Last week, when faced with a large number of shirts to iron, I used an app to tender this job out to a service provider. A welcome convenience.
Likewise, when I want to get from A to B, rather than leave my flat and wander around in the hope of hailing a black cab, I am now able, from the comfort of my home, to order a cab to my door. Uber has brought the market to me, saving me the trouble of having to go and find the market.
As a young member of a market-leading team at Allsop Commercial Auctions, I am keen to explore how technology might
present greater opportunities for auctions, and shape our market in my future.
I accept that the similarities between the purchase of a £2m building and a taxi ride are tenuous, but if you strip away the price and paperwork, it is just another transaction, subject to market forces like anything else.
The “PlayStation generation” is no less diligent than the older folk, but they are more demanding when it comes to the immediacy of, and access to, information.
If you listen to the traditional black cab drivers, they may tell you that Uber has undermined their profession, that there is no longer any value in “The Knowledge” gained over many years of hard graft.
Adapting the technology
Many of us can recognise that GPS has been around much longer than Uber, so it’s hard to place blame at Uber’s door. What it did is adopt the technology in a creative way. As an Uber user myself, it has made my journeys hassle-free and convenient.
As surveyors in a market, we possess a very specialised skill set and have built a substantial knowledge base over time. We could, if required, price a building from 50 paces or tell you the range of buyers and ownerships in many regional towns. It’s a sad party trick to have, but our niche and expertise is what differentiates us within our profession. Unlike the black cabbie, I do not see these skills being replaced by technology.
Knowledge is valuable, but knowing how to interpret the facts only comes with experience, and that is what differentiates technology that merely gathers data, from the expert, who knows how to interpret data.
The opportunity, I see, is to take the Uber-way, by using technology to refine both the delivery of information and the execution of the process in a more straightforward fashion.
It isn’t a secret that markets evolve quickly, with few immune to change. Who would have thought a few years ago that the largest provider of accommodation in the world would be Airbnb, a web-based company that doesn’t own a single room but provides a million rooms to the market? By comparison Hilton, Marriott and Intercontinental globally list around 700,000 rooms each.
Auction is one of the oldest marketing tools known to mankind, with earliest references dating from 500BC for the sale of slaves in Babylon. The Roman empire favoured the method and the entire Roman empire was auctioned off by the Praetorian Guard in AD 193; possibly the best instruction ever recorded.
Its pedigree as a route to market is undeniable and the traditional model of the auction has remained largely unchanged from the start. After 2,500 years, are changes now finally afoot?
The opportunities presented by the internet could, I feel, drive some of the biggest fundamental changes to the auction market since its inception.
This, you may say, is not new: internet bidding has been around for a while in many auction rooms and, although it has an established place, we have also seen its role in the process evolve.
Positive market reaction
We saw good examples of this in the recent online-only sales by Allsop Ireland and Allsop Residential Auctions. For the first time, exchange of contracts happened in real time, online, after transparent competitive bidding. Initial results showed a very positive market reaction, with 100% of the latest online auction catalogue now sold.
As more than 2.9bn people are online, with an ever-increasing proportion of business transactions over the web, this is an opportunity to extend our market further. Giving more people the chance to bid and enter the market, despite time zones or logistics, can only be a benefit to the vendors.
We all need to learn to act more like Uber but with the knowledge of a cabbie.
