Sytner invest in the latest version of Autoline

ADP have reinforced their partnership with Sytner, the UK's leading retailer of prestige and specialist cars, to further develop their existing Autoline system.

Autoline has been successfully serving the Sytner group for for a number of years and they have recently committed to an upgrade of their Autoline revision 7 system to a HSP version of Autoline revision 8.35.

This brings another 41 sites onto Autoline, creating uniformity as the whole group upgrades to one platform over the next 24 months. Existing systems displaced are Autoline revision 7, UCS Kalamazoo, Volkswagen managed solution, Incadea, MS1 and NDS.

Sytner who are owned by US based UAG, continue to invest in the UK market with the recent acquisitions of BMW Coventry, Chrysler-Jeep Bristol and William Jacks plc. UAG is also active in Germany with sites in Hamburg, Bremen and Munich.

Mark Carpenter, finance director at Sytner, gave an overview of the reasons for their upgrade, "Sytner has grown through acquisition in the past ten years to now include around 95 dealerships which generates £1.8 billion revenue. This rapid growth has led to a fragmented DMS network that is not integrated and is unable to provide the commonality of reporting required to run our decentralised business model. Sytner is also subject to stringent controls that are required of all US public companies, Sarbannes Oxley. Standardised systems and controls are an inherent requirement of this US legislation.

Sytner is based around a business model of having great management teams at all sites and ensuring they are run as independent businesses, with a group team supporting the management at the local level. Sytner believe that capturing the transactions of these decentralised businesses in a central DMS will provide both the group and local management with better information to help achieve our strategic aims. A standard DMS will also allow us to transfer skills across our businesses and franchises more easily as a key part of our strategy is to develop our existing employees, which on occasion may only be achieved through promoting roles in different franchises and locations.

When looking for the new system, Sytner considered other vendors, but ADP is undoubtedly the market leader. Autoline is currently or has been previously used by many of the Sytner employees, so disruption will be minimal. The functionality in Autoline is excellent and the flexibility of the system was also a key factor.

This implementation will now allow Sytner to use better information to enhance the decision making processes. As well as automating more processes and reporting, it will minimise the risk of inaccurate information.".