First Conferences,  November 1999

Detroit, Michigan

CRM for the Automotive Industry

 

360 Degree Communications...Just in Time, Up, Down and All Around

By Bob Gordon President,  The Auto Channel, Inc.

 

 

Now a single tool provides your company the power to tie it all together! You don’t have to be Ford or GM or Chrysler or a mega business to benefit from the power to interactively communicate in all directions…to each step in your distribution chain.

 

 The Internet provides the means for every end user, retailer, distributor and manufacturer to find and  access your products relevant information in this integrated world wide communications network.  From customer’s queries to real time order entry... from “requests for information” to the means to instantaneously provide product information and then direct that customer to a local distributor,  who really has the wanted item in stock. No mater which segment of the marketplace your company resides in, success in the next millennium requires that your business possesses the corporate will and commitment,  to gain the knowledge and implement the infrastructure to become an functioning participant in the on-line world.

 

Deciding how to include the Internet’s expanded capabilities to augment a companies Customer Service should begin and end with one question,  do I really believe that what I am investing in will really improve my business, increase profit and position my company for long term growth. The Internet and its unbelievable communications benefits are a fact of life in our fast paced competitive society…with the Internet opportunity exists, without it your bottom line will suffer.

 

I would be  foolish to stand up here in front of  such a sophisticated group and preach that the Internet alone should replace your well considered and implemented CRM and fulfillment programs, the Internet can not  be expected to replace or substitute for your business’ proven methods of customer relations and communications.

 

But as a communications technology the Internet can add exponential worth to your in place processes for information gathering and dissemination.  If your business does not support a well thought out well funded integration of your Internet developed information then you might as well call a business broker or hand the keys to the place to your daughter or son because you won’t be able to help your business, in fact you will have become a detriment the future of your business.  The big bonus of the Internet is not the ROI or cost savings as it applies to everyday tasks , but the increased revenue that can be generated from the creative use and decimation of information to the right audience. The Internet gives every business the ability to practice “Just In Time Delivery” of the right information at the right moment to the right person.

Lets take a quick look at my understanding of The Internet.  It is just a network of computers not unlike the LAN in your place of business except that anyone with a phone line and Internet connectivity can have 2 way conversations with any one of millions of data points or customers.  Some of these servers deliver content to the public, others to affinity groups, others just take advantage of a cheaper method to deliver password protected data to specific users like EDI.  The native capabilities of the Internet allows users to both receive and deliver data , the Internet facilitates the use of millions of data servers and user every second of every day throughout the world. This pool of  information is instantly available is always growing. Right now most of the information on the web is text but pretty soon it’s going to be video, audio, images, all held together with a database.

Information, information, information.  Everybody who’s been up here today has used that word.  If we tried to publish all of that information in any other single medium, it would be impossible to use.  The Auto Channel, for instance, and this is an unabashed plug, contains more than 200,000 pages of textural information.  If we put that into print on 20-pound stock, it would weigh thousands and thousands of pounds.  Impossible to carry around, impossible to use, just impossible!

The Internet is the only medium whose infrastructure is capable of holding and delivering all of this information.  It can’t be done on CD-ROM, it can’t be done in paper, and it can’t be done on videotape.  The Internet is the benevolent repository and lending library of all this information. 

Now, again, what does that have to do with CRM? I believe that the Internet will become ubiquitous. Everyone will use it every day for many purposes, only the Internet is interactive so it allows people to both gather and contribute information , it allows users to be the audience or be the publisher, it takes ideas and allows them to germinate and blossom into  communities formed around  those individual ideas and specific affinity subjects, affinity content. 

The most important difference between the Internet and other media is that it’s fully interactive.  The Internets database architecture holds the whole thing together and allows it to be used. What good is information if you can’t get to it, or if it’s not relevant to what you’re trying to do or know? The Internet has truly brought it all together. Let’s talk about database technology for a second.  Database technology is really the secret to the Internet.  By controlling the network to get to the information—please let me use an analogy.  Everybody here has seen aggregate.  A pile of gravel, a pile of stones, all different size stones, sand, everything else in this one big pile.  Now, that may be useful if you’re going to fill in a swimming pool or a basement, or it may be useful to help build a dam.  But if you’re going to put that pile of aggregate  to specific use, like making concrete or filling a sand box or building a stone foundation the whole pile wont work its not suited to the job.  Each task needs just a portion of the pile, a specific size , and Not the whole thing..well Internet information is like that pile of aggregate you need to be able to get just what you want or need otherwise its jus a pile of various sizes of  rocks.

 

Database technology acts very much like a sifting screen, to allow only specific kinds and

amounts of information through to the user.  So without that database tool you could never effectively use the Internet. As much technology as we can  develop and as many inventions we can all invent, there’s one thing we can’t do.  We can’t make 24 hours a day 25 hours a day or 30 hours a day.  So we all have to make the time that we spend at the tasks more successful and that’s where your creativity and the ability to utilize information that resides within your business and turn it into dollars, remember The internet is just a great big transmitter that can transmit all types of information including text, video and audio to your customers, employees, vendors and the world dealerships should  make available specific information to help turn info into $$$.

Billions of dollars are now being invested by some very smart people and some very not-smart people in the transformation of the Internet from a textual medium into a multimedia medium.  Again, what does this mean?  It means that everybody’s who’s on the Web, as a publisher on the Web, is going to begin to have to think differently than you’re thinking now..

So we at The Auto Channel and other affinity content publishers are going out and saying, “Hey, we need broad-range information which we can put into this pink cloud.”  We also now need specific information which we put into this pink cloud.  We need information, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s text, or whether it’s print, or whether it’s audio, or whether it’s video.  And I keep saying that because it’s very, very important.

The 360 degrees will allow you to speak to, if you’re a manufacturer, speak to everybody in your distribution chain.  Everybody from the ultimate consumer or the installer, to the wholesaler, to the retailer, to the design engineer, to the manufacturer, to the people who are your suppliers, to your vendors--everybody at the same time.  What it does is it puts your product information in the middle of a 360 degrees circle and the Internet allows you to speak to every point at once. 

Now, if you’re trying to do that in traditional media, it would be impossible because no company has the time or resources to specifically re-purpose product information for each of those segments of the distribution chain.  There are a lot of folks here in marketing communication, and you know how difficult it is just to get the information about your product to a specific constituency, let alone every constituency at the same time.

The way we see how a company can make the Internet work for them is for the author of the information , meaning anybody who’s got material to put up on the Internet to put it up with permissions, meaning, “Who do I want to be able to see this information?”  Who can see the information?  What can they do with that information? 

We believe that your customers can never have too much information. In order to buy the right part or service they need to know everything about it…in the past they actually needed less hard information because they were able to rely on a personnel relationship with their salesperson. This reliance must now be placed on product knowledge.

Because of  the Internet your customers will have access to more information. They will  have the ability to do things they never thought they were able to do.  They know prices, they know what they want, and now they can go click and buy it.

 Robert Eaton, President of the Chrysler Corporation at the NADA conference two years ago, drew an illustration of the new world of on line customers. What he said is “there’s a paradigm shift in leverage, a paradigm shift in who has the power.  Up to this point, the power was with the manufacturer or the retailer, now with the Internet delivering information in unheard-of gobs and amounts, the customer now has that power.”

The Internet is bringing “ just-in-time” to the information side of your business just as it is now a way of life on the manufacturing  side of your business.

What we see happening is instant inventory control through the implementation of just-in-time delivery of information.

Now we’re all trying to simplify our lives.  We all work harder and longer than ever before.  Our husbands and wives work, two-job households.  Nobody wants to waste time going someplace and not having that sale consummated.  So we believe that people who have no time to spend, people who really want something, are soon going to be able to go online and find out exactly where it is.

There’s another portion of this thing, and that’s the e-commerce side.  It’s just real easy for me to press the button and have the products I want shipped overnight from the manufacturer directly to me.  There’s a paradigm shift in the way we’re going to do business. It’s going to change the way we all live.  And it’s going to change the way we all live very, very rapidly.

As an example of what we believe is a new way for buyers to gather information to help them make their purchase decisions, The Auto Channel in conduction with Aftermarket Business Magazine is launching a new integrated guide for buyers. This web tool will contain the latest information about every manufacturers product..information. that includes company news, product news, personnel news, company video, press conferences, catalogs and even instant buy capabilities…a data base of spiffs and special will also be included…the information is instantly available and up to date…lets take a look

 

(on-line DEMO)

 

Remember because the Internet is Interactive you can have a conversation with all of your customers all of the time…ain’t technology grand! Thank You for listening,  any questions?