January 26, 1998 Saab's Driving Force Carmaker centralizes customer data for dealers By Justin Hibbard aab Cars USA will deliver its 1999 model to 230 U.S. dealers this April. Around the same time, the dealers will access an intranet that will let them track each car they sell-from the assembly line to the junkyard. Saab outsources its IT operations, and it turned to outside sources to piece together its software infrastructure to develop the intranet. Saab Cars USA doesn't have a central repository that lets dealers access all the information about a car in one place. Records about service, ownership, warranties, and parts are scattered among three systems: an AS/ 400 at Saab's U.S. headquarters in Norcross, Ga., an IBM System/390 mainframe at Saab's parts distributor, and dealer-manage ment systems at dealerships. Several Saab dealers, working with representatives of Saab Cars USA, decided to build Iris (Intranet Retail Information System). "The primary driver is improved customer satisfaction," says Jerry Rode, director of IS at Saab Cars USA. "We want to supply everyone in a car dealership with information about a customer." Saab selected IBM Global Services in White Plains, N.Y., as the primary vendor on the project. EDS maintains Saab's legacy systems, and the IT services company worked with IBM to modify Saab's existing applications for the intranet. Saab selected CST Inc. in Atlanta to develop Java-based graphical clients for Saab's green-screen applications using CST's Jacada host-to-Web middleware. IBM developed interfaces between Jacada and Lotus Domino, which functions as the main Web server and messagi ng server for the Iris intranet. Saab is running Domino and Jacada on a Windows NT server and will run them on IBM's AS/400 when versions for that platform become available later this quarter. Jacada intercepts data streams from the AS/400, plugs the data into the appropriate Java applet, and delivers the applet to a dealer's Web browser. Dealers can use a Java applet to view all the information about a car, including ownership, service history, and warranty. The applet pulls data from an IBM DB/400 relational database, which IBM developers installed on Saab's AS/400. The developers imported data from Saab's legacy applications and from the parts distributor's mainframe into the DB/400, making the database the repository for customer information. Saab is working with the vendors that supply its dealers with dealer-management software to develop a system for forwarding warranty information from dealers' servers to Saab's AS/400, eliminating the need to enter the information twice. Fred Shaw, presi dent of Shaw Saab in Hingham, Mass., is looking forward to the April launch. Says Shaw, "To be able to answer the customer's questions on the spot and have access to timely, accurate information is what's going to make this system pay off." Back to News in Review Send Us Your Feedback Top of the Page

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