Cloud’s Looker platform for business intelligence and Google Marketing Platform.
Through native integrations between BigQuery and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, it can centrally process and stream data in all formats.
This will help enhance existing AI applications’ performance, which includes a proprietary pricing engine that predicts a car’s realistic and optimal value based on model, age, and mileage.
It also uses a photo analysis system that automatically masks car plate numbers, preserving customer privacy and streamlining the inspection process.
This ensures pre-owned cars meet safety and quality standards before they can be refurbished and sold.
Additionally, a gen AI-powered contact center solution that automatically evaluates customer interactions and provides targeted recommendations to improve customer service agent performance.
Carsome embeds semantic search capabilities into its internal tools using BigQuery and Vertex AI Agent Builder.
This will enable employees across departments and functions to extract relevant information from the enterprise knowledge base.
With generative AI, tasks that used to take hours to find information now take minutes through quick searches or simple conversations.
It helps teams to create educational content, refine marketing strategies, and develop solutions that anticipate customer needs.
Facilitating software improvements
In 2024, Crasome surpassed 500,000 cars sold since its inception, and out of these, 150,000 were sold in 2023.
This sharp rise has led Carsome to shift to a unified cloud operating model.
This involves migrating the applications and databases of core operations and ancillary services to Google Cloud for deeper integration and facilitating software improvements.
The transition will help the company deliver new services through its digital applications, for example, the Carsome consumer app, Carsome CARagent, Carsome CARdealer, refurbishment facilities, inspection centers, and experience centers to serve used car buyers, sellers, and dealers.
It is leveraging Google Cloud’s built-in data access controls and Security Command Center for advanced threat detection and response.
This strengthens the company’s security posture, upholds compliance requirements, and reinforces customer trust.
Searce’s director of solutions consulting, Asia Pacific, Yash Thakker, said that Carsome’s cloud consolidation will optimise cloud spending by 30 percent, and these cost savings can be redeployed toward other initiatives.
It can include the potential development of next-generation conversational AI agents that autonomously and effectively handle common customer queries for relevant information, freeing up customer support staff to address complex issues, he added.
