Stephane's notes have most of the things that I took down as notes. However, I would like to make a few clarifications and give some additional notes.

First of all, the "arrow system" that Stephane referred to is actually the Reynolds-Reynolds system which use what the dealers called "Era Link" to link to. This Reynolds-Reynolds system is a custom-built system the dealer had which catalogues internal information for the dealer. Examples of such information is inventory of cars, account information, and status of cars.

Second of all, I noted the process that Rahal use when new cars / invoices come in. When new invoices or cars come in, the data in VISTA is usually updated already (MBNA). Then these information have to be manually typed into the Reynolds-Reynolds system at the dealer. When a sale goes through, the Reynolds-Reynolds system will account fo the sales and send the information to the accounting department of the dealer. Once the accounting people have time to go through them, the dealer will then have to manually type the sales information back into the VISTA system to inform MBNA of the sales of the car.

Finally, I observed that the most difficult problem in having the VISTA system and the Reynolds-Reynolds system is that there is coordination problem. VISTA and Reynolds-Reynolds are independent systems that will not talk with each other causing double entry information for the dealer. Furthermore, if all the sales personnel have a computer that has the Reynolds-Reynolds system in front of them, coordination between the sales personnel and the sales manager becomes a problem. Currently, the sales person has to go through the sales manager to make him aware of the situation. This way, information is more centralized and accurate. However, giving every sales person the power to enter data in the system and in charge of sales will decentralize the system and might cause inaccuracy in the information. (For example: a sales person forgot to enter the data in the system after a sale)

These are all the additional things I have jotted down and observed. The bulk of the interview is still in Stephane's notes. Please refer to that and use my comments here as reference to keep in mind.


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