News IRIUM SOFTWARE

CATERPILLAR User Club

CATERPILLAR DEALER CLUB (CDC) was created at the end of 2008 by eight CATERPILLAR dealers who were using the DMS iE from the IRIUM Group. After being in existence for one year the president of the club, Samuel MODICOM, explains the activities of the Club.

 

Samuel MODICOM was in charge, as Project Manager, of the choice and installation of iE DMS from the IRIUM Group at JA DELMAS Export. Working in conjunction with operational specialists (Parts & Service), and senior management he manages the implementation team. His team includes both IT specialists and operational specialists whose expertise in their respective business areas is recognized by the end users.

CDC in figures:

The Club gathers 8 dealers, 500 users iE DMS from IRIUM group:

  • BAMITEL (Caribbean),
  • HAYTRAC (Haiti),
  • HENRI FRAISE & FILS -HFF- (Madagascar),
  • J.A DELMAS EXPORT (West Africa),
  • PARENIN (Tunisia, Libya),
  • RIES / NEAR EAST FINANCIAL (Somalia, Ethiopia),
  • SCOMAT & SCIME (Reunion, Island of Mauritius),
  • TRACTAFRIC (Central Africa)

Start end of 2008, one year and half of existence.

What is the purpose of the Club?

The objective of the Club is for CATERPILLAR dealers using the iE DMS to be able to share their IT requirements and to prioritize and facilitate the development of new functionalities.

The activity of the Club is mainly focused on the development of interfaces between CATERPILLAR systems and the DMS systems of the DEALERS. These interfaces include warranty, product improvement, incident reports, parts orders, price lists and part catalogs.

The Club also involves itself in business process issues involving its members who are all involved in export operations.

The main principles of the Club

The Club has no involvement with the dealers DMS setup or business processes. Every dealer is responsible for producing their own business process and work flows. However CATERPILLAR dealers usually need to work in the same way and the Club allows them to share their experiences, define standard business practices and then integrate them into future DMS developments.

CATERPILLAR is becoming more interested in the iE product and in view of this, where necessary, the IRIUM Group is modifying the iE product functionalities to align them more closely with CATERPILLAR requirements, especially in relation to reporting which needs to be based on identical structures and data.

The parts KPI project is a good example. This project provides a structured and coherent data extraction procedure which provides the main parts service level information that has to be sent to CATERPILLAR.

CATERPILLAR uses this stock quality data for dealer benchmarking and therefore it must be based on identical procedures and working methods that have been defined by the Club.

The advantages of the Club

One of the advantages of the Club is to reduce individual development costs. By sharing the definition, development and maintenance costs individual dealers can minimize their costs.

The iE User Club for CATERPILLAR Dealers

CATERPILLAR DEALER CLUB (CDC) was created at the end of 2008 by height CATERPILLAR dealers who were using the DMS iE from the IRIUM Group. After being in existence for one year the president of the club, Samuel MODICOM, explains the activities of the Club.

By grouping together the members of the Club have been able to improve their communications with CATERPILLAR. CATERPILLAR have assisted in this by naming Daniel Alba of the “Product Support and Sales Operations” as contact person with the Club. Daniel has been able to help the Club by providing contacts with CATERPILLAR specialists in each subject.

This contact has also helped the IRIUM group who are now able to invest in developments that are of interest to a stable customer base and based on CATERPILLAR approved business methods.

Organization of the Club

A Charter defines the organization and rules of the Club. This charter specifies the method used to choose future projects, management of schedules, meeting agendas and financing of developments.

Because of the number of projects currently in progress the Club meets every month, either via telephone conferencing or working meetings, to review progress on each project. The participants include members belonging to either IT or operational specialties who participate depending on the subject to be discussed.

Two IRIUM Consultants, Stephane GUIRAUD, who originally suggested the creation of the Club, and Damien COUZINET help Samuel MODICOM with the preparation and running of the Club.

The Charter defines one of the members of the Club to be responsible for the running of each working group.

The members finance his work by contributing 5% of the license cost of developments defined by his group.

IRIUM also participates in this cost: for example of the 4 developments released in April IRIUM Group paid more than 25% of the development cost of 3 out of the 4 developments because they recognized that those improvements provided added values to the iE DMS.

Overall after one year

Two important events have occurred: The completion of several developments such as “Reserve on PO in progress”, “Integration of Excel Files and CATERPILLAR parts lists on supplier orders”, “Estimated parts cost price” More and more active involvement of CATERPILLAR who recognize the Club and IRIUM as important business partners.

Newsletters