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Understandably there are some very happy campers down in the wash bays. ‘We like it a lot,’ says Detailing Supervisor Norm O’Donovan. ‘Increasing the pressure on the guns means we can clean better and the grime comes off much more easily.’

That’s got to be a relief, when you consider that, between them, our Detailing and Rectification teams at Altona clean more than 50,000 vehicles each year.

‘Turning off the mains supply makes us one of the cleanest and greenest sites in the industry,’ says Victorian GM Miki Bilos. ‘We’ll be saving over three million litres of water each year.’

Harvesting water from just one-quarter of our enormous Salvage and Detailing shed roof fills the five, 50,000-litre mega tanks in a flash. Not to mention another two tanks collecting water running off half of the Rectification roof.

‘The first day we were connected it rained lightly and I wondered how much water we would collect,’ says Miki. ‘In half an hour we’d captured 10,000 litres! Clearly they are going to be beneficial, even over summer.’

‘It goes a long way to making us self sustaining as far as our water needs, and we’ve only drawn on a quarter of our Salvage and Detailing roof span.’ Miki says extending the system to flush toilets is an obvious next step.

Watch this space for news of similar systems being implemented at our other sites. Close

In May this year, One Voice reported on the strange activities of certain individuals loitering in secluded corners of our Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland sites.

Under the expert guidance of these master tradesmen who were shipped out to Australia and New Zealand from Manheim US, four of our guys were instructed in the ways of Paintless Dent Removal.

These days our newly minted Paintless Dent Removal masters Alan McLeish (NSW), Jason Noach (VIC), Gerald Coles (NZ) and Sean Kinsey (QLD) have gone mobile in customised ManheimFowles utes and are working hard to keep up with our customers’ demand for their services.

‘One of the main challenges we faced when setting them up to go mobile was how to streamline the offsite eftpos-based billing process,’ says Cath Harmer our GM Business Processes. ‘We needed to ensure that our system captures all the invoicing and therefore that we can pay our technicians on time.’

To this end, Cath and Executive General Manager Rich Curtis, ran a workshop for the Australian contingent on September 7, bringing together everyone involved—the PDR technicians, the relevant state GMs and Assistant GMs, the Altona-based Finance team of Dennis Kats and Lisa Phung, GM Logistics Wayne Thompson, Andy Bell, Gerard Geoghegan, Peter Goedheer and Linda Maat who, in a pivotal role, will coordinate the administration of the business from the Melbourne SMART Repair Centre using SAP.

‘We wanted everyone to get a better idea of the whole system—and how what they do fits in with that,’ says Cath. ‘We went through the billing procedures and made sure that everyone knows each other so that, for example, if Sean rings Linda with a question about invoices he knows who she is, what she looks like and what she’s doing.’

‘Processing PDR through SAP means we can keep tabs on Paintless Dent Removal volumes, check and pay commissions, identify target customers and business opportunities, generate profit and loss statements and keep tax issues simple—for us and our customers,’ Cath says.

To recap—Paintless Dent Removal is a SMART Repair technique carried out by professional, specialist technicians. The art of ‘massaging’ dents out of body panels can restore the vehicle to it’s original condition without time consuming and costly traditional methods of repair. Paintless Dent removal is environmentally friendly and can be carried out at any location. Close

‘We will be offering financiers and repossession agents a fixed price model for our services,’ says our CEO Scott Levy. ‘We’ve based the business on Manheim’s existing and successful Recovery Solution operation which is run from Nashville. Currently they handle in excess of 200,000 files per year and we will be leveraging from their proven systems.’

Our new business venture will operate out of our Brisbane site and will be managed by Robert Cooper who will report to Steve Lloyd, National Financiers Manager.

Robert comes to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience, having spent the past 18 years in the finance industry specialising in Automotive Equipment Finance and Debt Recovery.

‘Initially Recovery Solution will just be me but we’re planning to get someone else on board in January,’ Robert says. The web based software Robert will be using was originally developed by the US Recovery Solution team.

‘Over the past six months our IT team has been working with me and the guys in Nashville to modify the system to meet Australian standards and laws,’ says Robert, ‘All the computer systems for the Australian operation will be based in Nashville and maintained by the Manheim Corporate IT staff.’

‘One of the most exciting parts of the venture is that we will be the first to market this type of service in Australia and it demonstrates our commitment to being at the cutting edge of the Australian automotive industry.’

‘We will be running an initial Pilot Program with Toyota Financial Services for their Repossessions Australia-wide. All of TFS’s repossessions are co-ordinated from their Western Collection Centre based in Perth.’

‘Once the Pilot Program is completed we will be looking to offer Recovery Solution services to other financiers around Australia with a view to eventually expanding the operation to include the overseas markets where we have a ManheimFowles presence,’ Robert says. Close