IBIS 2012

IBIS 2012 saw 371 delegates from around the world gathering in Barcelona for a three-day global summit on the hottest industry topics.

Winning relationships - Kelly McDonald, president of McDonald Marketing, gave an overview of the 'dramatic changes in the way we do business,' including insights into doing business in the 'relationship era' where connections to brands and companies is key to success.

A massive draw for IBIS 2012's 371 delegates was, what Kelly referred to as 'high level schmoozing'.

Building for a global market - Andrew Marsh from Auto Industry Consulting provided a technical perspective and futurologist-style insight into our industry over the next 10 years.

Andrew's presentation included mega cities, the anti-car youth and the growing need to get new car design and development on the roads much quicker than ever before.

A winning relationship: Ford & Innovation - Innovation Group's Matthew Whittall and Paul McDermott from Ford discussed their innovative working relationship.

As well as providing non-UK delegates with a brutally honest overview of the chaotic UK justice system, Matthew and Paul spoke openly about joint Ford Accident Management (FAM) programme and why it was 'time to fix an utterly broken model'.

Australia – a land of opportunity? - There was a warm welcome for Andy Hopkins from Gemini. His interview with David Lingham covered an Australian repair market that's full of opportunities andbodyshops who are prepared to take to the streets and literally shut down Sydney in protest of the actions of one insurer.

Global success on a local level - Aidan Quinn, Chartis (part of AIG) and Stuart McClean from claims provider, MIS, highlighted the relationship between global insurer – Chartis – and MIS based in Ireland. Local issues were discussed, such as working with claims in Northern Ireland the Republic of Ireland (who knew the rules were so massively different) show local knowledge is key to Chartis' commercial success inmarkets such as Ireland.

Repair v replace – who wins? Chris Weeks from Direct Line Group and Lesley Upham from Thatcham gave a insight into the world of commercially smart 'business marriages' and 'a bit on the side' inrelation to the work between insurer and research centre on future-fit collision repair costs.

Dutch strength - Day two started with Dutch double act and what was probably the funniest and most 'out of the box' presentation of ibis from Felix Tenniglo (InShared) and Cees Klaassen (ABS).

'The Dutch insurance market is very well developed, experienced in creating networks,' said Felix, 'but there's a change in dominance and importance of insurance companies in Netherlands. Insurance has become a commodity.'

Spanish menu - On home turf, Josep Ferro from Spanish bodyshop group CRC, shared some interesting statistics: the average bodyshop labour rate in Spain is €30-70, there are15,000 to 20,000 bodyshops (generally very small businesses) repairing approximately six millions cars repaired this year.

US insurer/repairer relationship - For the final session of IBIS 2012, George Avery from America's number one insurer, State Farm, welcome one of his repairers, Mike LeVasseur from Keenan Auto Body, for an all-American and highly honest overview of insurer/repairer relations.