AI-powered pricing solution for Carspect
With artificial intelligence at its core, Pinja's dynamic pricing solution optimizes prices in real time, increasing revenue and bookings for more than 120 vehicle inspection stations in Sweden
Carspect transforms pricing with AI-driven solution by Pinja
The collaboration between Pinja and Carspect began in 2019, when Carspect chose Pinja as their IT partner during their information systems renewal. It started with Muster by Pinja, an ERP system for vehicle inspections, and grew into data warehousing, Power BI-based information management solutions, and CRM system development.
Building on this strong foundation, the partnership took a major step forward last year with the development of an AI-powered dynamic pricing solution that optimizes pricing in real time across all stations. A data-driven approach improves operational efficiency, maximizes revenue, and enhances station utilization, marking another key milestone in Carspect’s ongoing digital transformation.
The cooperation in brief
Solving pricing challenges with AI
Before May 2024, Carspect used a pricing model that couldn’t quickly adapt to real-time changes. Managing prices took a lot of time and resources, yet still wasn’t flexible enough for a market with fluctuating demand. Now the AI-powered dynamic pricing, built by Pinja and integrated into Muster, an ERP system used by Carspect, automatically adjusts prices every 15 minutes based on chosen pricing factors, like occupancy, booking time, and forecasted demand.
Transparent and adaptable pricing model
Unlike most AI-driven solutions that function as black boxes, the system developed by Pinja gives Carspect control over pricing decisions. Flexibility and transparency are at the core of the solution: the influence of each pricing factor can be adjusted dynamically. As business needs evolve, new factors can be seamlessly integrated, making this pricing model scalable and future-proof.
Streamlined adoption with strong results
The solution was rolled out smoothly across all 120 stations, thanks to a structured deployment strategy, and is now expanding to new Carspect locations. Initial results after 3 months of implementation are promising: the data shows an increase in bookings and average inspection price, confirming a positive impact on revenue. Carspect now plans to expand the solution to additional services and include more factors into AI-driven pricing.
We wanted to react to the daily changes in the market, especially last minute changes, faster than we could. Dynamic pricing has given us this flexibility and saved time. Setting prices was a time consuming process that we no longer have to do.
Before May 2024, Carspect manually managed pricing for over 120 stations across Sweden. Prices were set in advance and grouped by location and time period. While this approach was well structured, it lacked the flexibility and didn’t allow for real-time adjustments based on demand.
“Our previous pricing solution limited our possibility to adjust prices. We wanted to react to daily changes in the market—especially last minute changes—faster than we could,” shared Linda Taube, Marketing Manager at Carspect AB. “If station occupancy was high, we didn’t have tools to adjust prices, and if demand was low, we had to rely on discount campaigns that required constant manual work.”
Since each inspection slot is a fixed time window with dedicated staff and equipment, every unbooked slot meant wasted resources.
“Whether a slot is booked or not, the costs of running the station remain largely the same. That’s why increasing bookings and optimizing the pricing strategy is so important. But doing that manually for so many stations? That’s nearly impossible,” explained Pieter ter Berg, Director of Business Development at Pinja. “Even if you try to plan in advance, bookings don’t always come in as expected, so you have to adjust again. Doing that is so much work, but it is still too slow to adapt to real-time situation.”
Recognizing these challenges, Carspect sought a smarter, data-driven approach to pricing.
New AI opportunities for vehicle inspections
In September 2023, Pinja introduced the possibility of AI-powered solutions to Carspect after successfully implementing a few projects in various industries. During a regular steering group meeting, Pinja proposed several potential use cases for artificial intelligence in vehicle inspections—one of them was dynamic pricing.
A key inspiration for this solution came from Linda Taube, who had experience in the travel industry, where dynamic pricing is widely used. “You’ve probably seen how airline ticket prices fluctuate—that model has been in use for years,” said Taube. “I had worked with similar tools before and knew how effective they could be.”
While airline pricing involves complex factors like flight classes, seasonal trends, and demand fluctuations, vehicle inspections have fewer variables—yet the potential for optimization is still significant.
“People don’t usually think about dynamic pricing for vehicle inspections because it’s a ‘flatter’ product—you book an inspection, and that’s it. But the potential is huge. So, I was very excited when I heard we could adopt dynamic pricing,” Taube added.
The core of the solution
The AI-powered dynamic pricing automatically adjusts prices every 15 minutes based on real-time conditions. The optimal price for each time slot is determined by three key factors:
- Occupancy,
- Booking time,
- Forecasted demand.
“The industry follows clear demand patterns—we know when our peaks and lows are,” explained Taube. “Incorporating both historical data and real-time conditions was crucial for us.”
Since demand forecasting is at the heart of dynamic pricing, ensuring its accuracy and reliability was crucial.
“Before developing this solution for Carspect, we had successfully built multiple demand forecasting models for different industries, achieving highly accurate forecasts,” shared Stefan Otayagich, Artificial Intelligence Specialist at Pinja. “This experience gave us confidence that we could accurately predict the demand, which plays an important role in dynamic pricing.”
By continuously learning from past and present data, the AI-powered model dynamically adapts prices to maximize revenue and improve station efficiency—without requiring constant manual intervention.
The formula of dynamic pricing is tailored to the customer. It can be changed to include any relevant information—if you think the car's age or weather conditions are important, you can use that to calculate the price. So it can be customized for every business. This makes the solution really powerful.
Designed for effortless management
When developing the dynamic pricing solution, Pinja focused on transparency and control. “Many AI models operate as “black boxes,” explained Otayagich. “You don’t really know how the price is determined, and you don’t have much control over it. With our approach, we can explain the prices and adjust them as needed.”
The Pinja team made it possible for Carspect to control not only the impact of each pricing factor but also how that impact changes depending on the time of booking.
By making the pricing solution flexible and explainable, Pinja allowed Carspect to fine-tune pricing factors instead of relying on a pre-set algorithm. This also makes it easier to expand the model’s functionality over time as new business needs arise.
“We thought that at some point, we’d want to add more factors that influence the price—for example, competitor prices. With our solution, that’s quite easy to do, whereas other models might require a lot more reworking at the base level,” added Otayagich.
Another key part of development was integrating the solution into Muster by Pinja, an ERP system used by Carspect. Since prices were constantly updated for each time slot, the team had to ensure that the system wouldn’t be overloaded.
“There were lots of things to consider, but performance was a key one,” explained Sami Kauranen, Technical Architect at Pinja. “Instead of using the production database, we decided to use the data warehouse we had already implemented for Carspect. This kept the system stable while the pricing model remained responsive and scalable.”
Transparent for customers
A customer-oriented approach is at the heart of Carspect. By implementing this solution, they ensure that their services remain competitively priced while offering the best value to customers.
However, since dynamic pricing considers multiple factors and uncovers hidden market trends, prices can seem more random to customers. To explain it, Carspect uses a well-known example.
“Everyone knows that flight ticket prices change depending on the day, time, and destination. Nobody questions why a ticket costs more on a Saturday than on a weekday—it’s just how the market works. The same logic applies here: dynamic pricing reflects demand in real time. So it’s the market that sets the prices,” Taube says.
“It’s not a hidden pricing strategy,” adds Pieter ter Berg. “It’s quite clear where to click to get the best price. The system gives customers flexibility and makes it possible to choose the best option for their needs.”
Quick development and smooth implementation
The dynamic pricing solution went from concept to deployment in just six months. Pinja began development in November 2023, and in May 2024 dynamic pricing was launched.
Rollout started with a couple of stations and continued gradually throughout the summer, with only a few stations added at a time. This phased approach allowed Pinja to monitor performance and address any issues without disrupting operations.
By the end of August, all 120 Carspect stations were successfully using the dynamic pricing.
“I don’t think there were any major issues,” shared Taube. “The team did a really good job preparing the tool. Even with testing environments, there’s always a chance that something unexpected happens when you go live. But in this case, the transition has been very smooth for us.”
Easy scaling for future growth
One challenge that came up as dynamic pricing expanded was adding newly opened stations. Since they had no historical data, it was difficult to forecast the demand and set the right prices.
“We considered a few options. One was to improve the forecasting model so that it could make predictions for new stations based on shared characteristics—like location, capacity, and local demand patterns,” said Otayagich.
Ultimately, because the situation required a quick and effective solution, Pinja chose to use the data from existing stations with similar capacity and geographic conditions. The model leveraged their demand patterns to create a starting point for the new stations.
Pinja’s pricing solution is built to be continuously updated and refined. The forecasting model retrains daily, so the latest trends and real-time behavior are reflected in the pricing strategy. As new stations generate their own data, the model automatically integrates these insights, making forecasts increasingly accurate over time.
With this system in place, expanding to new locations becomes seamless, allowing Carspect to scale efficiently without additional manual adjustments.
Measurable business impact in just 3 months
Just three months after implementation, Carspect saw measurable improvements, including time savings and increased flexibility in pricing management.
“Setting prices was a time-consuming process that we no longer have to do,” shared Taube. “Dynamic pricing also lets us set individual prices for each station instead of grouping them into clusters like before.”
The solution works as expected, responding to demand fluctuations in real time. “I’ve heard positive feedback from stations—they say that the tool behaves as intended. When there are many empty slots, prices go down, and when they’re busy, prices go up. That’s exactly what we wanted to happen,” Taube said.
Early data confirms a positive impact—just three months after implementation, bookings and the average PTI price have increased.
“Of course, other factors may also play a role, but I believe dynamic pricing has been a major contributor,” Taube noted.
A strong partnership for future innovation
The success of dynamic pricing was driven by continuous dialogue and collaboration between both teams.
“I think the project went very smoothly, both internally and externally. I am very happy with how well we work together with Carspect. One reason is that we get to hear the challenges firsthand. When we have a much clearer understanding of what is happening on the customer’s side, we can actually fix the problem instead of just developing some feature,” says Pieter ter Berg.
Taube agrees: “The team has been very responsive to our requests. I am very happy with the collaboration, so looking into other possible projects is definitely something that I’m interested in.”
With promising initial results and positive feedback from stations, Carspect is now planning to further refine the AI-powered pricing. “There are several more things that we could do to develop this solution. Today we only use the AI pricing for the PTI, so we could add other services and vehicle types. We could also include external factors when determining the price, like competitors prices. for example,” says Taube.
Building on a strong foundation, the partnership continues to drive growth with new opportunities for AI-driven optimization.
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