Specialty Imports: A Case Study on Automobile Dealership

This case study focuses on Specialty Imports, an automobile dealership that sells cars from various manufacturers. It discusses their business position, products, computing history, and ways to increase their customer base. The study also covers their organizational structure, vehicle sales process, acquisition of cars, and service business.

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Case Study
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About the Organization:
Specialty Imports is one of the automobile dealership which is situated in the “Auto
Strip” of North-West Brampton. There are also several other dealerships in this area and the
number of dealership is increasing due to the reason that many of the dealerships are
currently being moved into this area by Brampton. Maurice Risner is the owner of the
Specialty Motors and he is also the general manager of this organization. Pete and Henry
Preen, two brothers are also the acting general manager of this organization. The Preen
brothers owns almost 80% of this organization and is responsible for operating this
organization as the subsidiary of the Ford Dealership that is located in the center of
Brampton.
The Specialty Imports is autonomously managed by Maurice Risner at both the
levels that is operational and tactic level of the business. Being very much entrepreneurial,
Maurice had been associated with planning the usage of his sizable bonus for the purpose of
buying the interest of the Preen brothers or for purchasing another dealership in an
independent way. Besides this Maurice is entirely market oriented and is associated with
believing the fact that keeping track of the customer’s and keeping a constant contact with the
customers would be acting as one of the key elements in selling the line of vehicles he is
having.
Business position and Products: Specialty Imports
Cars from various manufacturers are sold by Specialty Imports and the
manufacturers includes Acuras, Jaguars, Mercedes Benz and Land Rovers as well. Which
means that they are primarily associated with the selling of passenger cars and besides this
they also some sport utilities as well. The age of the organization is only 4 years and for this

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they are not having any well-built customer base. This leads them to the need of having a
well-established customer base which would help them in tackling the different type of
customers along with managing the various processes as well. It is generally observed that
the customers of the imported vehicles are very much choosy and tends to be very particular
and for this reason they are associated with searching of vehicles according to their choice all
across the nation. One such example which was experienced by the organization itself is that
one of the customer of this flew from Edmonton for the purpose of buying a white Mercedes
Benz in her own private airplane.
There are few ways by which the organization can increase its customer base and
below are the five basic steps by which they can do so:
1. offering free newsletter: Free newsletters can be afforded by everyone and when
free newsletter would be provided it would be informing the potential customers that the
organization is willing of provide them with free information from the start. If good contents
are provided that the customers would know more about the organization.
2. by asking for opinions: before anyone leaves the organization premises they
should be requested to complete a short survey that is related to the business. People would
be happy to express their opinions and would also enjoy in telling the organization about the
online as well as offline experiences.
3. keeping and maintenance of an excellent customer support and service: instance
are where when the customer would be contacting the customer support for resolving any
queries related to the cars or for their first order. This is having almost similar importance as
the customers who is contacting the customer support for his or her tenth or ninth order. This
means each customer should be treated equally and with respect so as to take actions that are
appropriate.

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4. keeping the contents of the website fresh: The website that the organization
Specialty Imports is having should be consisting of fresh and informative contents. This
contents acts as one of the major element which is responsible for pulling the potential
customer and visitors towards the business. The contents should be kept fresh by means of
publishing the blogs which would be consisting of the latest business news along with the
key-takeaways from the whitepapers and hot topics inside the industry. Including fresh
contents in the sites would also help the website of the organization to be found easily in the
search engines.
5. promotion of the business on social media networks. Broadcasting any
information related to the creation of new offers, introduction of new imported cars or any
kind of campaign on the social media channels is one of the easy way of building the
customer base along with providing value which would then be followed by promotion of the
brand by the customers instead of the organization being directly involved.
Computing History of Specialty Imports:
The IBM minicomputers are associated with providing support to the computing
services to the Specialty Imports and the parent dealership. These minicomputers are
associated with running the AIX and is also associated with the usage of the primarily
packaged software which are purchased from one of the major suppliers of software. Some of
the major application which has been implemented includes the parts, inventory and the
payroll. For every automotive dealership business, the usage of the turnkey packaged
software and hardware is very much common. However, it is seen that this type of system is
generally focused mostly upon the accounting and record keeping functions. These computers
are situated in the parent dealership and gets managed generally by the treasurer that the
parent company is having. Besides this the organization also consists of a programmer as

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well. The organization as well as the parent dealership is thinking of expanding the various
type of computing services . despite of this the slumping of sales of the new cars at the parent
dealership is acting as the barrier making all this impossible. However, because of the rapid
growth of the sales, Maurice Risner had been associated with pushing the authorities to make
plans for unilateral development of the new information service that can be used by the whole
organization.
One such information system which can be sued by the Specialty Imports is the Car
Dealership Information System. This is an computerized system which can be used for the
purpose of minimizing the manual work that is done by Specialty Imports. This information
system would be consisting of a good GUI which would not be providing the ease of
providing support to the administrators but would also be responsible for performing of
certain tasks very efficiently and effectively. The system is also likely to consist of features
which would be capable of generating reports that are entirely free of errors and would be
describing all the records as well as generation of the custom reports. This information
system is likely to consist of two main groups which includes the transaction system and the
decision support system.
The Transaction system is considered to be a record which consist of some well-
defined single or usually very small amount of occurrence in the system. the transactions get
inputted into the computer system so as to update the files of the database. Besides this it
would also be responsible for checking the data entering the system in order to get its
accuracy. Which means that the numeric data are generally appearing in the numeric fields
and the characters are generally appearing in the character field. after completion of all the
checking transaction would be used for the purpose of updating the entire database. Batch
mode or online mode can be used for inputting the transactions. In case of online mode, the
updating and entering of the transactions are done almost instantaneously. Whereas in case of

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batch mode the transactions are collected in the form of batches which might be held for few
time and would be inputted later.
The Decision Support System: This would be associated with assisting the Specialty
Imports in taking of analytic decisions. This system is responsible for showing the various
type of data that are organized in a way known as analysis. This analysis is generally used for
the purpose of taking decisions. The users would become capable of storing the information
as per required which in turn can be used for the purpose of comparing this with the other
reports.
Managing the manual dealings is a challenging and tedious job which means in case
of searching the particular thing the administrator would firstly be associated with searching
for the application from the files and this would be followed by the presentation of all this in
the form of reports. For all this reason it is essential to automate all this processes in order to
systemize and fasten up the entire system in such a way that computerization of the enormous
data are easy to access. Characteristics that the new information system that is likely to be
possessed have been discussed below:
 Accessing the database by the administrator
 All the details about the employees as well as the customers would be recorded.
 Backups can be taken by the administrator and can also generate reports regarding any or
all the database.
Basic operation of The organization: Specialty imports
The participatory manager Maurice Risner, generally leaves the office frequently for
doing his work like greeting the customers especially the repetitive customers and this leaves
the showroom entirely overlooked. It is essential that each of the deals get approved by

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Maurice and besides this occasionally he is also associated with selling of cars by himself. A
traditional organizational structure is followed by the organization and it has been depicted in
the figure provided below. The part and the service managers are responsible for operating
the business wwithin the business. It is also evident that they are not closely supervised. The
accounts are managed by the accounts manager which includes the various type of cash flows
and the accounts receivable. Most of the service is charged on the bank cards and the papers
related to this operation should be processed as rapidly as possible. The assistant managers
for the new and used vehicles are present at the floor having additional dutiesof supervising
all other sales staff present at the floor along with approving the sales in cases when Maurice
Rinser is absent. Maurice wants this sales manager to get more innovative and involve
themselves in the marketing and for attracting new businesses as well.
Fig 1: Organizational structure of Specialty Imports

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1VEHICLE SALES
The sales process generally involves three working documents and this working
document includes the sales invoice, and this invoice generally consist of the base price along
with the trade-in, salesperson, add-on options and likes of the customers are detailed in this
paper as well. Firstly, the invoice in written with hand bu the salesperson while the
salesperson is associated with talking with the customers. The major reason lying behind
writing this with hand is that the preferences of customers change at a frequent rate when the
deals are being made. Once the customer and the salesperson is associated with shaking hand
on the sales agreement the computerized invoice is generated. This generated invoice is to be
signed by the customer as well as by the salesperson. The invoice also consists of the details
about the insurance, loans undercoating and other items which are considered to be the
options needed for preparing the sales agreement and also for calculating the commission that
the salesperson is going to receive.

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Followed by the invoice is the Vehicle inventory record which is considered to be
the 1second working document which has been provided below. This document is generally
used for the purpose of describing the number of vehicles that are existing the stocks of
Specialty Imports. This working document can only be prepared after the receipt of a vehicle
is received from the manufacturer or from trade-in. this working documents is also generated
when the vehicles are on order or are being considered as trade-ins in the sales which are
being negotiated and are not being recorded.
Fig 3: Vehicle inventory record
After the Vehicle Inventory Record is the third working documents which is also
known as the Vehicle Sales Accounting Supplement. This is used by Maurice Risner for the

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purpose of calculating the margins of profit on the vehicles during the process of sales
negotiation.
Fig 4: Vehicle Sales Accounting Supplement
1ACQUISITION OF CARS IN SPECIALTY IMPORTS:
Every month the company is informed about the things that are available for
shipment by the Specialty Imports. In order to inform the company Specialty Imports require
two kind of forms. Firstly each of the manufacturer is associated with informing the Specialty
Imports about the cars that they want to ship to Specialty Imports witin the next month.
Secondly the manufacturer is associated with indicating the choices that are available on the
options for the vehicles that are to be delivered and the options generally includes the various
kind of features of the cars like the color, type of upholstery, engine size and so on)
The monthly allocation for the manufacturer is around 8 to 15 and for this reason the
manufacturers need to very cautious about selecting the cars as the selection is very much

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crucial. This in turn would be enabling Maurice Risner to become capable of matching the
potential car sales with the orders that is made by him as much as possible. Due to the long
delivery times on the custom orders which almost more than 9 months, the customers tens to
the shop all around at different dealerships looking for a car that consists of the features that
they need. Specialty Imports is associated with buying of vehicles to stock up however dating
the features of these cars are not systematically chosen.
In most of the dealerships it is seen that the many cars are being purchased in part,
by trade-in. saleing the Used car sales is not very profitable, and for this reason rapid turnover
is important. Maurice is associated with making of attractive deal on the new car sale after
knowing the fact that there is a potential buyer for the trade-in.
Specialty Imports also transships vehicles with other dealerships. Records of such
transshipments are not important (manual bookkeeping is sufficient), but the ability to record
changes in vehicle inventory due to this type of activity is necessary in any computer system.
1SERVICE BUSINESS
According to Maurice it is certain that the periodic mailed reminders that are to be
sent to the drivers would not only be associated with the generation of the service business
but would also be associated with frosting the new sales as the customers come to visit the
dealership. One of the problems which is faced while tracking the customers by making use
of the sales is that the buyers and the owners are often found not to be same. There are
parents who want to buy cars for their children’s and customers who actively trade and sell
their cars somewhere else. Consequently, although tracking service customers to increase the
service business (which is very active without much effort) could produce some marginal
income, service visits are a more important source of information on current owners of
vehicles. Figure 5 is an example of the Service Work Order now used at Specialty Imports,

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which services 15 to 20 vehicles a day. Service work is also experiencing a 15% annual
growth.
1CUSTOMER TRACKING AND MARKETING
Maurice Risner's primary concern is to keep track of existing and potential
customers, the vehicles that they seek, the vehicles he has in stock and that they have
purchased. Maurice believes significant sales are lost because of the following:
1. Potential customers' preferences for cars and car options are not remembered by
the sales personnel.

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2. Prior customers are not identified and not dealt with as "old friends".
Conclusion:
For the purpose of eliminating all the problems Maurice had been associated with
the identification of several reports which would be helping in better marketing of the
products that he is having.
a) a list is to be prepared in the zip code order consisting of the names along with
the addresses of people who have bought cars from a specified salesperson and this process is
considered to be one of the standard selected mailing list. Maurice is also associated with
believing the fact that the duplicate mailings from the same salesperson would be seem to be
very much annoying for the customer, however the same "personalized" mailing from
different salespersons is likely to be tolerated.
b) An on-line on-demand inquiry system that would yield the name, address and
telephone number of prospective customers who have shown an interest in selected vehicles.
The search criteria for finding such customers would include combinations of make, model,
color, upholstery style and year of manufacture of their preferred vehicles. He has found that
some customers will consider several possible cars, so multiple preferences must be handled.
c) A list is also to be prepared consisting of the number along with the average
dollar cost of the different service visits for selected kinds of vehicles. Maurice Risner had
been associated with discovering the fact that the records of the service for a car acts as an
important item of information which the buyers consider when a vehicle is being purchased.
Besides the car manufacturers to whom the Specialty Imports sells is not associated with
providing of sufficient data, so Maurice wants to be able to generate them from his own

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service work. He sees this as a marketing tool that a salesperson could use during the
negotiation of a sale. The salesperson would respond to a service history inquiry by taking the
customer to a computer terminal, entering the characteristics of the desired vehicle and
immediately displaying the summary. Characteristics of make, model, year and engine type
should be sufficient for qualifying most service inquiries.

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