Plumtree portal drives out Subaru complications
Plumtree portal drives out Subaru complications
Plumtree believes it has driven out the paper-based problems that used to plague Australian car firm Subaru to unite all of its databases so that every member of staff can monitor the history of each car from an easy to use portal.
Plumtree has named its new portal concept: Integrated Activity Management, and it is the result of 12 months of research, that ended in October, which involved Plumtree asking its customers and analysts what end-users needed from portals.
They conducted the research to find out exactly how they could iron out the portal problems of the past and create services that could be more beneficial than ever before.
Dean Stockwell, the managing director of Plumtree for the Asia/Pacific Region, explained how he thinks this new system is the most forward-thinking portal concept in the market.
"Traditionally, portals were created to provide good presentation for companies, but nowadays customers expect much more from their portals. Our new charter allows a number of different databases to be joined together and accessed via an easy to read portal that can be seen remotely from anywhere.
"With Subaru, we have allowed dealers to get access to their ERP databases without having to use SAP. A dealer can find out about stock inventory; records of the history car for when services need to be done; and they have access to the track record of every Subaru. The sales people can find out how old cars are from the portal and what rewards are on offer for selling older cars."
He said that having so much access to this kind of valuable information via the portal allows the company to conduct it's business much more easily without the use of faxes and telephone calls, which cost more money over time than the cash needed to implement the software.
"One of the key advantages is also that we build the system on open standards at the back-end, although we use Microsoft and Java tools at the front-end. We have been very pro-active in finding exactly what is wanted from portals, so we are confident that the Integrated Activity Management will meet those needs more so than our competitors."
Stockwell added that this initiative allows the user to operate the portal with many of the functions that would be otherwise available on the desktop.
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