My name is Matt Ackley and I am the new CMO at IronPlanet. I have been in the role for about three months now and the experience has been amazing. As someone who has 12 years of online auctions on their resume (eight of them at eBay) and another couple of years at Google, it’s great to see online technology really start to have an impact on the heavy equipment industry. In these roles, I had the wonderful opportunity to help pioneer the use of data on both the seller side and buyer side of an online marketplace. Whether it was helping sellers with auction strategy or driving demand to the various eBay categories, data proved to be the lifeblood of our day to day work. This only accelerated during my time at Google.
At IronPlanet, we are incredibly excited to drive this transformation in the heavy equipment industry. It’s why I joined. This is the first in a series of posts, where I hope to update you on how we are using data to build a more efficient marketplace - a global marketplace that enables buyers to get the equipment they need and sellers to realize the most optimal price for that equipment.
With our global database of 1.5M equipment buyers and over $5B worth of online heavy equipment transactions, we have a bunch to work with. Data drives everything we do - from equipment inspections (over 100K so far this year and counting) to auction pricing and management, and finally in marketing to match the right buyer with the right piece of equipment at the right time.
Global is important to us. Take a look at a recent auction.
The global participation is amazing. We had bidders from over 30 countries and over 22 percent of the items had international bids. And Toto, we aren’t selling Pez Dispensers. This is the power of the online marketplace approach.
As we continue to expand our buying formats and marketplaces (our recently launched GovDirect as an example), we strive to give our sellers more options to manage their asset disposal processes in a strategic rather than a reactive manner. Unlike other marketplaces, the foundation of this endeavor is to incorporate our global marketplace data into IronPlanet’s platform and processes to enable better decision making for both buyers and sellers. Examples of this include our “Sold Item” searches for buyers and our Asset Management Portal for sellers.
Data is a key component of our ongoing strategy. We continue to build out our data science efforts to raise our game even more. Over the next few months and quarters I will be sharing more and more of these efforts with you as we release new products and build out new services. I look forward to the ongoing dialogue and hope to see you at some of our onsite events as well.
