Estify Adds Industry Veteran Toan Nguyen as Chief Technologist

Aug. 28, 2017
As Estify’s chief technologist, Nguyen will oversee the continued development of the company’s core products, Estify Transfer and Estify Pro, which aim to simplify the rekeying process and generate repair plans that align with OEM documentation. He will be responsible for spearheading projects and cultivating strategies.

Aug. 28, 2017—Estify announced the appointment of Toan Nguyen as CIO/CTO/CSO.

As Estify’s chief technologist, Nguyen will oversee the continued development of the company’s core products, Estify Transfer and Estify Pro, which aim to simplify the rekeying process and generate repair plans that align with OEM documentation. He will be responsible for spearheading projects and cultivating strategies.

An automotive industry veteran, Nguyen has spent 14 years in executive roles in the automotive space, where he has focused on application development, software and hardware engineering, big data analytics, and cloud computing.

Nguyen transitioned from medicine to collision repair back in 2003, when he was hired by ABRA Auto Body & Glass. Nguyen rose through the ranks at ABRA, eventually becoming senior vice president and CIO a few years ago. In January, he added another title to his list of roles, chief strategy officer. In his past roles, Nguyen has been responsible for multiple divisions and has helmed product development in addition to leading enterprise growth strategy

“The primary tipping point for my role at the organization occurred in 2006, when we decided to build data warehouse to try and better manage locations and operations,” he said. “I’ve loved my time [at ABRA]. I learned a lot. They allowed me to be very innovative in what I wanted to do at ABRA. I helped build a lot of internal tools, from operations to marketing to payroll.”

He’s now applying that knowledge to Estify, where he thinks he can make a huge difference based on his professional background. When Nguyen transitioned from the health care field to the body shop industry, he said he actually found quite a few similarities.

“I had reached a point [with ABRA], where I had done all that I could do to grow the company, and then an incredible opportunity came up,” he said. “I was with a medicine company before ABRA, a tech startup, so when the opportunity with Estify came up, it was like lightning in a bottle. I felt the urge to do something that was creative in technology space.”

With the “incredible advancements” that have taken place over the past several years with vehicle technology, Nguyen said his transition into Estify is perfect timing, as they are “trying to disrupt our industry.” His goal is to build an "incredible ecosystem" through Estify, and he's excited to help the company grow as telematics, AI and repair information services continue to reshape the industry.

“Witnessing recent advancements in vehicular technology really motivated me to venture back into the software space,” Nguyen said. “I wanted to do something bold and disruptive within our industry, so Estify was an obvious company with which to partner. The ecosystem we’re building will completely change the landscape of how automotive companies operate.”

“Core to Estify’s success is our laser-focus on ensuring we have a world-class technology team that can very quickly understand the unique challenges of our partners and create technology to anticipate the needs of our rapidly changing industry,” said Estify CEO Rochelle Thielen. “Toan has become one of the best-recognized technology leaders in our industry by creating ‘first-of-its-kind’ technology and fostering industry-wide collaborations that have been responsible for advancing major breakthroughs for repairers. We are elated to have him at the helm of our technology and strategy team going forward.”

 

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