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MAY 2010

Contents From the CEO New Clients Norris Endorses PMDS Auto-IT Aust. New Starters New Factory Interfaces PMDS Software Release R5.8 Useful Tips Keep Smiling   From the CEO We are nearing the end of the 2010 financial year. Sales in general in the dealer market remain buoyant and at Auto-IT we have exceeded our financial and sales targets, and are looking forward to the approaching financial year with cautious optimism. Auto-IT is a vendor of retail Dealer Management Systems. A massive amount of resource is expended by us in continually improving our product offerings in line with Worlds best practice and this is reflected in a continued steady growth in our client base. Our fortunes are inextricably linked to the viability of our Dealership customers in the domestic marketplace and we will ultimately succeed or fail in direct relation to our ability to understand and react to the needs of these customers. Since the beginning of the current financial year the number of licensed users of Auto-IT’s software products increased by a total of 2,269 users to reach an all time high of 17,485. This represents an average of 269 new users licensed to utilise our dealer management software in each month of the current financial year. Our dealer systems now run the businesses of 450 dealerships in an estimated 1100 locations. Further, as we mature as a company the average size of our new dealer customers is growing and many of our new dealer clients are proprietors of sizeable multi franchise dealerships in multiple locations and in excess of 150 users per dealer group. None of us know what’s ahead in the new financial year. The fallout from the taxation proposals in the Australian resource sector cherry picked from the Henry report, could have far reaching consequences. And recent events in Europe where the financial securities of entire countries have recently been relegated to junk bond status leave us struggling to predict good times ahead any time soon. This convinces us of the absolute necessity of providing real value in the supply of our products and services. At Auto-IT we are single-mindedly focused on the provision of new generation enterprise software products designed to help our clients efficiently run their businesses, irrespective of what the economy might throw at them. We pride ourselves on achieving the following: Moderately priced Dealer Management software embracing the latest in technology but capable of holding its own against any global competitor.   Regular web-based training programs designed to make user training more relevant and much more affordable.   Dealership process improvement programs designed to maximise the efficiency of our dealer systems and to guarantee more profitable outcomes from our customers’ investment in technology. You will hear a lot more of this service in coming months.   Auto-IT’s internal processes for writing, testing, deploying, and supporting our software products have been subject to intense scrutiny and we are now proud of the robustness of our quality control programs. This will be manifested in the high level of stability our users can expect when we roll out the latest production release of UNITS® / EQUIP® over the next few weeks and PMDS® over the next few months, We are very much looking forward to the new financial year but have no doubt there will be challenges aplenty in the Dealer market ahead of us. At Auto-IT we will do our best to make sure that the partnership between our company and its valuable customers will continue to flourish and as the CEO I will always welcome personal contact from customers at any time on my mobile phone number +61 432 689 688.   Ken W Fife | Chief Executive Officer | Auto-IT Australia Pty Ltd | Email Top of Page   New Clients     Welcome to the following new clients who have recently upgraded to our world class Dealer Management Systems. We are proud to have you as Auto-IT clients.   Bill Buckle Auto Group NSW Audi, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen Callaghan Motors VIC Holden, Mercedes Benz, Mitsubishi, Suzuki Ceduna Machinery SA Toyota, John Deere Crouch Rural Pty Ltd SA John Deere Geoff King Motors NSW Holden, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Volkswagen, Kia Honeycombes QLD, NT BMW, Porsche, Audi, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Hyundai, Citroen, John Deere, Holden, Mazda Keema Automotive Group QLD Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Suzuki, Isuzu Ute, Great Wall, Kia McIntosh & Son WA, QLD New Holland, Case Construction WSB Distributors SA Kubota, Massey Ferguson   Top of Page   Norris Motor Group Endorses PMDS®   The Norris Motor Group (NMG) began as a single motor dealership 23 years ago with 26 staff including Brian Hannan who is now the group’s CFO. Norris Motor Group has grown to become one of Australia’s largest privately owned motor groups with seven locations, an additional 14 franchises and 400 staff across Queensland. NMG selected Auto-IT’s PMDS® as the dealership’s software system 20 years ago and PMDS® has remained a core component of the business ever since. “When PMDS® was introduced to Norris Motor Group, our staff had no experience with computer systems and were used to carrying out transactions manually,” Brian Hannan said. “Access to a full online system for invoicing and cataloguing parts significantly boosted efficiency at that time, while the financial data the system provided was essential to modernising our business and planning for growth,” he added. “The Auto-IT PMDS® DMS continues to be the best system available for handling complex tasks in our motor dealerships as easily as possible. It is incredibly stable, resource friendly, economically excellent and our people with different levels of ability can be successful with it. I would recommend it to other motor dealerships with no reservations,” Brian concluded.   Top of Page     Auto-IT Australia's New Starters   Auto IT Australia is proud of the recent growth in its business. This growth has led to the employment of new staff in all areas of the business. We would like to introduce to you the following staff members who have joined us in the last six months. Many of you may have already spoken to the lively addition to our NSW office - Houda Taoube (right) - the new Sydney Receptionist who joined us late last year. Houda comes from an Administration, Reception and Childcare background and brings with her an excellent mix of administration skills, cheeriness and patience. Dominic Alfonsi (left) is a Support Consultant working with UNITS and EQUIP. Dominic works full time and is completing An Advanced Diploma in Computer Science including CCNA (Cisco Certified Networking Associate) part time. Dominic is a newcomer to the industry but has a wealth of customer service experience gained in the hospitality industry. Some clients may have already met Michael Weiszbach (right),  Installations Consultant in NSW. Michael started his career as a mechanic/technician and subsequently went on to work in most areas of the dealership, from spare parts to vehicle sales. This was followed by a role at Gateway computers in the engineering department and three years supporting NRMA Motorserve with setup/support for Units and additional software interfaces.   Evgenia Gustova (left) is a Developer based in the Melbourne office of Auto-IT. With a Masters Degree in Mathematics Evgenia specialises in solutions design, database and software development and support, data analysis and Reporting. Evgenia, who is a passionate problem solver, has previously worked for international Telcos and utility companies and also for Visy, ANZ and Telstra in Australia. Upendra Singh (right) is currently working as a Business Analyst in the Melbourne office of Auto-IT. He has earned a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from NMU, India and a Master of Business (IT) from RMIT University. Upendra worked for ICICI Bank India as a channel officer under Retail group of ICICI bank for one and a half years and then for Salesforce Pty Ltd as a Business to Business sales consultant for two years.   Daniel Mitchell (left) is an Installation Consultant based in our Queensland office. After starting in the Service Department at a multi-franchise dealership in Wellington, Daniel has been working for the past two years in Auto-IT’s New Zealand office as a Support and Technical Consultant. Currently working on installation projects in Australia gives Daniel the opportunity to combine his strong technical background, front-end product knowledge and dealership insight to help Auto-IT deliver outstanding service to our clients.   Diana Costanzo (right) has taken up the role of Marketing Assistant in the Melbourne office of Auto IT. After completing her Business/ Arts degrees at Swinburne University Diana worked for Austrade as a Marketing Assistant. Her role at Austrade focused on a project centred on the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. More recently Diana worked for Victoria Police in an IT support capacity.   Craig Thomson (left) is the new Installation Consultant based in the Western Australian office. Craig has extensive experience within the Motor Industry and was previously employed by Armstrong Prestige one of our New Zealand dealers in a Parts Manager role.     Kyle Blanchard (right) is our Software Test Manager, based in Melbourne. Kyle worked for 20 years for the National Australia Bank, many of the those years for a subsidiary called National Custodian Services in numerous roles including Team Leader, Business Analyst, Senior Tester and Project Lead. Then as a Senior Testing Consultant and Auditor for DST Global Solutions, a financial software house for four years.   Jason Halpin (left) is a Support and Installation Consultant based in the Melbourne office of Auto-IT. Jason has worked in most areas of the IT business during his 5 years at Infomedia, spending time in their Melbourne, Sydney and UK offices. His new role is not Jason’s first foray into the dealer management system business, he has spent one year with Ultimate Business Systems as a Support & Installations consultant. Other work experience includes: License Coordinator in the UK and casual work while studying at a large dealership based in Newcastle picking & packing in the parts department.   Akram Mustafa (right) is a new Developer in the Melbourne office. With a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Yarmouk University Akram has significant experience working for a range of companies as a Senior Analyst/ Programmer. Some of the companies he has worked for include: AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator), TeleFinity, Cumulus Integrated Solutions, Gapbuster World Wide, and Alalamiah Electronics.   The newest Sales Cadet set to rise through the ranks of Auto-IT is Clem Murphy (left). Clem, who is currently studying for his MBA at Deakin University, comes to us from an IT sales role. Extensive corporate retail experience, including ten years with the Coles Group, lays a solid foundation for the rigorous training program Clem will undergo at Auto-IT. Clients may encounter Clem in Support, assisting with installations or working with an Account Manager over the coming months.   PMDS® Business Relationship Manager, George Kleoudis (right) has 25 years experience in the automotive industry, including dealer service management and vehicle manufacturer positions in dealer audit and after-sales management (with General Motors). These positions have endowed George with extensive experience in business intelligence tools, database management and dealer management systems.     Top of Page   New Factory Interfaces   Auto-IT has and will continue to write all available factory interfaces. Many of these interfaces make your business more efficient and effective. Don't miss out on giving your business a competitive edge! To find out more about how these interfaces can benefit your business and how to set these interfaces up please speak to your Account Manager or Grahame McCann on 0412 561 929.                   BMW     Fur ISPA Light (replacement for Key Reader)                                     Holden     Trade Club                               Mazda     Service Load DMS Integration (coming soon)                               Mitsubishi     Capped Price Service                                     Iveco     CSI Extract (coming soon)                               Subaru     PSRV Interface                               Hino     HIPS Financial                               Hyundai     CSI Extract                 *For more information and pricing please contact your regional Account Manager. Top of Page   PMDS® Software Release R5.8   The latest general release software upgrade for PMDS® ‘R5.8’ has had great uptake from almost all dealerships, and for the few that have not yet upgraded we have included a reminder for some of the new features that were made available within this release. For those sites already running release R5.8, a subsequent patch release has recently been made available, which includes a handful of minor software patches. As always we recommend that you install these patch releases as soon as possible to ensure that your system is running the most recent software and important fixes. Brief descriptions of the new features with this release can be seen below, whilst in-depth detail for all enhancements can be found within the Release Guide for PMDS® Release R5.8. If you did not receive an e-mail notification that software release R5.8 was available for download, please contact your PMDS® Account Manager or the PMDS® Support Team to ensure we have up-to-date contact details and to also to have the release documentation for this upgrade supplied.   General Ledger Posting Disbursement Feature This feature will allow the disbursement of a single posting amount across any number of accounts or departments when processing the transaction. Very simple to use but at the same time extremely flexible. E-mail-to-Fax Gateway PMDS can now utilize email-to-fax gateways for delivery of fax documents. Faxing providers offer this service where an email may be sent and converted to fax format and delivered to the required recipients fax machine. This may offer savings on phone line and fax modem overheads.     International Address Support For those sites with international customers or addresses, PMDS will now allow easy maintenance of these addresses within the customer maintenance screens. Vehicle Search by Keywords An additional vehicle search function has been added to the VMS vehicle availability menu allowing vehicle stock search by keyword, particularly useful for quickly finding vehicles by specific model or series description.     Customer Contact Log “Undeliverable/Ignored Messages” PMDS can register any follow up attempts which could not be delivered due to missing customer information (such as email or mobile phone number), and also for customers flagged with ‘Do not contact’ flags. The attempt will now be shown within the contact log and reports are available to analyse these entries. Service Enhancements Several enhancements have been made to both the standard PMDS service module, and also within Kaizen. Standard PMDS enhancements include, the vehicle service enquiry can now show much more detail, next service enhancements, SMS booking confirmation feature plus many more.     Bulk SMS from Follow-up Transactions The CRM module can now preview and send many SMS messages in batch mode. The feature will allow the user to select entries from the follow up transactions which are triggered automatically via the predefined schedules, allowing preview, exclusion & sending. Kaizen Booking Confirmation Kaizen can send customized booking confirmation via email or SMS message. The email template can be customized HTML featuring company logos/maps etc. Design fees are applicable for the customized HTML email template and module requires PMDS email and/or PMDS SMS module.     Data Interchange PMDS continues to add new manufacturer and third-party data interfaces to the extensive library of already available interfaces. Refer to the section ‘New Factory & third-party interfaces’ section for more detail of the new interfaces, or to your Account Manager for more information regarding available interfaces or requirements for a new interface. End of Day Enhancements A new summary screen is used at the completion of EOD, showing important information such as processing summary for each data account, and additional notifications and warnings. Offline processes (data transfers) triggered by EOD are checked to ensure that the process has completed, plus several more EOD related enhancements…     Other Release Highlights! Administration – New Debtors Trial Balance Export to Excel function Administration – Re-print or send a Debtors Statement copy from within the Debtors Enquiry function Vehicle Sales & Marketing – Enhanced data entry screens for Vehicle Details in Appraisals/Used Vehicle Into-Stock Service Department – Print estimate hours on the repair order print for scheduled services Parts Department – Locate feature added to receipting to find a part number within a large shipment General System – Export any text box window immediately using ‘XV’ command (Export & View) Administration – New report to list or extract individual GL Transactions by date range Vehicle Sales & Marketing – New and enhanced Drive-away pricing controls Vehicle Sales & Marketing – Easily create a ‘Joint Customer’ now when adding a new prospect Service Department – Option to print a more detailed service history section on the standard Repair Order form Parts Department – Re-print Parts Invoices or Credits directly from the Parts Movement Enquiry General System – Many reports re-written to include additional information and export to Excel functionality   Top of Page   Useful Tips Terminal Connection Drop-Outs   Due to occasional network irregularities, the PMDS® terminal connection may ‘drop out’ if left unattended over a long period of time e.g. during a lunch break. To help prevent these drop outs, ViaDuct and/or AccuTerm should be configured with a ‘keep alive’ setting to keep the terminal connection active. To configure the ‘keep alive’ follow these steps: Step 1: Log off your current PMDS® session. Type “off” and [enter] at any PMDS® menu. Step 2: Click the “Setup” Menu on the top menu bar and the click “Communications” from the menu.   Step 3: Append the text “@2” at the end of the current text. There must be a space between the IP address and “@2”. Do not change your current IP address. In the image below, the address “192.168.1.1” is for demonstration only.   Step 4: Click “OK” and then “File” and “Save Setup” to save the configuration details. If you are using AccuTerm, simply click the “Tools Menu” then “Settings” then select the “Communications” tab. Click the advanced button and then tick the box that says “Send keepalives”. Click “OK”, then “File” and “Save”.         Top of Page   Keep Smiling       Top of Page     Auto-IT Australia Pty Ltd  ABN: 57 091 383 854 Suite 2 / Level 1, 333 Drummond St, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia Ph: (03) 9349 3062 :: Fax: (03) 9349 3067  www.auto-it.com.au