Ordering almost anything online these days is as easy as a push of a button. I have an array of them on my computer’s opening page.  Unlike in Oz, where a wizard behind a curtain is driving everything, Amazon for instance, now has a worldwide monolithic infrastructure, for the most part, invisible to the everyday user. The distribution, warehousing and storage facilitates grind away, supported by enormous data processing centers spanning acres of humming electronics. Customer records also drive predictive marketing to a pinpoint.

The National Auto Auction Association, convening in Orlando this year, will reflect similar streamlining in its operations and communications, albeit on a smaller but just as sophisticated scale, including the predictive capability. A glance at the attendee list will confirm the direction of the auction industry; in the days of yore, an auction owner, his GM (if he had one) and eventually a fleet/lease manager may have attended. Typically, customers sent used car managers and fleet resellers (including some wholesalers), the word remarketing hadn’t made its way into our lexicon then.   Auctions represented relatively local sentiments in their marketplaces but those on major interstate junctions had wider inputs of value judgments. Nashville was such a center because of the confluence of I-24, 40 and 65, putting Chicago, Florida, the East Coast and Midwest in a day’s reach. Now, values are a click away with no need to physically observe the market.

The guidebooks, always an integral part of the business, were, at best reactionary although expertise on seasonal adjustments from watchers within the business ensured values reflecting real conditions. Their advisory capabilities have grown enormously to counsel all sorts of interested parties from manufacturers, financial institutions and so on, comparing inventory values with those of the day’s market – an underwater report - even to observations for Wall Street.

 Where, in the past, seminars and discussions may have been as simple as how to improve a customer’s car with reconditioning or how to efficiently lay out an auction lot for everyone’s ease on sale day, now, they’re more likely to look at global economic analysis, artificial intelligence interpretations and performance matrices. Auto auctions have come a long way in just a few decades, by necessity paralleling their expertise with both buy-side and sell-side customers’ expectations and even forging new methods for others to follow. It’s been one of the most flexible industries I can think of.

Affiliated companies have happily kept pace, as opportunities to grow alongside the auctions have occurred and indeed, many new services have been spawned and grown to bring better suites of services to the vehicle distribution services. Auction Insurance Agency stood behind early transactions to underwrite the security of doing business with NAAA members. Now, as Autotech, access to much data and history underscores an allied approach continuing to provide growth opportunities. The atmosphere created by auctions is thrilling, exciting and knowledgeable; it’s always been that way. It’s been made better and more competitive by innovative customer-to-product-matching skills.

All the while, the monster moves millions of cars all over the country within an infrastructure as complex as a spider’s web – one of the strongest structures known to man!