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The Top Eight of 2008:

Highlights of R6V06

PFW Password - Spring 2008The PFW IntelliDealer Dealership Management System was designed for Dealers by Dealers. PFW views its customers as business partners and strives to provide a total solution for their business needs. Each year, with the help and insight of our customers and industry vendors, PFW unveils the latest release of IntelliDealer.

2008 sees the release of R6V06, which includes a wide range of new features, upgrades and applications to help you better take advantage of the depth of PFW IntelliDealer. As we go through the top-8 features of R6V06, Ross Atkinson, PFW Vice President, System Architecture and Product Design, will provide his thoughts on exactly what makes each new feature special and how it helps you better serve your customers and manage your dealership.

1. General Invoicing
The new General Invoicing application was developed to replace the Key Invoices and Rental Contract Maintenance modules in the classic “green screen” version of PFW’s Dealership Management System. General Invoicing is the last of the billing applications to be moved over from green screen to the browser-based IntelliDealer Dealership Management System.

“General Invoicing is the last billing system to be transferred over from our legacy system and it is a major accomplishment for us. It’s an application that allows for general billing and invoicing that doesn’t necessarily fall under the domain of the other applications – and is also known as a repetitive billing system.” – Ross Atkinson

2. Targeted Marketing
The ability to quickly and easily create a marketing campaign targeted at one specific customer is another highlight of R6V06. With a few simple clicks from anywhere you see a customer’s name in the system, you can create a Targeted Marketing campaign to reach your customer by e-mail, fax or letter.

“Whether it is a ‘Thank you for doing business’ letter, an e-mail reminder of an upcoming service or just a ‘Happy Birthday’ fax, you are only a few clicks away from marketing to anyone you see anywhere in the system.”

3. Campaigns per Contact
The second major change to the Marketing Campaigns module is the addition of the Campaigns per Contact feature. In the past, it was only possible to send one marketing campaign per customer. Now, with R6V06, you can send a marketing campaign to one or more specific contacts within a customer record.

“Utilizing the contacts loaded within a customer profile and eliminating the previous restriction of one campaign per customer, the Campaigns per Contact feature lets you focus directly on individual people or departments, rather than an entire business.”

4. Dashboard Highlighter
The Dashboard Highlighter feature will allow users to define conditions that will cause information on the Executive Summary Dashboard to be highlighted and brought to their attention. Users can set up rules and parameters regarding data or even specific names or customers that can be applied to single cells or entire columns, making the dashboard more powerful than ever.

“The Dashboard Highlighter represents the red light / green light theory to me. It’s one thing to have a single-screen dashboard like the Executive Summary Dashboard showing you a wide range of information. It’s another thing to have that information highlighted – whether it is good or bad – so that it stands out and grabs your attention.”

5. Today’s Revenue Meter
The Today’s Revenue Meter is a new set of views available on the Executive Summary Dashboard as of R6V06 that give you a graphical, easy-to-understand view of the revenue billed for the day in seven different areas (Part Invoicing, Equipment, Work Orders, Shop Parts, Shop Labor, Rental and General).

“The Today’s Revenue Meter provides a new set of views that should be a hit in the dealership. Even at a quick glance, it will be easy for Dealers to see whether each department of the dealership is meeting its objectives for the day.”

6. Sales Support Portal Recognizes Contact Salespeople
Although the Sales Support Portal dashboard was only released in 2007 and has been a huge success, our goal was to make it even better for 2008. In R6V06, the Sales Support Portal can recognize contact salespeople loaded in each customer’s contact list so that the data presented on the Sales Support Portal can accurately reflect every salesperson associated with a customer.

You can also customize the colors and sequencing of data in the Sales Support Portal in this release.

“Because dealerships sometimes have more than one salesperson assigned to a customer, it simply made sense to upgrade the Sales Support Portal to recognize the salespeople loaded in customer contacts. This feature allows every salesperson associated with a customer to see their customers on the Sales Support Portal dashboard.”

7. Dashboard Drilldown
R6V06 also sees the introduction of the “eye” icon to the Executive Summary Dashboard. Shown alongside the high-level, user-defined categories that make up the dashboard, this icon allows you to retrieve corresponding, in-depth data from Management Central to take a closer look at the information you need, when you need it.

“Dashboard Drilldown makes the detailed information gathered by IntelliDealer accessible by a single click of the mouse rather than by having to search through the system. Nothing could be simpler.”

8. Task Tracker System
First shown as a concept at the 2007 PFW Dealership Management Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Task Tracker System is being released as part of R6V06. With user-defined tasks and customization, the Task Tracker System provides dashboard and e-mail notification of your assigned tasks.

“The Task Tracker System is a collaborative ‘to do’ system that allows you to customize the elements of the task and assign tasks to different members of the team, so that everyone knows their role and tasks can be completed smoothly.”