Client Profile:
An automobile manufacturing company, with 14 regions across the United States with approximately 150 dealerships in each region.

Challenge:
Field Managers travel throughout the region to help local dealers grow sales and profit in four revenue categories -- new vehicles, used vehicles, parts, service and financing. Huge volumes of discrete data about each of these revenue categories are updated around the clock in separate databases housed in corporate mainframe computers.

But, regional Field Managers need meaningful and timely information to be effective -- raw numbers on separate databases in corporate mainframes are useless to Field Managers operating remotely and trying to help local dealers analyze trends, implement sales promotions and forecast revenue and profit.

Solution:
Peart-Hannon recommended that this client should disseminate graphical depictions of consolidated data without installing software on remote computers.

Approach:
Before proposing specific tools, Peart-Hannon assessed the client's databases and business operations from corporate, to the region, to local dealers. After the initial assessment, Peart-Hannon met with the client's technical and management staff to learn their requirements and expectations.

Armed with this knowledge, Peart-Hannon suggested an enterprise database solution to provide data access across the entire organization. Along with the enterprise database, Peart-Hannon also develop web based applications that utilize the latest technologies from Microsoft and Crystal Decisions to provide field managers with the capabilities to perform web based reporting, that analyzes daily performance by dealer, region and nationally.

Results:

As an unexpected benefit, the program has generated a high degree of good will and strengthened the relationship between dealers and the regions. The dealers are very pleased to have the tools and have shown a willingness to use them to take more initiative in growing their own dealerships.