Two major developments connected with Automotive Ventures’ Steve Greenfield surfaced on Tuesday and Wednesday, less than a week ahead of NAVIcon and Used Car Week in San Diego.

First, Greenfield and three other industry entrepreneurs launched a tool that can track more than 140 of the top dealer groups in the United States.

Then, the CEO and founder of the automotive technology and mobility venture capital firm announced the addition of Chip Perry to its operating partner team in a move Automotive Ventures described as further demonstrating its focus on attracting top talent to identify the best companies, drive outsized growth and realize superior returns for investors.

During the past 20 years, Perry has led some of the most iconic automotive technology companies including AutoTrader.com, where he was the first employee in 1997 and served as founding CEO for 16 years. At AutoTrader.com, Perry helped create the digital auto classifieds and software ecosystem, organically grew the company from zero to $1 billion in revenue, 2,000 employees and 20,000 dealer clients, and acquired several prominent companies including Kelley Blue Book and vAuto.

Perry later served as CEO of TrueCar and CEO of A2Z Sync.

Earlier in his career, as a vice president of the Los Angeles Times, he led the team that launched one of the first online newspapers in 1993.

He is currently on the board of CarTrade Tech, a publicly listed company in Mumbai, India, and A2Z Sync, and he previously served on the board of AutoTrader.co.uk.

“We are thrilled to welcome one of the industry’s most accomplished and successful veterans to Automotive Ventures as we continue to strengthen the capabilities of our growing team,” Greenfield said in a news release. “Chip’s deep expertise across automotive strategy, digital innovation, and scaled entrepreneurship will be invaluable as we continue to deliver differentiated outcomes for both our portfolio companies and our limited partners.”

Perry said, “After spending 25 years as an operator in the digital auto space, I’m excited to have this opportunity to help Steve grow his venture firm, which has made several promising investments and is seeing excellent deal flow.

“Along with Steve and his team, I look forward to leveraging my experience to identify and accelerate the growth of early stage autotech and mobility companies,” he went on to say.

Meanwhile, Greenfield, who along with Brian Reed, Andrew Gordon and Pete Batten have an operation called Automotive Market Data, launched Dealer Group Activity Mapping, which is designed to track more than 140 of the top dealer groups in the United States, including the current new vehicle stores within their groups and their franchise dealer websites.

“Marketing and client support teams serving the automotive industry don’t have good systems to keep up with the volume of changes in today’s active dealership buy/sell market,” said Batten, a partner at Automotive Market Data. “While there’s industry awareness around the growing trend of dealership group consolidation, we see that some groups are actively selling stores almost as fast as they’re acquiring new ones. The churn and level of changes undermine industry vendors’ CRM and outreach activities, and lead to waste and embarrassment when calling on stores where ownership changes are missed.”

Batten explained that tracking dealer group activity is extremely challenging and not something that sales teams are paid to manage every day. The company’s Dealer Group Activity Mapping report is designed to help sales professionals run more effective campaigns, keep their CRMs updated and save time and confusion in the process.

Late last year, Automotive Market Data launched with the introduced of its first-ever Digital Retailing Market Share Database, which can inform dealers, investors and vendors in real-time about the automotive digital retailing landscape.

Specifically, Automotive Market Data evaluates more than 35 digital retailers, each day, across approximately 18,000 U.S. automobile dealer websites to identify the top digital retailers among car dealers, predominant digital retailers by brand and leading technology providers in the automotive space, as well as unique digital retailing trends and emerging technologies.

The AMD team also provides the industry with dealership contact information, vehicle-specific data, new and used vehicle market pricing, cost of ownership information and vehicle history reports. When needed, they provide customized, per-request analyses depending on a business’ goals and objectives.

For more information about Dealer Group Activity Mapping or the Digital Retailing Market Share Database, visit www.automotivemarketdata.com or send an email to info@automotivemarketdata.com.