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“The biggest overall advantage of the new system is the
improved service that the counter person is able to provide
to the customer,” Iskov said.
The YPIC application, produced by IHS Australia allows the
counter person to find the part information much faster,
usually in under a minute, without leaving the customer.
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Yamaha Clients
Yamaha Motorcycle
ATV Yamaha Marine & Water Vehicle
New online incremental updates provides Yamaha Motor Australia (YMA) dealers
with instant access to the latest Yamaha models and help improve dealer customer
service by obtaining parts information faster than ever possible before.
IHS Australia developed a data conversion solution for YMA converting their
hardcopy Motorbike and Marine parts manuals to a fully searchable information
centre incorporating image linking technologies. This application has developed
from inception as a CD-ROM-based technology, to DVD-ROM. The current application
uses XML to allow users to download new and updated models and download
application updates via the internet.
“This project has been very successful in accomplishing its major goal, helping
our dealers to provide better service to their customers. The product created by
IHS Australia is of the highest level of quality and has been very well received
by its users. It has helped us at Yamaha to reinforce our position as the
technological leader in the motorcycle business.”
Colin Iskov,
YMA National Parts Operations Manager
Present and Future
The YPIC (Yamaha Parts Information Catalogue) DVD-ROM provides text and
graphics information for the range of Marine and Motorcycle catalogues available
from Yamaha Motor Australia from 1988 onwards. In 2002 Yamaha also included a
range of their old model manuals from 1963 - 1988. The current application,
released via DVD-ROM annually, allows dealers to download both application
updates and models updates via an online incremental update facility. This means
that users can now gain instant access to the latest models that are released
into the Australian market.
Yamaha dealers can use the YPIC application to search or browse the entire
Yamaha model list and view their assemblies right down to the individual parts
within that model. Each part is hyperlinked to the relevant part in the image
pane allowing dealers to view the part within its assembly. From here, dealers
can create a customised order form, keeping a running total of their order with
the ability to save, alter, print, and export the order. YPIC also provides the
ability to generate an electronic order form which links to the IDS Offline
Order Entry Module.
IHS continues to provide YMA with update management and data conversion services
to maintain the currency of the YPIC data. IHS has remained YMA’s development
partner through the development of the product from a CD-ROM based application
to DVD-ROM and now the provision of online updating. The future may see the
application move to a completely online facility.
History
YMA, Wetherill Park, Australia, is a distribution arm of Yamaha Motor Japan,
one of the world’s leading producers of motorcycles, boats, outboard motors and
other products.
The products sold by YMA include a wide range of recreational items and
industrial products, such as motorcycles, scooters, four-wheelers, snowmobiles,
outboards, water vehicles, boats, golf cars, go-kart engines, power generators,
water and sludge pumps, industrial engines and accessories. YMA was incorporated
in June 1983 with distribution rights in New South Wales and took on
distribution in Victoria later the same year. Within a few years, the company
also began distribution for Western Australia and Queensland. In the 1990s, the
company began production of fibreglass boats at a facility located in Ourimbah,
north of Sydney.
Problems with Microfiche and Hardcopy Catalogues
Providing parts information to its network of over 300 distributors
throughout Australia is an important and challenging task for YMA. The company
has long produced both paper and microfiche catalogues that cover the huge
number of parts required to service the company’s products for the Australian
market. The space required by the paper catalogues and the special equipment
needed to view the microfiche catalogues means that these catalogues must
usually be stored away from the parts desk.
When a customer approaches the counter person and asks about a particular part,
the counter person takes the information and goes to the area where the
catalogues are kept. It then often takes a fair amount of time to locate the
right item, either by paging through the books or by searching the microfiche,
while customers are kept waiting.
Other problems with the old approach included the high cost of printing the
paper catalogues and the fact that they quickly became outdated. YMA management
recognised switching over to CD's as the primary method of supplying parts
information to distributors would address all of these issues. Yamaha operations
in North America and Europe had previously created CD products that provided
complete parts information but differences in regulations created significant
differences between the products sold by the different operations. YMA
management felt that it would be an extremely difficult task to adapt either one
of these products and so decided to build their own.
Selecting a Development Partner
“We felt that a CD could provide an excellent platform for distributing
parts information to our dealers,” said Iskov. “We began looking for a
development partner with the experience necessary to create an end product that
would be well received by our rightfully very demanding dealers. IHS Enterprise
Solutions showed us a wide range of very attractive and highly functional CDs
they had produced for their many clients. We were impressed by their experience
over a broad range of delivery options including CD-ROM, DVD, Internet and
others. Their solution was surprisingly affordable considering the high value
that it offered” Iskov concluded.
The Set Up
IHS Australia developers set up a process to scan in the data from the
existing parts catalogues and perform optical character recognition to read the
text. They also used special programs designed to identify and correct OCR
errors.
“This method has provided us with a very high level of accuracy at a reasonable
cost,” Iskov said. “We did the final proofing by hand and found only a very
small number of errors.”
IHS Australia converted the information to the format used by Dataware’s
CD-Author program, the database used on the CD. Then developers created a
customer querying application in Visual C++ designed to help dealers easily find
the right parts. This application makes it possible to search by model, part
description, year, prefix and part number.
Preparing a Pilot Version
“IHS Australia prepared a pilot version of the user interface very quickly,”
Iskov continued. “We presented it at a national dealer convention in order to
obtain feedback from potential users. Their reaction was generally very
favourable but they also provided some very good suggestions that we
incorporated into the final product. Our basic idea was to provide a simple and
clean interface that has a similar feel to basic Windows productivity
applications that most of our dealers are already familiar with. The new
application met all our requirements and has received a very positive reception
from its users.”
The CD-ROM was designed from the start to integrate with YMA’s highly successful
dealer communications system, called Yamaha Dealer Connect (YDC). The parts
catalogue contained on the CD-ROM is linked to pricing information that is
contained on the YDC computer and updated on a regular basis through a network
connection to YMA.
Most of the major developers of the software that dealers used to run their
business operations have also created links to the new CD-ROM. Users of these
programs are able to transfer the items that generated in the parts catalogue
search into a quotation that can later be cancelled or turned into an order.
Improved Customer Service
“The biggest overall advantage of the new system is the improved service
that the counter person is able to provide to the customer,” Iskov said. The
YPIC application, produced by IHS Australia allows the counter person to find
the part information much faster, usually in under a minute, without leaving the
customer.
“They can stay at their terminal and work with the customer to find the right
part. The customer can look at the screen and help pick out the exact item that
is needed. The counter person has the choice displaying or not displaying the
prices that they are paying for the product. Our dealers have recognised the
value of the product and so far 203 have purchased the CD-ROM out of a potential
market of about 250 dealers with the computer equipment required to take
advantage of it.”
The time and skill required to find the right parts are dramatically reduced
because the counter person merely has to type in a few search terms, such as
“bulb” “12v and 2w”, to find the information in far less time than would be
required to page through catalogues or microfiche. A good example of how it
works would be to look more closely at the search described above for “bulb”
“12v and 2w”. It finds 32 instances of bulbs meeting the description that was
entered. The user can view a graphical and textual description of each by
highlighting the item in the found box and clicking on the display.
In searching for a particular model year, counter people can use the “>” or
“<”icons to search over a range of models by year. For example, to search for
models years from 1991 to 1994, you would type in the year column “>1990 and
<1995”. The user can further refine the search by entering a model year such as
YZ125, which would bring up all parts for this particular model over these
years. Then, typically, the counter person would add a description of the part
for which they are looking, such as “Jet*”. This particular search brings up 42
different jets found in these model years. Or the counter person could limit the
search to “jet” and main*) to only search for main jets.
Capability Statement
Development:
▪ .net
▪ VC++
▪ Delphi
▪ C#
▪ VB.net
▪ ASPX
▪ Visual Basic 6
▪ C++
▪ ASP
▪ Web services
▪ Web applications
▪ Web development
▪ HTML
▪ Java script
▪ Text retrieval
▪ Installation scripting using InstallShield
Operating Sytems:
▪ Unix
▪ Windows 2000/NT/XP/Vista
▪ Systems Administration & Network Administration
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