Mobilizing a Car Dealership: A Case Study
How eManaged Helped Big River Toyota Upgrade Their Infrastructure
Meet Big River Toyota:
In operation for over two decades, Big River Toyota deals in new and used cars, offering parts and services for drivers in this and its two other franchises, Big River Nissan and Big River Isuzu. Promising a No Fuss Buying experience to their customers, Big River Toyota has set a high bar for their team of 40 to reach.
In order to do so, the team relies on assorted technologies and tools, from the workstations and mobile phones their sales and administrative teams utilize to the diagnostic equipment used in the garage.
In turn, this means that they need to have technology that is reliable at their disposal…as well as the security needed to protect this technology and the data it contains.
However, this was not always the reality for Big River Toyota.
eManaged Modern Office Proved to Be the Right Fit
Drawing upon their partnership with Microsoft 365, eManaged implemented a special version of Microsoft 365 that, amongst other benefits, adds significant cybersecurity and provides the productivity tools that have effectively become household names at this point.
As such, eManaged enabled Big River Toyota to take advantage of the latest version of the Windows operating system, Office 365 and all its included toolkits, multi-factor authentication via Azure Active Directory, the collaborative SharePoint Online platform, and more considerable workplace improvements. The team was all provided with new workstations, as well, to replace their old ones.
Most pertinent to Big River Toyota, however, was the fact that this cloud-based system did not require an on-premise server—saving the dealership a substantial amount in hardware acquisition costs—and enabled the mobility that Big River Toyota could make so much use of. While the complexity of the project ultimately threw up some obstacles, the collaborative efforts that eManaged focuses on during these kinds of projects allowed them to be overcome, and ultimately saved Big River Toyota approximately fifty thousand dollars that would have otherwise been spent on server upgrades.
Big River Toyota’s Infrastructure Was Holding Them Back
Still running off an on-premise infrastructure, the auto dealer’s maintenance of their aging technology was costing them a pretty penny, and lacked the security that a modern business should have. On top of that, it restricted the team’s ability to move around with their technology…something that Big River Toyota wanted to be able to do, as it would open them up to greater opportunities over time.
Fortunately, Big River Toyota had an asset on their side that was more than prepared to assist them in resolving these issues—eManaged. After a brief conversation, eManaged had their assignment, and got down to business.
This Isn’t All eManaged Has Done for Big River Toyota
As mentioned, Big River Toyota had already been working with eManaged when this challenge presented itself.
Before establishing their relationship with the managed service provider, the auto dealership lacked many information technology basics.
As their Financial Controller Tracey McFadden puts it, their security was nearly non-existent, and they lacked any organized IT support. All backups needed to be manually maintained, an understandably time-consuming process.
Partnering with eManaged fixed all of this for them, so much so that when Toyota was attacked via one of their dealers, Big River Toyota passed their security investigations with flying colors, while many other dealers did not.
“There’s nothing that competes with eManaged, they are at the top of the game in the area.”
— Tracey McFadden, Financial Controller for Big River Toyota
Thanks to eManaged, Big River Toyota is Making Use of IT
While there are still reports of growing pains within the auto dealership in terms of fully utilizing everything their IT is now capable of doing, things have generally trended upwards for Big River Toyota. Collaboration is up, thanks largely to Outlook and Teams being used vigorously as a means of communication within the dealership, and again, Big River Toyota’s team is no longer chained to the office in terms of their access to their technology. Of course, eManaged is there to help them with any challenges they encounter.
This is exactly why Big River Toyota is happy to recommend eManaged’s services to other businesses encountering issues with their business technology. If you’d like to learn a bit more about what eManaged could do to help you, visit emanaged.com.au, or give them a call at 1300 363 308.