In an interview with Insights Success, Adrian Walsh, the CEO of CheckVentory Innovation, shares insights over the organizations delivery of reformative inventory auditing and management solutions through their cloud based platform, CheckVentory, crafted precisely for the automotive and machinery inventory segments. He also comments upon the company’s journey so far and also its vision of a global ascension.
Following are the highlights of the interview:
Give a brief overview of the company, its solutions and services?
CheckVentory was founded specifically to address the risks associated with the lack of validation and certainty in the vehicle distribution process. As the name suggests, CheckVentory is a cloud based platform to check inventory. It enables Banks, Distributors and Dealer groups to easily audit their vehicle inventory, anywhere, anytime and by anyone. Many people don’t realise that the nice shiny cars and machinery that are displayed on dealer forecourts are not generally owned by the dealerships, they are on funding from banks or distributors. And if you are a funder, the further you are removed from the asset you are funding, the greater the perceived risk, which limits funding.
CheckVentory eliminates these risks by giving funders and dealers certainty over the assets via our robust auditing platform.
CheckVentory is made up of two distinct elements, a mobile app for collecting/counting the assets and a web portal for managing, reconciling and reporting on all the audit information. The CheckVentory Solution enables funders to lend with less risk and their customers to access credit.
How do you diversify your Audit Management solutions in ways that would benefit your clientele?
Our solution is designed specifically for the automotive and machinery inventory segments, it’s a bit of a niche so we focused on building a solution for purpose. We have refined the core auditing process, so it is extremely robust but have added broader functionality to cater for the nuances of diverse customers. Where we engage with a client and uncover an improved process or output, we turn that into a report or feature for all clients to benefit.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.
When we first started engaging with customers, we were all about addressing their perceived risks, they were dictating what they wanted from us. But through our deep engagements and consistent methodology we have been able to convert risks into opportunities. By providing transparency and validated data, we have been able to act as a “bridge of trust” between lenders and borrowers, enabling commerce to grow.
While we are a relatively young company, all of the management team are veterans of either the Automotive, Banking or Tech industries, we draw deeply from our domain experiences but work in an agile manner to avoid the bureaucracy and procrastination that we all experienced earlier in our careers. We apply this same no-nonsense approach to our product development.
How does CheckVentory contribute towards making the contemporary Audit Management industry better?
We make auditing a net contributor to the business not just a control. For many of our clients, auditing has generally been done by a few select people, often just from the accounts department. It is frequently done purely to tick a box for a governance requirement. Accountants make great auditors, but it is not the best use of their time. By utilizing non-specialist staff, they can audit larger volumes, more efficiently and frequently, enabling them to stand back from the process to discover an extremely rich source of business intelligence, enhancing their operations well beyond their initial governance requirements.
Where does CheckVentory Innovation see itself in the long run and/or what are its future goals?
Our solution is already translated into multiple languages and deployed in multiple markets.
We integrate with many of the leading back end wholesale finance and dealer management systems as well as other auxiliary systems. Many of our customers are multinationals and we want to see CheckVentory become the benchmark for vehicle auditing, globally.
Considering the rising number of Audit Management solution providers, how does CheckVentory Innovation stand out from its competitors?
We have always taken a holistic view of the auditing process and we ensure that all stakeholders get a benefit from our audits. This has enabled us to scale organically, dealers want to use our software to identify their operational risks but in doing so they can also resolve the financial risks for their funders, all from the same audit.
Reflections of Delivering Quality
“The first CheckVentory audit took a fifth of the time of our normal audit and was reconciled within a day.” – HQ Controller for a UK Nationwide Automotive Group
“We simply couldn’t have grown our book as quickly as we did if we were not using CheckVentory to manage the risk.” – Wholesale Risk Manager, European Captive Bank
“We want to be able to deal with even the smallest of dealers, without CheckVentory, that would be too expensive.” – Dealer Credit Manager, European Floorplan Bank
“We thought we had a good auditing process, CheckVentory challenged us to audit using their platform, 2 minutes into reviewing the results and I was sold. We now audit our entire network simultaneously and monthly to ensure our (improved) processes are being followed. This has resulted in far greater efficiencies and profit opportunities.” – Group CEO, Major Automotive Group