Manheim's Brenton Barnes
Automotive auction house, Manheim, is giving customers software intelligence that it says will provide much-needed information, insights and forecasting abilities.
“By providing access to our new software we can empower them to better understand the used vehicle market, in order to set more competitive residual values and better manage risk,” according to Manheim data and market intelligence product manager, Brenton Barnes.
Manheim is considered one of Australia’s largest providers of automotive auction services. It holds weekly used car auctions for passenger, government, SUV & 4WDs, commercial, clearance and prestige vehicles as well as auctions including trucks, trailers, motorcycles, plant and equipment, machinery, recreation vehicles and damaged cars.
The market intelligence software platform incorporates a residual valuation tool as well as a used vehicle value index.
The new tool allows data driven valuations for most popular fleet models, which are constantly checked and refined by the company’s valuations professionals, Barnes says.
The prediction methodology takes into account new and used model vehicle lifestyle stages and can generate valuation predictions for 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60-month lease terms across a wide range of kms.
According to Barnes, Manheim established a Market Intelligence team dedicated to analysing trends in prices for vehicles sold in the secondary market and developing wholesale price forecasts for high-volume models.
As a member of the Cox Automotive Australia group of companies and a remarketing partner for automotive OEMs, state and local governments, FMOs and dealerships, Barnes says Manheim has unique insight into local and international trends affecting supply and demand for vehicles.
Barnes says the new intelligence platform leverages Cox Automotive’s retail and wholesale data sets, data science teams, valuations and used vehicle listings to help customers improve the accuracy of their residual values.
Barnes says the fleet and leasing industry depends heavily on accurate residual forecasting to underpin their business decisions.
“They especially appreciate access to vast amounts of wholesale auction data from the Manheim auctions lanes and digital sales channels.”
Barnes says the tool provides an essential service in that it combines auction wholesale data as well as listing data from online-classified sites.
“By providing both sales and listing data, we can help our customers form a view of both the wholesale and retail markets for the vehicles they are setting residual values for.
“Our valuation engine formulates a depreciation curve of a given model by plotting both auction results and retail listing prices to form a single view. When wholesale data is scarce, we can also use the listing data to better determine the most appropriate residual valuation and depreciation curve.”
He expects the new tool to be a useful source of information for those in the automotive industry who need to accurately predict residual values.
“Our aim is to better inform our customers so they can make intelligent choices; helping them to address their most pressing valuation needs and adding new layers of insight and information than they have previously been able to access.
:Working right across the automotive industry and with such a diverse customer group, we understand their challenges and we have designed the new tool to help them solve them.”
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