A brave new world of retailing is upon us and things have moved very quickly in Motorcycle retail in the past year.  Many dealers are now aggressively pursuing online shopping solutions.  Some suppliers are mandating utilising of their own web solutions.  Seems like everyone is getting on the band wagon.

C9 has been working away on aligning our technology to help fulfil this need for over 12 months now.  We are positioning with a comprehensive approach that will give you peace of mind that your strategy for embracing Internet retailing will not be hindered by technology limitations stemming from your dealer system.  C9 has expanded to embrace 'Cloud' capability, and done so in such a way that we can offer simple to understand solutions that have sensible pricing.  Yet we have not compromised flexibility or capability in doing so.  Nor are we compromising our core business focus; building and expanding Australia's best Motorcycle DMS.

The broad goals and outcomes of our strategy is that we can offer:

1. Basic Website Offering

For those not too fussed about the fact that the website will look similar to other dealer websites.  Get something up and running in no time with minimum of fuss.

• customise content, upload news, comments pictures, contact details etc via c9
• organise your units and spare parts; add descriptions and images etc.
• No double entry of data - fully integrated solution.  Units and spare parts automatically reflect state of your inventory. Change price in c9, or sell items out of stock and the website updates instantaneously and automatically
• Online shopping for spares and accessories.
• Placed orders appear in c9 point of sale automatically, within 15 seconds of the order being placed
• Customer details automatically sync/merge in with c9 customer list
• Online parts catalogue browsing
• Cost is $200 setup. $50 a month running (plus GST).
• Domain name registration you need to bear yourself; typically $20 a year; depending on who you use.
• Up and running in just a few days.
• Keep in mind though that organising all your stock, saving images against spare parts etc is a bit of a job. The basic skeleton website will be setup quickly, but the task of organising your stock and getting pictures and descriptions may take you as much as a few months. If you stock is well organised, i.e. you have been diligent in assigning stock types to stocked items for example, then this process will be faster.
• Beyond what you can control inside c9, we will not customize look/feel beyond a few basic changes; such as setting up logo banners, color scheme etc.  Site look and feel is provided strictly as is.  Tweaking websites is not c9's business; but we are setting up our strategy so that we can work with companies who do precisely this.  Hence option 2:...

2. Full customisation

Full control, control every detail of your website look and feel, no matter how minute. Complete control and complete flexibility.

• The software code for our above basic website will be offered for FREE; for you to tinker with as you see fit
• Engage a local web developer of your choice to tinker and tune and build a site with the level of customisation you want.  There are 1000's of registered web developer businesses in Australia.
• Use our software code as a starting point; no need to rebuild a website from scratch and have to pay that expense. Just pay for the customisations and the cost to maintain those customisations.
• All features in above offering are available. Including ability to fetch information out of c9, such as images and pricing etc
• C9 will not charge you for this method; it is completely FREE. But your web developer will change money, for the customisation work, and the web hosting.

3. Other internet programmes

• Remote access c9. Run c9 across the internet, do stock taking using a handheld brower.
• SMS/Email notifications
• Spare parts enquiries, factory suppliers and other dealers

The Technology Roadmap

Technology already delivered

• SMS/EMail notifications
• Online backup. Pre-requisite technology for making internet services work
• Parts Magician integration
• First basic online website : for bolton motorcycles
• Remote access
• Remote handheld browser functions; e.g. stock taking
• Remote API to allow other web developers to modify the website and hook into c9 data directly.
• Other dealers now using basic online website
• Upgrade of server infrastructure to facilitate more sites and to facilitate storage of price catalogue data

Technology to be delivered

• Ability to import price catalogue/fiche.  Will start with KTM, Suzuki, Honda and Kawasaki. ETA : End of December
• Modify API to access above price catalogues. ETA: End of December
• Modify website to use the API 100% and provide source code. ETA: Mid February
• Release website software code under an appropriate open source licence that provides dealers a means to tweak and tune and customise to whatever extent they wish to engage in such activity.

Technology/ideas under consideration

• 3rd party website integration targets: E-Bay, and Paypal etc
• Android version of handheld access
• Android version of remote access