Member Article

Tech innovation readies G3 Group for big 2018

Leeds-headquartered motoring brand The G3 Group has invested heavily in a number of internal innovations, as the company prepares for further growth in 2018.

A gating app developed by G3 Remarketing’s own technical team will improve the security of vehicles on site, not to mention the efficiency with which cars, bikes and vans can pass through the auction process from arrival to release.

Linked to the company’s new key safe system – which cost £30,000 – the barcode-driven app can determine the real-time location of a vehicle, whether it is being valeted, inspected, photographed or is waiting in a bay ahead of a sale. In a busy auction hall this has resulted in time savings of up to two hours per day to process and prepare the stock. There are further post-sale benefits which enable sold vehicles to be located with pinpoint accuracy, improving gate release times and the buyer experience.

Elsewhere in G3’s RMS Receivables division, an investment in new payment gateway technology has strengthened the company’s PCI compliance in keeping with increasingly stringent FCA requirements for debt recovery. The robust system with secure line and DTMF tone suppression also enables the efficient collection of payments out of hours, should that be more convenient for the customer.

Finally, the entire Group has migrated to a new GDPR-compliant IT and telecoms infrastructure. With an in-built data recovery and backup strategy, the company’s database of core services is now mirrored in real-time to enable business continuity in the event of an outage, system failure or cyber-security attack.

The developments have all been spearheaded by operations director Gary Monaghan, a senior colleague who promised to deliver a strategic plan for continuous growth when he was appointed at the turn of 2017.

“None of this is innovation for innovation’s sake,” explains Gary. “Some of the changes – however simple – will enable us to work smarter as a team, whereas others will immediately translate into enhanced benefits for our customers. Either way, it’s all about us becoming more efficient and effective as we expand in a highly competitive space. This is what will help us to continually attract new vendors and buyers who want to work with us to sell and purchase their valued stock.”

This innovatory mindset looks set to continue into the New Year too, with a new buyer app and a separate vendor app set to be revealed in the first quarter of 2018, to name but a few.

“It’s too easy to rely on the innovations that already exist in the industry, but when we spot a market gap, we can rarely let it go,” admits Gary.

“We know, for example, that online auctions will become increasingly important to many of our buyers in 2018, because it’s difficult to justify time spent away from the forecourt. So, we’re working hard to further improve their customer experience – even if they’re bidding remotely. We’ll do this by fostering a more 1-2-1 relationship via push notifications and timely, media-rich app updates, so that they can bid and buy conveniently, wherever they may be.

“It’s a very exciting time to work in the motor industry, if you’ve got the right outlook and a forward-thinking approach.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katie Mallinson .