The following is the text from Sandi Jerome, a respected authority on auto Dealership Management Systems (DMS) and a respected cooleague of mine. She got a sneak preview of what M$ is planning for the auto dealership market, and part of that future involves VFP (in bold below).
Gil Special Report on the New Microsoft DMS System The Future of Microsoft is Today? I recently spent a day at Microsoft with twenty of my dealerships clients to find out more about their DMS system and what the future holds for DMS systems. It was exciting to walk those sacred halls, see the famed free Diet Coke coolers and video games and eat in an amazing cafeteria that looks out on a waterfall. They have every food choice imaginable including sushi!. I guess Microsoft's thought about keeping the employees happy is working based on their deferred earnings this year. Let's talk about the specifics of this DMS system. First of all, Microsoft has various solutions for retailers as they try to grab a portion of the 2.7 billion spent annually by dealers for DMS systems. According to our host, John Reed of Microsoft, they want to provide an "all in one" global solution for this industry - from the first contact with the customer to the supply side with the OEM. A core part of this initiative is their Dynamics product, specifically; Dynamics AX. Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) is an ERP (enterprise resource management) tool. It is basically a general ledger, inventory management, invoicing, payroll and other modules wrapped up in a customizable product. It sits on a MSSQL database. This product has been customized for the automotive retail by a Demark company, Infonizer and sold all over Europe. Microsoft has now licensed the software from Infonizer for our market. Infonizer US has set up shop in Michigan, but the front line folks will be the "partners" of Microsoft. These are existing automotive retail technology companies which will probably include a DMS, CRM, lead provider, and F&I company. I'm guessing that the DMS company will either be Procede or Quorum, and the CRM/lead management, Cobalt. It will weeks before the first wave of "partners" will be named, but these are my guesses for now. Microsoft will have a booth at NADA and those partners will be introduced in the booth. The other piece of information that I found interesting is the pricing. This will be a price valued system and not a bargain system. This price will be based on enhanced value and ease of connecting to third parties. At our Microsoft seminar, we also saw quite of a few of the "here and now" Microsoft-based products. The first one was MPKAuto who showed us their DMS system based on another Dynamic family product, Dynamics NAV. It still sits on a SQL database and looks very similar to Dynamic AX. The pricing of this product was very attractive - coming in under $3,000 a month for my typical DMS client - or about 50-70% less than their current DMS charges. Compared to the Microsoft DX product which will only have core modules, (CRM, F&I, Reporting, DOC, Inventory management are all "add on/plug-ins) this product from MPKAuto has all modules. They also have quite a few manufacturer interfaces -the most interfaced being Daimler Chrysler. After that, we saw another system, ACS for the smaller dealer market. Coming in under $2,000, this product is perfect for the dealer who has grown too big for AutoSoft and ADAM or needs to replace their R+R, ADP, or UCS system. Their typical dealership client needs lots of manufacturer integration with all modules including payroll and CRM in one system. They offer a stand alone F&I/CRM/Prospecting module (ACS First) that can be installed with an existing R+R or ADP system to help dealers migrate slowly to a Windows-based system. Their product is on Visual Fox Pro and Windows 2003 server. The final demonstration was one of the plug-ins for Microsoft Dynamics AX and a current Microsoft partner, bridgeSpeak. It uses Microsoft Speech Server to make the calls your salespeople or BDC don't want to make. It is an interactive system using the voices of the dealership employees' voices (one current dealer sings "Happy Birthday" as Frank Sinatra to his customers!) Since it uses the dealership's existing phone system, the customer can connect live to the employee to schedule an appointment, check on the status of their vehicle or talk to a salesperson. Termed as a "BDC in a Box" this might be the future of BDC and call centers. At the end of the day, my group of IT directors, dealers, controllers and other managers were impressed with the existing and future products from Microsoft. I did a small case study of each of the attendees; who should look at ACS (both the new ACS First (CRM/F&I/Prospecting) module or full DMS system) and which ones should investigate the MPKAuto system. This was about half of the group. A lot was dictated by price, interfaces, and their current DMS system or timing. Only one dealership group was what I considered a true candidate for the Microsoft Dynamics AX system and I set them up with Microsoft to be considered for the pilot program. The rest I recommended they stay with their current ADP and R+R systems with some considering ACS First. For all the attendees, I saw a need for the "BDC in a Box", since the biggest reason for failures of CRM/BDC software is that in the end - the salespeople and BDC staff does not like calling the customers. If you would like contact information for any of these products, just send me an email and I'll send you the links and the right person to talk to. [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are just over 20,000 dealerships in the USA, and not all of them are huge super-stores. I have my doubts at how well M$ will actually do in the DMS market, but the smaller stores that may be interested in the ACS system are the kind of stores that I prefer to work with. So, this is pretty nice for all of us from where I stand. Ciao! Gil Gilbert M. Hale New Freedom Data Resources Pittsford, NY 585-359-8085 - Office (Rolls To Cellular) 585-202-4341 - Cellular/VoiceMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/mixed text/plain (text body -- kept) application/ms-tnef --- _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
