Vendor Affinity Program Spotlight: ADAS Find
by Alana Quartuccio
If anyone should know the ins and outs of the ADAS world, it’s Owen VanEck. He’s come at it from all sides, thanks to his experience in the automotive world. A former estimator and former ADAS technician, it was only natural that VanEck would come to find his own business devoted to making ADAS calibrations more accessible and more affordable for today’s technician.
VanEck is the founder and CEO of ADAS Find, an ADAS identification software that made its official launch in late 2023.
“Body shops or calibration businesses can input estimates into the software, and in return, we create a report in just a couple seconds to determine the required ADAS calibrations for that car as well as the repair procedures,” explains VanEck. “We identify what calibrations are necessary via the report, and we include the links from the manufacturer to prove that calibrations are required.”
Documentation is key toward repair planning, not to mention the role it plays when it comes to billing for necessary procedures with the insurance company. ADAS Find “also provides research fees to bill the insurance company, for a sense of return on using the software,” according to VanEck.
“When I worked in the field, I noticed the lack of utilizing a tool like this,” he elaborates his reason for launching this venture. “Our software is similar to other well-known ADAS software. While working as an ADAS calibration technician, I was encouraged to get customers to use software like this. A lot of people did not want to use it because they found it to be expensive and could not justify the cost. We started ADAS Find to provide another option to the industry, one that was not extremely expensive, so people don’t have to pay a ton of money to have a way of catching these requirements when fixing cars.”
Through their research in creating the ADAS Find tool, they found they’ve been able to improve upon it. “We’ve found a way to make ADAS Find be more consistent as we use a different source for how we provide requirements. Typical tools out there use ALLDATA. Because I work in the industry, I have access to a lot of documents, so we created our own table of requirements instead. The reason we did that – as great as ALLDATA is – there are few hiccups that would be missed along the way. We wanted to make our software as best and cost effective as possible by using our own table. It also gives us a bit of an edge over the competition.”
VanEck put gears in motion in January 2023 to develop ADAS Find, and it’s been quickly growing its footprint since it officially opened to the marketplace in mid-October. Based in Michigan, the company is serving the entire US and Canada. “We are looking to expand as much as possible, including outside the US and Canada.”
ADAS Find is being utilized by shops in Massachusetts and has gotten involved with AASP/MA. The company recently came on board with the Alliance’s Vendor Affinity Program as a Silver level sponsor.
VanEck was introduced to AASP/MA through Board member Don Dowling (Marblehead Collision), who has been a customer since last December. “Don is a great customer. He provides great feedback, and he told us about AASP/MA, suggesting we get involved. Don is a great guy, and we wanted to show our support and connect with other shop owners like him.”
Providing solutions and easy access is what ADAS Find is all about.
“ADAS continues to grow, and we want to do our part in helping to provide an ease of understanding around it. As it continues to grow and become more complicated, we want to provide an all-in-one resource of knowledge in addition to the tool. When I was an ADAS technician, part of my job was to educate people on why we perform these calibrations and why they are necessary and important. We want to provide a platform that will provide ease of access to what they need, so there is no need to spend hours on the internet trying to find information on all the different complicated systems. That is what we are looking to provide.”
Want more? Check out the July 2024 issue of New England Automotive Report!