OEMs: Building Technology Standards Together

One main area of focus for STAR has been helping manufacturers and dealers establish a standard way of exchanging business transaction data (parts orders, warranty claims, retail deliveries, etc.) between themselves, with systems vendors, and occasionally even customers.

In the past each OEM required their dealers to have a proprietary or custom solution to transfer this data that was expensive, slow, and less secure. Multi-franchise dealers often had several different methods to perform this data transfer, which doubled and even tripled the cost, without improving the quality or performance of data transfer.

The introduction of the Internet as a secure means to transfer business information, together with steep price reductions in the cost of broadband Internet service from national carriers created the perfect opportunity to optimize the cost of data communications for dealers, manufacturers and vendors alike. All that was needed to make this happen were standards governing the use of this new resource. This is where STAR has made significant contributions on the industry's behalf. By developing open standards and guidelines for the use of this resource, and encouraging all automotive manufacturers and retail systems providers (RSPs) to adopt these standards STAR has helped dealers and manufacturers to realize the some significant benefits. They include:

Provides a robust, secure method of exchanging key operational business information. This will improve the accuracy and efficiency of processing routine business transactions (parts orders, warranty claims, etc.) for both dealers and manufacturers.

Provide an efficient and reliable way for the OEM to receive the operational planning information they need (parts movement and capacity, service capacity, etc.) to accurately plan the growth in dealer networks, parts distribution centers, and the like.

The standards provide the OEM with a common, known web development environment in every dealership that uses the same technologies used by the OEM in their corporate systems. This results in better utilization of finite IT development resources.

The dealer IT infrastructure uses the same technology used by the OEM in their corporate systems. This allows the OEM to leverage the knowledge and skill of their internal IT staff to assist dealers in planning or expanding their IT infrastructure.

Corporate volume discounts for IT hardware and software negotiated by the OEM from their vendors could be provided to dealers to save them money in establishing the needed infrastructure.

The simplified, common technical environment at the dealership will result in reduced support costs for both dealers and OEMs.
Anticipates emerging technologies and will enable them. This will create new opportunities for improved customer service and profit at reduced start up cost.
Establishes a strong and reliable communication channel for the dealer to their customers.