Gateway Software Solutions
We are prohibited by confidentiality agreement from using the name of the company referenced below, which is one of the world's top three vehicle manufacturers.
BRISBANE, Australia and GOLD RIVER, Calif., Aug. 25, 2005 – Gateway Software Solutions (Gateway), provider of software tools to the automotive industry, has successfully implemented a Synergy/DE-based XML/SOAP solution for one of the world’s top three vehicle manufacturers. This new solution enables secure communication between manufacturer and dealership, resulting in significant time savings and increased accuracy of information.
In 2003, a major vehicle manufacturer decided to abandon the dialup and FTP-based system they used to communicate with their dealers and other supply chain partners. They wanted a more secure ADSL-based VPN solution using XML and SOAP. This effort required significant dealer software changes to enable the seamless and secure passing of information over the VPN. The manufacturer initially worked with their top eight dealer software vendors and aimed for a July 2004 rollout.
In August 2004, the manufacturer invited other dealer software vendors to join the project, including Synergy/DE customer Gateway Software Solutions. Gateway had not been included in the initial roll-out because they were providing software to only one of the dealers, and as such, were not considered a major vendor. Using application generators to build the underlying Synergy code and using the native Synergy XML parsing routines to quickly create the interfaces they needed, Gateway began implementation in mid-December 2004 and completed the initial phase of the project by January 31.
“We were able to finish the project in just six weeks—compared to the 12+ months required by the other software vendors at their dealer sites,” states Gateway’s Jeff Gill. “Not only that, we had just one programmer working full time on the project, with about three days of input from another. And we needed only limited support from the manufacturer—a total of about 12 phone calls and the same number of e-mails.”
Gill attributes much of the success and expediency of the project to Synergy/DE. “Thanks to Synergy/DE, the whole process was relatively straightforward,” states Gill. “In fact, we were able to use samples of code from the Synergex CodeExchange to get started.”
In the next phase of the project, Gateway used Synergy HTTP routines to securely transmit information from the dealer site back to the manufacturer over VPN. Thanks in part to productivity-enhancing features in Synergy/DE, Gateway was able to implement this functionality quickly with limited resources. They completed this phase of the project in just ten days, using one programmer, compared to more than six months required by the other vendors.
Feedback from the dealer has been extremely positive. They can now control how and when data is imported into the manufacturer’s databases, and they are able to track information changes as required. The information is updated instantly and can be automatically disseminated via e-mail within the dealership. Staff members have reported significant time savings and increased accuracy of information as a result of the new software. And because of the cost savings and quality, some of the other dealers have abandoned their software vendors in favor of Gateway.
“Because Synergy/DE enables us to adopt emerging technologies, we are able to stay ahead of our competitors and produce quality software on time at a much lower cost,” concludes Gill.
