CASE STUDY
Building a Standardized API to Streamline Auto Dealership Integrations
Client Testimonial
"Distillery has been a trusted partner for me over three separate ventures over more than a decade. They have consistently provided strong developers who are also fun to work with and great team members. Their developers not only produce strong code themselves but are also always looking for automation opportunities and AI implementation. "
Project Overview
AutoUnify is building a unified API layer to bridge fragmented dealership systems across the U.S. automotive industry. Dealerships typically rely on proprietary platforms to manage vehicle inventory, service records, and repair operations, creating significant complexity for external vendors seeking to integrate with them.
AutoUnify’s mission is to eliminate this friction by providing a single, standardized API that connects to multiple dealership systems and abstracts away their inconsistencies. This middle layer enables external applications, such as sales tools, repair schedulers, and customer-facing platforms, to integrate faster and more reliably.
Distillery joined the initiative as AutoUnify transitioned from a mock prototype into a real-world implementation phase.
Project Overview
AutoUnify is building a unified API layer to bridge fragmented dealership systems across the U.S. automotive industry. Dealerships typically rely on proprietary platforms to manage vehicle inventory, service records, and repair operations, creating significant complexity for external vendors seeking to integrate with them.
AutoUnify’s mission is to eliminate this friction by providing a single, standardized API that connects to multiple dealership systems and abstracts away their inconsistencies. This middle layer enables external applications, such as sales tools, repair schedulers, and customer-facing platforms, to integrate faster and more reliably.
Distillery joined the initiative as AutoUnify transitioned from a mock prototype into a real-world implementation phase.
Project in Numbers
5 major dealership platforms integrated into a unified API
9 months of continuous development from MVP to production-ready integrations
Team
Challenges Faced
When Distillery joined, AutoUnify’s product was still in its early stages:
- Existing services relied entirely on mock data, with no live dealership integrations in place.
- Real-time data handling, validations, and repair order workflows had not yet been implemented.
- Test coverage was nonexistent, making future scaling and reliability risky.
- Each dealership system (including CDK Global, Tekion, and others) had unique schemas, behaviors, and security models, complicating standardization efforts.
Additionally, the project followed a monorepo architecture, which introduced a learning curve for incoming developers and required careful coordination across services.
Solutions Implemented
Distillery developers embedded directly within AutoUnify’s core team and helped drive major technical advancements, including:
- Established live integrations with five major dealership platforms.
- Designed a standardized API architecture supporting both REST and SOAP APIs.
- Built robust workflows for repair orders, customers, and vehicles.
- Developed a mapping and data model generator to streamline schema normalization and significantly accelerate development.
- Implemented an AI-powered tool to generate mappings and data models across multiple programming languages.
- Introduced comprehensive automated testing using Vitest, covering unit, integration, and end-to-end scenarios.
- Collaborated closely with AutoUnify’s internal data team to define consistent data models and mapping logic.
- Improved the monorepo structure to support a more modular, maintainable, and scalable codebase.
Value Delivered
Through this close partnership, AutoUnify evolved from an early-stage concept into a scalable, production-ready platform capable of handling live dealership data.
Today, the unified API serves as the backbone of AutoUnify’s go-to-market strategy, already simplifying integrations for early adopters like Curbee, PartsPulse, and Epicor, and reducing what once took months of custom engineering to just days.
Value Delivered
Through this close partnership, AutoUnify evolved from an early-stage concept into a scalable, production-ready platform capable of handling live dealership data.
Today, the unified API serves as the backbone of AutoUnify’s go-to-market strategy, already simplifying integrations for early adopters like Curbee, PartsPulse, and Epicor, and reducing what once took months of custom engineering to just days.
Technologies
What’s Next
AutoUnify is currently validating production deployments across 10+ dealership platforms, with ongoing development focused on:
- Ensuring high accuracy and resilience of data flows across all connected systems.
- Expanding to more dealership platforms and more business use cases.
- Enhancing onboarding workflows for new clients and dealership networks.
- Continuing development of an AI-powered e-commerce platform.
- Introducing real-time integrations for provider and customer notifications.
About the Client
AutoUnify is a developer platform that simplifies integration with automotive dealer and shop management systems through a unified SDK. By standardizing data models and offering native client libraries, AutoUnify enables companies to build automotive retail applications faster, with less complexity and lower maintenance costs. Their platform connects to thousands of stores and systems, allowing businesses to scale quickly without the burden of custom integrations.