Web-enabled DMS vs. Web-based DMS - Does it really matter?

By Joe Ard., Director of Darwin XE System Management and Marketing, NeoSynergy, July 23, 2004

Examine the product material of many of today’s dealer management system (DMS) providers and you find the terms “Web-enabled” or “Web-based” embedded within.  What is implied by these terms?  And should today’s dealer, especially those forward thinking eDealers, be concerned?  This paper provides basic definitions of these “Web” terms, examines the migration history of DMS products to the Web, and answers these questions from the dealer’s point of view.

A brief DMS history

Today’s DMS started as tape driven products that were used to collect data and send it to the dealer’s franchise car company.  Rudimentary DMS functionality was then offered via phone line connection to remote hosted servers because the cost of computing infrastructure was too great for an individual dealership.  As computing costs declined, it became more economical for a dealer to purchase a system to reside in the dealership, and have terminals and printers hang directly from it to eliminate the phone connections.  As PCs came into vogue, terminal emulator software was used to allow PCs to also function as terminals on this DMS generation system.  The more recent DMS products were primarily developed using client-server architecture.  The common theme of these DMS evolutions is that at its core, current DMS systems have a large system which serves to clients the needed application screens and data.

The last few years have seen a powerful trend in DMS architecture, the movement of the server to an off-site location.  The common term for this system architecture is ASP (for Application Service Provider).  The nature of the DMS architecture required these first ASP systems to have very large network ‘pipes’ or connections.  The required solution was essentially to create an extended in-dealership LAN (local area network) that would include the hosting site.  The extended LAN architecture allowed for the easy use of the terminal and terminal emulator devices required by these client-server applications.  The early ASP DMS models did move the server from within the walls of the dealership, but they did nothing to reduce the fundamental costs associated with the client-server systems.  Any savings obtained by sharing the server with other dealerships was eaten up by the cost of the required LAN architecture.

Outline

1. History of DMS
   1. Tape drive product
   2. Phone line connection
   3. In-store system – terminal based
   4. Client-server
   5. ASP
2. Web-based
   1. More than moving server from dealership
   2. Making the network (Internet) the system
   3. Repository-based
   4. Stateless
3. Web-enabled still has infrastructure issues
   1. Must still meet requirements of client-server
   2. “Added” software used to move application to the Internet
   3. “Big-pipe” (large connection, persistent) required for Web-enabled
   4. Cost structures still in place
4. Web-based advantages
   1. No infrastructure requirement (proprietary)
   2. No server requirement
   3. Non-persistent Internet connection
   4. Scalable – client-server-based systems are limited to the number of different customers it can support
   5. These cost savings can be passed directly on to the customer!
5. Software-as-a-Service (SAAS)
   1. Web-based applications can now be offered in new models
   2. Providers must “prove” themselves each subscription period (usually monthly)
   3. Customers no longer “locked” into long contracts
   4. Other solutions can easily be added to increase functionality (free integration)
6. If you could buy your cake a piece at a time, at a lower cost per piece than buying the whole cake, What would you do???

References

• Principles of Internet Marketing. South-Western