Technology Helping To Sell Technology
Good administrative and analytical tools are key to leveraging strong teams and sound processes. Many used equipment vendors rely on ad hoc and manual procedures to conduct their business. In contrast, CSG continues to innovate in this area and has invested considerable time and resources to develop functional tools that support recovery operations as well as tools that support our customers.
AssetCaster
For Investment Recovery Customers: Through AssetCaster customers can manage equipment throughout the entire Investment Recovery process. They can see at what stage of processing equipment is in at CSG's facilities. Customers can manage equipment, request equipment from inventory, and see which equipment is selling through CSG's channels. AssetCaster provides turn key cradle to grave control of resale and e-Waste reclamation initiatives.
For Buyers: AssetCaster's asset management system allows buyers to browse and search product categories, create customized category and item alerts, generate bids for items for sale, track activity, and manage payment and logistics for winning bids. Buyers have access to equipment inventory and consignment parts representing over 35,000 line items and over 450,000 individual parts.
AssetCaster includes a number of components, including:
An internal database and query tool that includes key industry information, manufacturer equipment data, sales histories, customer data, critical spare parts list, top 100 parts list, part forecasts, and other data that helps us properly identify and value equipment. As noted earlier, individual parts are matched to industry databases and identified to their specific CLEI code, giving us a clear understanding of the value of each individual part. Parts values are estimated using a formula that takes into account:
- Previous sales prices for the same part number, revision and CLEI code
- Previous bid histories
- Known market prices gathered from third party sources
- List prices from other dealers and wholesalers
- Estimation of near-term demand based on customers’ forecasted parts list
- Matching to national top 100 parts lists (current and trends)
Investment Recovery Manager
A web application and customer dashboard that provides our customers selling decommissioned equipment with automated web order entry processes, order status information, and comprehensive sales history reporting and analysis capabilities. The reporting can be customized for corporate managers or for the individual local operating groups. In most cases today, equipment sellers are never provided detailed equipment lists when equipment is pulled from a telco service provider or enterprise's facilities, and are never provided with the detailed information about how individual components were sold and how much they were sold for. With CSG's Customer Portal our customers have extensive real-time and historical information at their fingertips that many have never had before.