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Curtis Trailers has
seen a lot of change in
the 53 years they have
been serving the Portland,
Oregon area and the
Northwest. With three
generations of family
involved in the business,
they have grown from one
small location with four
employees to two locations
with 150 employees and 46
service bays. They are
proud of the fact that they
sell more trailers and 5th
wheels than any other
dealer in the Pacific
Northwest.
With the continued
growth of the dealership,
finding a computer system
that had a good return on
investment (ROI) was
crucial. The IDS Astra
system fit the bill.
When asked what he
felt the ROI would be for
Curtis Trailers in regards
to their purchase of the
IDS Astra system, GM
Morgan Philipp stated, “I have forecasted a
return in about three years,
for the total investment,
and I believe we will
accomplish that goal
by that time.”
Although Curtis Trailers
hasn’t been on the
system long, they have
already seen the impact of
the IDS system on their
departments. As in most
dealerships, the parts
department is faced with
the challenge of keeping
track of all inventory.
Since being on the Astra
system, Curtis Trailers
has been able to "keep
track of things that never
got accounted for before
and just walked out the
door.” This alone could
save a dealership thousands in losses annually.
One of
the other benefits Morgan has seen is
that “by linking both locations together,
we have real-time capabilities for
PMS” (prospect management). “ In
other words, if we have a customer
shopping at this site, we enter him into Astra - if he then
decides to go to the other site, his information is already
there - we could never do this before."
Curtis Trailers also has the Astra
system producing a thank you letter
for the purchase and plans on implementing
a next day automatic followup
letter in the future.
All this makes
for great customer service and in turn
an increase in overall sales. In Morgan's
words, “the system will actually give us
better customer follow-up all around, with tracking through
parts, service,
and sales. Also, being able to do
follow-up letters will be key and paramount
to keeping customers coming
back later.” All this just adds to the
return on investment for this product.
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