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crm5_cs_jabber_reynolds.pdf

Jabber, Inc.

NEAR REAL-TIME, SYSTEM-TO-SYSTEM COMMUNICATION: IMPROVED SERVICE,REDUCED COST, INCREASED REVENUE

THE CHALLENGE

Imagine 27 car manufacturers, more than 10,000 auto dealerships, and countless third-party service providers being assured that their critical systems were being monitored in near real time. Imagine that it could be done quickly and costeffectively, while providing a path to new near real-time interactive applications. Imagine information silos and disparate applications seamlessly connected—in near real time—while utilizing enterprise application integration (EAI). Reynolds and Reynolds imagined it—and their customers are profiting.

Reynolds’ primary offering is turnkey dealer management systems (DMSs) for auto dealerships, encompassing everything a dealership needs to run its business. Inside a typical dealership, a Reynolds system touches on every aspect of the business, from sales, product inventory, and logistics management to point-of-sale reporting back to the car manufacturer. A Reynolds system is a crucial ingredient in dealership profitability.

If Reynolds could create a near real-time monitoring dashboard to keep an eye on its vast customer network, it could better respond to its customers who rely on their systems to generate revenue. The ideal solution would not only monitor remote systems, but also enable near real-time, two-way system-to-system communications linking dealers with car manufacturers and third-party providers, while connecting their disparate silos of information. The only way Reynolds would implement such a solution is if they could do so without saddling their developer resources with an overly complex and expensive project. Their concerns included:

Cost and Reliability. Tying together so many disparate systems could create higher service costs and possibly affect network reliability. Additionally, if every single dealership in the network required a static Internet Protocol (IP) address to participate, the costs would immediately be too prohibitive.

Secure Transport of Personally Identifiable Information. Information sent to and from auto dealerships contains “personally identifiable information” about customers that is subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) Act. To comply with the terms of the act, highly proscribed security measures are required when transferring personal financial information via a static IP address.

THE SOLUTION: JABBER XCP

Reynolds found the ideal solution with the Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber XCP). Jabber XCP enables dynamic, real-time system-to-system communications, without requiring static IP addresses and without introducing the typical complexity and cost usually associated with tying together many disparate systems and applications. And that’s not all:

Presence Platform Monitors Systems. Because Jabber XCP automatically maintains and distributes presence and availability information for systems, applications, and end-points, it easily fulfills the need for Reynolds to remotely monitor the currently installed base of approximately 1,500 dealerships, with plans to grow this number to 6,600. The system proactively monitors “heartbeat” and indicates which dealer systems are “green-light” or “red-light”—if connectivity is lost it can be re-established remotely.

Presence May Be Embedded. Jabber XCP allows organizations to build new presence-enabled applications or to embed presence features within existing applications. Reynolds chose to create “agents”—Jabber extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) clients to enable near real-time, two-way information flow between systems and applications.

Disparate Systems and Applications Communicate. Jabber XCP's open, interoperable platform facilitates the integration of disparate systems and applications. The Jabber XMPP agents Reynolds created deliver application specific payload via XMPP, leveraging the inherent extensibility of the protocol.

The Solution Architecture

Jabber XCP creates secure, many-to-one connections, using the accepted standard protocol for all automotive retail action/transaction processing. The Reynolds agents sit on the servers installed at dealerships. An XMPP tunnel over secure socket layer (SSL) using HTTP Secure (HTTPS) provides secure transport for agents/clients to relay information between systems and applications.

THE RESULTS

Incorporating Jabber XCP into the Reynolds network offers significant added value to dealers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in terms of the accumulated savings in time, money, and effort related to every bit of information used or sent. With the incorporation of Jabber XCP into its DMS, Reynolds achieved a strategic competitive advantage, along with immediate business benefits, including:

Improved Support, Increased Cost Savings. Technical support can automatically, remotely monitor individual dealership systems, thereby diagnosing and resolving issues much more quickly. Jabber XCP allows technical support to monitor the presence of the remote system, ensure correct configuration, and eliminate operator error.

Near Real-Time Enterprise Integration. The manner in which Reynolds implemented Jabber XCP makes it possible for disparate systems and applications to communicate in near real time, the gaps between application silos disappear and business processes flow seamlessly. And, unlike traditional middleware solutions, Jabber XCP makes it happen without the need for complex, time-consuming—and potentially costly—manual adjustments to individual systems.

Accelerated and Streamlined Sales Processes at Dealerships. Accelerated online processing has improved the sales process and enhanced reporting. For example, Contact Management, an application of the Reynolds-hosted customer relationship management (CRM) application, uses Jabber XCP. When a dealer enters a customer’s contact information (name, address, phone number, etc.) into the Contact Management application, that information must be consistent with the Reynolds ERA3™ application database used for other dealer functions. Traditionally, this would require the dealer to enter the information multiple times to keep it updated in multiple databases.

Now, when the remote application service provider (ASP) data center for the hosted application receives the information from the dealer, the Jabber XMPP agent automatically transports the information to the Reynolds data center, interacts with the existing application services, and then sends the information to the other dealer application databases. No additional data entry is ever required, saving time and money while eliminating the potential for errors to multiply.

OEMs Save Time and Money, Improve Dealer Service. Immediate savings have been realized for Reynolds and its customers, via the added value to services and the elimination of redundant, manual processes. For example, when an OEM sends a truckload of cars to a dealer, they must also send along a new vehicle inventory report that contains all the relevant information about each of those cars. In the past, that information would be delivered to the dealer via hard copy, which required manual data entry.

Using Jabber XCP, Reynolds can eliminate duplicate data entry requirements for the dealer. The manufacturer can electronically route dealer communications to Reynolds, and the Jabber XMPP agent automatically distributes the information to the right dealer via the integration environment.

THE FUTURE

Jabber XCP is now the near real-time communications platform for all new Reynolds systems—the company is steadily attracting customers to the new system. The organization is also in the process of retrofitting all of its existing customer sites to incorporate Jabber XCP.

Jabber XCP is now the platform for all inbound, dealer-based applications—Reynolds plans to release even more functionality on the platform in the near future. Manufacturers are enthusiastic about the possibilities of using the Reynolds/Jabber XCP system to send many more types of information to their dealers.