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 From the CEO
Xmas is upon us and in
Australia at least, we are nearing the end of “the year of the great
escape.” Sales in general in the dealer market remain buoyant and at
Auto-IT we have exceeded our 2009 financial and sales targets and
are looking forward to 2010 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
world's best practice and this is reflected in the steady growth in
our client base.
During 2009 the number of
licensed users of Auto-IT’s software products increased by 3,120
users to 16,241. This represents an average of 260 new users
connected to our dealer management software in each month of 2009.
Our dealer systems now run the businesses of 450 dealerships in an
estimated 1050 locations in 10 countries.
Some of the highlights of 2009
were:
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Auto-IT dealer
software implemented in 18 new dealer groups in Australia, 23
new dealer groups in North America and two new large dealer
groups in South Africa.
-
The
successful release of a Spanish version of EQUIP®
to the John Deere dealer network in Mexico.
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Country wide
implementation of UNITS®
to the 46 locations of Daihatsu in Malaysia
In Australia we were spared the
worst of the fallout from the financial meltdown but the crisis is
far from resolved and many commentators are forecasting a
rollercoaster ride during 2010. At Auto-IT we have invested heavily
during 2009 in new products designed to ensure a far higher level of
efficiency in the way our customers utilise our software to run
their businesses.
You can expect to hear from us
during the first quarter of 2010 when we announce the release of :
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Dealership process
improvement programs designed to maximise the efficiency of our
dealer systems and to guarantee more profitable outcomes from
your investment in technology.
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The release
of a major new build in each of our flagship products. PMDS®,
UNITS®
and EQUIP®
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Announcements for User Group Conferences for UNITS®
and PMDS®
where we can work closer with you, our clients. Note: We ran a
successful EQUIP® user
group conference in
September this year
We are very much looking
forward to 2010 but have no doubt there will be more challenges
ahead. We intend to make sure the partnership between Auto-IT and
its valuable customers will continue to flourish and as the CEO I
will always welcome personal contact from customers on my mobile
phone number +61 432 689 688.
Finally, in lieu of sending
professional Xmas cards, Auto-IT continues to support
underprivileged children through the world vision program.
Please accept our good wishes
for the Xmas season and our hopes that 2010 will bring with it
health and happiness to your families and loved ones.
Merry Xmas.
Ken W Fife | Chief Executive Officer | Auto-IT
Australia Pty Ltd |
Email
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Auto-IT Attends Annual Virtualisation Forum
Senior technical staff
from Auto-IT this year attended the annual Virtualisation
forum hosted by VMWare in Sydney. Our staff were amongst
2000 other delegates who were hungry for as much new tech
information as they could eat in two days.
The theme of the conference was, “Virtualise, Automate and
Liberate”. VMWare’s Vice President Paul Harapin, stated that
on average more than “70% of the IT budget is used simply to
maintain the status quo and only 30% on innovation and
competitive advantage for your organisation.” Virtualisation
is shifting the focus to modernisation and business
continuity while at the same time reducing the costs
associated with IT infrastructure, often seen as a 'black
hole'.
So what is Virtualisation? In a nutshell, Virtualisation
allows organisations to run multiple server instances on one
physical server, or most commonly, many servers on a very
small number of physical servers. Most servers these days
are underutilised. A common application server may only use
10% of the hardware’s available resources, so why not make
better use of the other 90%? Products such as VMWare are
allowing organisations around the globe to take advantage of
virtualisation - with benefits like server redundancy, fault
tolerance, dynamic performance throttling, and best of all,
big savings in infrastructure costs and power usage. The
biggest plus is that disaster recovery down-time is being
reduced from days and weeks, to minutes and seconds.
Some of the focus areas of the conference included
virtualising your entire IT infrastructure (including
servers, desktops and workstations) and using automation and
redundancy to bulletproof the IT infrastructure and
guarantee business application uptime, even when hardware
failure occurs or data centres lose power.
Auto-IT is using virtualisation products to consolidate its
own IT infrastructure and has seen immediate improvements
and benefits since first adopting the technology back in
2007.
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Save Money. Feel Good.
There is a lot of talk about doing your bit to
look after the environment. It's easy to assume this will
cost you money, but here at Auto-IT we recently realised
we've saved a lot of money putting a few basic green
initiatives in place. We thought we'd share them with you.
 Shutdown
and switch off your PC.
Choice₁ recently calculated the cost of keeping a desktop
powered for a year- $130.23 each. If PCs were switched off
entirely at the end of each day, you could save at least 50%
of the power cost per PC per year. If your dealership has 25
desktop PCs, then this is a saving of at least $1600 per
year. This figure does not include monitors which cost
around $43 per year for LCDs and $95 per year for the older
CRT monitors. Consider the savings! Laptops are far more
energy efficient overall (only $28 per year to run); so next
time you require a new desktop; consider if it's appropriate
to get a laptop instead.
More interesting
savings can be realised in the full article at Choice (₁http://www.choice.com.au/Reviews-and-Tests/Technology/Computers-and-accessories/Green-computing/Computer-energy-costs/Page/Power%20usage.aspx).
These savings can be applied at home too - it is definitely
worth a read!
Save the trees!
We recently switched to email-only for dispatching our
transactional documents. We previously posted all invoices &
statements, for example. The stamp saving alone is $0.55c
per document sent in Australia. However, further savings
include:
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Envelope
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Paper
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Printer ink
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Post delivery
This
may sound measly but imagine if you sent a couple of hundred
documents a month - that's a saving of thousands per year PLUS you
are saving trees in the process.
Keep your cool.
Keep this possible initiative in mind for the new year when things
cool down towards Autumn. One cost saver we implemented in our own
offices was to only turn the air conditioner on when needed. If the
temperature is in the early 20’s then quite often your air
conditioner is pumping out the same temperature of air outside,
which in most places is unnecessary if you can open windows and
doors and keep your workplace ventilated. By turning our air
conditioner off in Spring, we cut our power bill by a staggering
25%+. We did this when power costs increased too, so it's more like
a 35% saving! Keep it in mind and if possible, open those windows on
lovely days. Fresh air is much nicer too!
Take a look around.
There are plenty more cost savings and energy efficiencies to be
realised around your dealership - take the time to consider them and
you will reap the rewards!
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Killing Malicious Content - New in Netbox Blue
 Australian IT security
innovator, Netbox Blue, has released its most advanced
protection against known and unknown internet threats -
Netguard IPS (Intrusion Prevention System). It extends the
security infrastructure of the Netbox by preventing viruses
and other malware being inadvertently downloaded by staff
whilst using web 2.0 type services – blocking brute force
attacks, botnet threats, hacking attempts as well as
preventing networks becoming zombie hosts for spamming or
other malicious activity. This service provides complete
protection against malicious content being downloaded onto
the network and protects against the network being used to
send malicious content.
Quite simply, it delivers control of the network back to its
rightful owner. With the rise in use of web 2.0 content,
threats to security, productivity and network bandwidth can
all be managed. The Netguard IPS feature also enables
companies to discharge their duty of care with complete
confidence.
It can be used to block certain applications or to create
alerts to identify which staff members are using
inappropriate sites. The feature can also be used to block
and alert managers so swift action can be taken against
inappropriate behavior.
Examples of traffic that can be controlled with this new
feature are Skype, peer to peer media streaming sites,
instant messaging, online gaming and other 'dynamic'
applications that a traditional 'stateful' firewall will not
block.
For more information,
please contact your Account Manager.
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EQUIP® Useful Tips
Parts per Package and Quantity
A
few steps to the process:
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Must have the part created in the Manufacturer Maintenance
program with the parts per package and the factory cost and list
prices – ie the price for the full unit;
-
The sell prices, list price and costs must be set to the per
package prices.
When purchasing using purchase orders there is an option to raise
the order using “Stocking” or “Purchasing” quantities, which will
only present the quantities on the purchase order differently - it
does not change the way the quantity is recorded.
Example:
Part ABC has a “parts per package” of 100. The list price of the
item when purchased (as a quantity of one) is $100.00, therefore the
per package quantity is $1.00.
Note the factory list and buy prices must be recorded.
Raise a purchase order and select the option 'Purchasing Qty' to
display the purchase quantity of 1 unit at the full buy price:
As
this is just the way the PO is presented, you can open the PO and
select the other option, reprint the PO with the correct quantity
ordered.
When receipting,
EQUIP®
will want to receive into stock 100 units, not 1.
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Warranty
Credit Notes
You cannot credit
Service Warranty invoices. In order to clear them from the
Warranty Control table, they must to be claimed and settled
for zero value, by entering a dummy supplier’s credit note
against a sub-claim on that Warranty Claim. Answer 'Y' when
asked, "Is this the final claim?"
This will write off the invoiced value (or any unsettled
portion) to the Warranty Expense account. The written off
value can then be dealt with as required depending on the
reason for the credit.
If parts need to be put back into the parts stock, this can
be done via a parts stock adjustment. This will post to the
Parts Stock Adjustment account unless you have a sundry code
set up to post directly to the Warranty Expense account,
which you can select at this point.
If you do not have a sundry code set up for the Warranty
Expense account you will have to enter a G/L journal to
clear the written off value from the Parts Stock Adjustment
Account to the Warranty Expense (write-off account).
Any 'Labour', 'Sublet' or 'Other' sales value can be
journaled from the Warranty Expense account to the
respective Sales account if necessary.
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Creating a
Technician - Set Default Indicator
When creating a technician you must make sure you
have the default indicator ticked on one work category type.
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When creating a technician you can select ‘STANDARD’ from the
drop down
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Profile name comes from profiles you have created via the
profile tab
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You can create one profile and attach to all technicians
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Make sure you have the default indicator ticked on one work
category type
-
You can create a new work category in type code maintenance,
type code = WO
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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
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