.KEYWORD auction
.FLYINGHEAD PALM IN THE REAL WORLD
.TITLE Palm handhelds go to work at auto auctions
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Many auto dealers are finding Palm handhelds to be the perfect portable, infinitely versatile tool to help them buy and sell used cars. Contributing Editor Steve Niles will introduce you to one dealer who finds his Palm OS-based Manheim Market Report valuation software invaluable in the fast-paced world of auto auctions.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
If you want to experience a fast-paced environment, pay a visit to the nearest car auction. Of course, unless you’re a certified dealer, you’ll be kicked out immediately, so you’ll have to take my word for it. They’re kinetic.
Car auctions are where car dealers gather to buy and sell used automobiles in order to stock their lots or trade inventory. To find the cars they want, they’ve got to be quick. Bidding takes place at a lightning fast pace, with the time between a car hitting the auction block and going to the highest bidder lasting between 30 seconds to a minute.
I recently had opportunity to speak with Mike Kelly, a dealer in Mobile, Alabama. He described the typical car auction as about 30 baseball-fields worth of real estate transformed into a parking lot for, at the high end, up to 15,000 automobiles. Kelly works for a wholesale and retail company that supplies eleven different dealerships with vehicles. These dealerships give Kelly their wish lists–the cars they’re looking for to stock their lots–and it’s Kelly’s job to attend car auctions throughout the country in order to fill these orders.
With acres of ground to cover and thousands of auctions lasting seconds at a time going off at intervals throughout the day at various locations on the grounds, it’s vitally important to be in the right place at the right time. In order to make the proper bid, it’s also vital to know exactly how much the individual automobiles you’re after are worth.
The first step in the process takes place at the office. Kelly first consults the Internet at his office in order to find the section numbers for the cars on his various shopping lists. Armed with this knowledge, he sets out to the auction to scope out the vehicles. To determine the vehicles’ worth, it’s necessary to look up each vehicle in valuation guidebooks. The typical dealer might need to lug around three to five different books to cover all the different vehicles he or she is checking out. However, Kelly and many others like him have discovered a better solution.
.H1 Manheim Market Report software
Kelly downloads all the information he needs right to his Palm Vx handheld utilizing a software program developed by Manheim Auctions (at http://www.manheimauctions.com) called Manheim Market Report. Now Kelly can carry several guidebooks worth of valuation data in his pocket, conveniently stored on his Palm handheld computer.
Manheim runs 85 wholesale auto auctions at fixed sites throughout the country. The company developed their valuation guidebook software for Palm OS 3.0 or higher with the aid of thirty developers and contractors. The Manheim Market Report software is free to subscribers to Manheim Online at http://www.manheim.com. According to Joe Luppino, Chief Operating Officer of Manheim Interactive, Manheim chose the Palm OS platform for their solution because of its dominance in the handheld market.
When you first open the Manheim Market Report, you’re brought to a screen where you can choose the manufacturer of the vehicle you’re interested in. You can see the opening screen in Figure A.
.FIG A Choose the make of the vehicle on the opening screen.
In this example, we’ve chosen Chrysler. You’re then taken to a screen where you can choose the model of the vehicle, as shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Choose the vehicle model.
Next you can choose the body styles and model-years that match the previous selections, as shown in Figure C.
.FIG C Display of body styles and model-years that match the previous selections.
Finally you’re provided with the mean prices for clean, average, and rough conditions. You’re also given the mean mileage for vehicles in Average condition as shown in Figure D.
.FIG D Mean prices for clean, average, and rough conditions.
The QuickChange buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to change to another vehicle with a single tap. The Change Miles button allows you to adjust the mean prices for mileage using a numeric keyboard.
.H1 Become an auto expert
The information in these digital guidebooks is always changing, with new data coming in all the time from the auction lanes. Users of the software can get regular updates every time they synchronize their Palm handhelds to their Internet enabled desktop computers.
It’s a relatively new service for the company, having been in full use only a month now and in beta for six months before that, so as yet, Luppino hasn’t received much feedback from users regarding ROI (Return on Investment) since replacing paper guidebooks with the Manheim solution. However, as I learned from Mike Kelly, ROI comes in more than just financial terms.
True, Kelly says, since using the Palm handheld solution for accessing this guidebook data, he has saved considerable money in that he no longer needs to purchase the updated paper guides. However, there are even greater advantages. For one thing, he no longer has to wait for the new guidebooks to be published. Instead, he updates his data every few days when he returns to the office to HotSync his Palm Vx to his PC. For another, Kelly says having the guidebook data at his fingertips has made him an expert on every car.
In terms of building relationships with clients, this is a priceless commodity. Kelly can walk up to any car on the lot cold, and with a few quick taps through the easy-to-navigate software, he knows the car’s history and what it’s worth. This helps him make a better bid on the vehicle, which can save his customers money.
In the future, Kelly envisions a day when he’ll be able to expand the utility of his Palm handheld even further. He can imagine a pervasive computing scenario in which the Palm handheld can sense through its infrared port what car Kelly is standing in front of and instantly bring the pertinent information to the screen. We may be close to a similar solution already, as all cars at auto auctions have corresponding bar codes. With a bar code scanner attached to his Palm handheld, Kelly could simply scan the car’s bar code and let the handheld do the work of finding the data he needs.
Kelly’s next handheld will be the Palm m505. He’d like to equip it with a Kodak PalmPix digital camera (at http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/cameras/palmPix/) in order to take digital photos of the cars he bids on. He’d then email the photos to his clients to show them exactly what they’re getting, helping them to sell the vehicles more quickly. An added benefit of taking a digital photo is that it would serve as a visual record of any damage the car has at the time of purchase. This would help hold the shipping company accountable for any damages the vehicle may suffer in transit to the dealership.
Kelly also looks forward to equipping his Palm handheld with a wireless modem. This would allow him not only to email digital photos as soon as they’re taken but also to receive instant updates to his valuation software. He could also access the Internet and utilize CarFax.com (at http://www.carfax.com), which provides detailed histories of automobiles.
Because of the fast pace of an auto auction, Kelly describes it as a "highly charged environment." With the portability and infinite versatility of Palm handhelds, more and more auto dealers are finding them to be the perfect tool to help them buy and sell the used cars they need.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Manheim Auctions, visit http://www.manheimauctions.com.
For more information on Manheim Online, visit http://www.manheim.com.
For more information on Kodak PalmPix digital camera, visit http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/cameras/palmPix/.
For more information on CarFax.com, visit http://www.carfax.com.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
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.END_SIDEBAR
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