SOMERS, NY - 03 Sep 2003: IBM today announced three new software solutions that are specifically designed to meet the needs of businesses in the automotive, government and life science sectors. After collaborating with industry business leaders, along with IBM Business Partners, IBM created these solutions to address critical issues and serve as a central source of information tailored to specific industry needs to help businesses respond faster to customer demands and quickly changing market conditions.
The new industry-based solutions, which include IBM software and pre-tested applications, allow customers to create a Web-based environment that helps streamline business processes and improves integration. By extending the reach of their business through the Internet, customers can expand collaboration capabilities to include vendors, distributors and dealers to increase speed to market and lower total cost of ownership.
These solutions are based on IBM WebSphere and Lotus software, giving businesses an open, standards-based platform that can work with a variety of operating environments, including Linux and Microsoft Windows, for added flexibility.
IBM Software Solution for Automotive Dealer Collaboration
The Automotive Dealer Collaboration offering helps automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), enhance and expand the relationships they have with thousands of dealers, fleets and independent repair shops. Building strong collaborative relationships with these businesses is critical as automotive manufacturers look to improve the customer experience and loyalty to protect and grow lucrative aftermarket revenue streams, which include ongoing car maintenance, warranty claims and parts for service and repair purposes.
With the new IBM Automotive Dealer Collaboration offering, which is based on WebSphere Commerce, WebSphere Portal, and Lotus Collaboration software, OEMs and suppliers can quickly enhance their relationships with dealers by giving them secure access to critical information over a simple Internet connection. With this solution, dealers can have access to applications that provide sales, service and customer information. They can interact quickly and efficiently with sales, parts, warranty and quality applications over the Web. This is beneficial for both the automotive manufacturer and the dealer because the tighter integration allows real time collaboration, driving faster response times, which save money and increase both revenue, and customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
Currently, OEMs and dealers use the Dealer Communication System (DCS) to share information electronically. The system, which is narrow in scope and not fully integrated, makes it difficult to supply dealers with all the information they need in one, easy-to-access location. For example, dealers may access DCS for parts information, but then they may need to look through manuals for the specific parts bulletins and search through faxes or e-mails for service updates pertaining to the part or repair procedure. This has become a time consuming and cumbersome process.
The Automotive Dealer Collaboration solution is new technology that is designed to help consolidate information into a collaborative environment, which is far more productive and less expensive to maintain, making it easier for OEMs and suppliers to communicate and work with their dealers.
The new system allows OEMs to select a solution from a range of pre-tested IBM software and industry applications, that best suits their individual needs. This approach allows OEMs to update their existing systems so that all the information a dealer may need, from part numbers to service updates to placing an order is just a couple of clicks away. The solution can be set up to allow dealers to see a two-dimensional diagram of a car and, with a simple click, they can enlarge a segment of the car on screen. The image immediately shows the various parts, with corresponding part numbers in clear view, instead of having dealers search in a catalog for a specific part number. After quickly identifying the part, a dealer can click on the part to see all the corresponding service updates and warranty information. The dealer can then easily check to see if the part is in stock and place the order online.
Overall, the IBM Automotive Dealer Collaboration offering enhances efficiency and service processes while improving the sales, delivery and execution of parts and accessories through the fast growing post sales demand chain.
IBM WebSphere Portal for e-Government Access
The WebSphere Portal for e-Government Access offering is designed to assist governments in integrating applications, processes, management and delivery channels that link their internal agencies with outside stakeholders with Web-based technologies. The e-government portal will better enable government agencies to respond quickly to nearly any challenge, whether that entails answering a citizen's questions about a recent referendum, or providing more convenient services online.
By coupling software and IBM's solutions expertise, governments can now build an e-government environment that is prepared for the challenges and rewards of being intimately involved with and responsive to the needs of one's entire constituency. By providing government agencies with a solution that can serve as a single point of access to services and information, IBM's helping governments streamline access to resources and information, integrate existing systems, reduce paperwork by providing online self-service and increase efficiency while maintaining security and protecting citizen privacy.
In addition to improving access to critical knowledge through Web-based information delivery and personalization features, government agencies will now be able to provide more efficient and thorough service with collaboration tools. This will allow service representatives to assist citizens in navigating some of the more complex online transactions.
The government access portal will also help agencies increase responsiveness by providing constituents with a self-service model for routine tasks, eliminating many paper-based processes and significantly reducing administrative expenses. With IBM WebSphere Portal solution for e-Government Access, more government for the people means less expense for the government.
IBM WebSphere Portal for Life Science Syndicated Content
The WebSphere Portal for Life Science Syndicated Content is designed to respond to the collaborative information access and personalization needs of today's pharmaceutical, life science research and health care companies. These companies excel by knowing of trends in their business, what their competition is doing in a particular space, what drugs or products are in most demand and then responding to the facts as rapidly as possible. Much of the research materials needed to complete their business comes from syndicated content sources.
Through the life sciences portal, IBM's offering a content delivery method in a portal environment to bring subscription-based external research, internal content and collaborative applications together for users to access, share, discuss and take necessary action. IBM is facilitating life sciences companies to decrease the time spent searching for documentation and information in support of innovation, remove the need for repetitive tasks of subscription and information filtering, and increase efficiency of individuals by placing all necessary information in a single interface and within similar applications.
Although most life science customers already subscribe to these content sources, the IBM life sciences portal offering provides customers with a method of receiving this content in a single Web-based portal environment. Using IBM WebSphere Portal with Lotus collaborative capabilities and syndicated content from other vendors, IBM provides a team workspace where information can be located and shared to aid in the business process of research and help to decrease time-to-market and increase productivity and competitiveness.
This solution will also allow groups of users to react rapidly to information received in their portal applications and, through the use of Web conferencing, document sharing, instant messaging and application sharing; the information can be made actionable as soon as it is received. Additionally, the portal can be personalized through rules and preferences to provide users only that content that is important to their role within the organization.
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Contact(s) information
Scott Cook
IBM Media Relations
(617) 693-3008
kenneth_cook@us.ibm.com
| Topics | XML feeds |
|---|---|
| Software Information Management (DB2), Workplace, Portal & Collaboration Software (Lotus), Tivoli, Rational, WebSphere, Open standards, open source |