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bringing the remarketing industry together

WINTER 2016

THIS ISSUE 2015 YEAR IN REVIEW 2

AUTO PILOT 3

MARSHALING 4

Getting to Why

continued on page 2...

Auto Auction Services Corp. was incorporated as a business in late 1997. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and AutoIMS now prides itself on playing a pivotal role in Bringing the Remarketing Industry Together. How did we get here? As Steve Jobs famously quoted, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking back-wards.”

In December 2015, I had the joy of leading the AutoIMS team in an ex-ercise we called The Golden Circle, with the goal of better defining the three tenets of our business:

• The What

• The How

• The Why

The inspiration for this exercise came from Simon Sinek’s treatise on how to inspire action by starting with the “why,” and his simple yet powerful concept called The Golden Circle. The thesis of the Golden Circle is that people do not buy what we do or even how we do it; they buy why we do it.

The AutoIMS team put up a large graphic in our break room with the three circles representing what, how,

and why. We left sticky notes and pen-cils for the team to put their thoughts and ideas about AutoIMS directly on the display. The company convened for a lunch discussion where we played a short TED Talk video by Simon Sinek. Everyone was encouraged to contrib-ute in their own words for each of the three questions. The exercise picked up steam within a few days and very soon we had ideas and views pouring in from the entire company.

The ideas ranged widely, including things like, “Balancing continuous innovation & operational excellence,” to “putting customers’ needs first.” All in all, we realized that we were playing our own version of blind men and the elephant. That AutoIMS as a whole is bigger than the sum of its parts! We also realized just how far the business has come.

The company exercise was so engag-ing, that we had the results made into

by CIO, Venkat Krishnamoorthy

AUTOIMS NEWSLETTER WINTER 20162

Auto Auction Services Corp. (AutoIMS) is pleased to report an-other productive and innovative year in 2015. Gearing up for increased volumes, automating more processes, and offering new intelligence from data were some of the major themes of our client conversations this past year. Here’s a recap of some of the resulting accomplishments:

• Introduced the Sale Calendar for all users at no cost

• Introduced Run History for all users at no cost

• Launched new, internal CRM system

• Completed hardware and software upgrades while maintaining up-time promises

• Addressed new regulatory concerns for financial/banking clients

• Grew the use of zip-code level mapping and automated auction assignments

• Introduced new AutoIMS membership options for online auction portals

• Introduced new AutoIMS membership options for marshaling facilities

• Established or expanded a range of new and existing 3rd party connections, including:

◆ Allied ◆ RDN

◆ All State Title Service ◆ Ready Auto Transport

◆ C.A.R.S. ◆ RMS

◆ iRepo ◆ Van Wagenen

• Worked with individual consignors and the IARA to enhance build data availability in AutoIMS

• Congratulated our employees on their educational achievements:

◆ Lee Clark

◆ Mike Greene

◆ Vimala Shirur

◆ Kellee Watson

• Completed new custom floor pricing work flows for several consignors

• Updated and supported IsItFrame?™ and AutoGrade™ industry resources

• Created a new Web Service data back offering

• Created new web service for ServNet auctions to access MMR values

• Welcomed multiple new consignors and auctions to AutoIMS membership

Now, what does 2016 hold? We want to help you move the needle to success, and look forward to continued partnership. Visit www.autoimssolutions.com for new ideas, or con-tact us any time: customer.service@autoims.com or 888-683-2272.

a custom jigsaw puzzle to provide a fun, meaningful activity in our break room during January. We had some visitors who enjoyed the puzzle in progress, and who also connected some dots of their own as they learned more about our interconnectedness in the remarketing industry.

In the end, this unique exercise strengthened our collective commitment to and understanding of what we truly mean by AutoIMS Brings the Remarket-ing Industry Together. The 18-minute TED Talk by Simon Sinek (search Ted.com for How Great Lead-ers Inspire Action) turned out to be a valuable investment of time. We encour-age you to check it out and let us know what you think – especially if you learned more about why you do what you do.

Steve Jobs finished his statement from above by saying, “So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Help your organization to think more about why you do what you do, and we’re confident you’ll connect more dots than ever before.

AutoIMS Year in Review - 2015

Veteran AutoIMS staffer Don Stephens putting in the last piece of the golden circle puzzle

Getting to Why continued from front page.

AUTOIMS NEWSLETTER WINTER 20163

Going out to lunch? I’ll drive. Those of you who know me well, know that I prefer to literally and figuratively have my hands on the wheel. This makes me half-car-guy, and half-control-freak guy. I’m also pretty social, so when a friend recently got a new job as a Product Specialist at Tesla, and said I could do him a favor by test-driving their flagship sedan, the Model S, I was all in. Little did I know what to expect.

Accepting the minimalist – albeit comfortable – interior, and the initial curiosity about how something so quiet could go so fast, I realized this car would challenge more than just my basic sensibilities about the driv-ing experience. The second level of shock to my system, was how quickly I liked the car, not in spite of its differ-ences but because of them. I could get used to this. Well, at least until Ben said, “See that button? Hit it twice.”

Now up to this point, I chose to mostly ignore Ben’s enthusiasm about some kind of new software update in the car. Software is my living, right now just let me drive this thing. When he asked me to hit the button twice, I was driving northbound on 400, the large interstate that connects Atlanta with its northern suburbs at

about 60 mph. It was raining. There was traffic. I was in a car worth double my own. At least part of my friend’s livelihood hung in the bal-ance. My blood pressure was at or above the Atlanta interstate average. I hit the button twice.

“Now what?” I said.

“Let go,” he said.

“Let go of what?”

“The wheel, trust me.”

I suppose this is why the ego was invented. If he could do it, I could do it. I hovered my hands over the wheel. The dashboard gave very affirmative indications that the car had a strong sense of the lane and traffic (lots of traffic) around it. It steered itself better than I could. It slowed down and sped up by itself. I told it to back off the car in front of it and it did. I put the turn signal on and it changed lanes.

“Let go,” he said. And I’m glad he did. If you want the rest of the story – go test drive a Tesla.

Geoff’s favorite part of working at AASC is the quiet and friendly work environment. He develops and sup-ports our EDI systems and provides assistance to customers on our test environments. With no prior experi-ence working with databases, Geoff claims everything he knows, he picked up here, though his jigsaw puzzle abilities seem to come from lifelong experience.

In his last job for 3Dlabs, Geoff helped design and program computer graph-ics boards and multimedia chips. “Geoff Challand” appears on a patent for a plurality of parallel pixel process-ing pipelines.

When at home, most of Geoff’s time is spent watching and playing with My Little Ponies. He tries to encourage other pursuits, but the ponies always seem to win. 

When asked what he and April enjoy doing when they have time away from the kids, Geoff responded, “We’re al-lowed time away from the kids? My wife needs to be told about this immediate-ly!” Geoff enjoys long-distance running, growing his own vegetables and he may be a sleeper agent for the KGB.

Letting Go of the Wheel Geoff ChallandEditorial Musings by Joe Miller C++/Lead Developer

Tesla autopilot sensors at work

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Auto Auction Services Corp.50 Glenlake Parkway, Ste. 400 Atlanta, GA 30328 888-683-2272

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AUTOIMS NEWSLETTER WINTER 2015

Turn Up the VolumeIn our mission to add value to the remarketing industry by bringing it together, AutoIMS introduced a new offering to help auctions and consignors work together to manage the steadily increasing volume of vehicles hitting the market right now. Available to existing AutoIMS member auctions, a new Marshal-ing membership category provides auctions another option to separate inventory that may not yet be slated to sell through the physical auction lane.

With one location already participating in Flint, MI, and oth-ers slated for St. Louis, and New Jersey, some larger-portfolio consignors are already reaping the benefits of seeing their inven-tory organized. Auction companies benefit too, as this provides more options to provide the services consignors are asking for as volumes soar.

Want to learn more about managing marshaled inventory in AutoIMS? Email solutions@autoims.com or call Customer Service: 888-683-2272.

Send newsletter recipient changes to Beverly at bheslin@autoims.com.

autoimsnewsletter

the

bringing the remarketing industry together

Attending the CAR Conference in

Vegas? We look forward to seeing

our clients and friends while shoot-

ing some hoops.

With March Madness in play and

keynote speaker Bill Walton fea-

tured at CAR, come and play for

fun and prizes and check out what’s

new at AutoIMS. We look forward

to seeing you in Las Vegas!

www.carconference.com.