Built by someone who had to use the other stuff.

I am Kory Goossens. I am a software engineer, and before that I worked at a car dealership.

The job was fine. The software was not. Uploading photos for one car could take an evening because everything had to be resized on a desktop first. The website ran a day behind the lot, so people phoned about cars we had already delivered. The inventory system, the lead tool and the website were three products from three companies, and when something broke each one pointed at the other two.

The login for the website was a username and password shared across the whole store, written on a sticky note under a monitor. Changing a banner meant a support ticket and a wait.

None of this was unusual. Most dealer platforms were designed for franchise groups with marketing departments and OEM compliance requirements. An independent lot with one person doing photos, pricing and the phones gets the same machinery, at the same complexity, without the staff to run it.

So I built the tool I wanted at that desk. OctaneOS is one dashboard for inventory, leads, promotions and analytics, behind a website that is designed for the dealership rather than pulled from a theme gallery. When you save a change, the site updates in about a second. Sold cars keep their pages. You sign in with Google. Photos come straight from your phone.

A Designer Digital product

OctaneOS is built and run by Designer Digital, my web design studio. That matters for two reasons. The engine and the website come from the same people, so nothing falls between vendors. And every dealer site is designed properly, because designing websites is what the studio does.

Where we are going

The platform is young and the roadmap is driven by the dealers using it. A native app for the lot is in progress. Video tutorials for every part of the dashboard are being filmed. If there is something you need that is not here, tell me; the answer is usually a date, not a maybe.