South Motors Automotive Group, Chain of 14 dealerships throughout South Florida.

When you are one of the highest volume luxury car dealerships in the country, and you rely on technology to sell cars, downtime is not an option. South Motors Automotive group sells and services more BMWs than any other organization in the country, but they can’t sell a single car or service a single engine without a reliable Information Technology Infrastructure.

“Our mission is to sell cars, sell parts, and sell service. We can’t do that without our computer systems, which is why we hired Conquest. They made sure that systems that are critical for our operation are always running, and helped us drive productivity and cut costs in the process…”

• William Ford, IT Director, South Motors Automotive Group

The chain is one of the largest BMW sales organizations in the US, with the number one and number two (by volume) BMW stores in the nation under their umbrella. They rely completely on their computer network to run their business. From email and IP telephony for communications with customers, a dealer based CRM package to internet based systems for credit checking and advertising, to their dealership management system that manages all of their transactions and inventory with manufacturing, they can’t sell without their network.

This is why IT management hired Conquest, to architect and deploy a redundant network that would meet South’s needs, and never go down. “Our mission is to sell cars, sell parts, and sell service. We can’t do that without our computer systems, which is why we hired Conquest. They made sure that systems that are critical for our operation are always running, and helped us drive productivity and cut costs in the process...”

Conquest went to South’s headquarters, met with William and put together a design for a redundant Cisco converged IP network that would keep South up and running while integrating this IP telephony solutions with other existing critical systems, without over running the budget. Conquest analyzed South’s business needs and worked with existing technology vendors to build a solution that not only provided the reliability and performance that the dealership required, but also brought more efficiency and productivity to their operations.

The Benefits

High availability – Conquest designed a Microsoft and Cisco network for South with built in redundancy for all core networking equipment and servers including designing mesh site to site connectivity, to ensure that a network disaster would never prevent a dealership from being connected and selling cars. Lower network costs – By converging video and voice onto one IP network, Conquest helped South Motors reduce the cost of maintaining their telephone network and eliminated some of their telephone line costs.

The consolidation of over 1000 Microsoft PC’s into a single Microsoft Active Directory, administering the network and keeping it updated became not just feasible but easy. Increased productivity – By leveraging Cisco Call Manager’s integration features with ADP and Higher Gear, the dealerships customer management system, Conquest brought new level of productivity to South’s sales and service teams. The system gives sales reps the ability to identify incoming calls in their customer database, and click to dial from ADP. It also gives sales managers a new level of visibility into what their sales people are doing on the phones.

This has top line and bottom line impacts to South Motor’s Business. Lower payroll – By leveraging Cisco IP telephony Conquest helped South consolidate receptionists, and outbound telemarketing personnel at a time when efficiency is key to not just survive in the automotive world but to be positioned to win as things improve.