Local company Auto I.T has inked a deal to establish dealer management software (DMS) in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Under the tri-partite agreement, 1C-Rarus (John Deere’s Russian agricultural dealership) and EkoNiva Tekhnika Holding will promote and support Auto I.T.’s Windows-based DMS software system, known as EQUIP, in Russia as well as in the CIS markets of Belorussia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
EkoNiva Tekhnika Holding will steer the introduction of EQUIP in Russia, which is specifically designed for dealers in the trucking, agriculture and construction equipment industries.
The company said the deal will help it establish itself in the international export market.
The systems allow dealers to run their total operations with modular features that cover finance, operations, customer relationship management, executive information centre, web trader and interface operations.
The company will localise EQUIP using language cloning – which enables software to be easily transferred from English into other languages – after its first installation.
Auto I.T. chief executive officer, Ken Fife, said in a statement that adding Russia and CIS markets to the company’s portfolio will be beneficial to Auto I.T.
“Russia has vast agricultural, forestry and mining resources, which will see the emergence of many new retail dealerships servicing these areas over the next decade and there is an enormous opportunity for our software to help these dealers improve productivity," Fife said.
Fife said there are a lack of comprehensive DMS products available within automotive dealerships in Moscow, and said Auto I.T.’s UNITS product (specifically designed for automotive dealers) will follow the implementation of the EcoNiva pilot.
The agreement follows the roll out of John Deere Information Systems across Canada and North America, taken up by around 35 per cent of dealerships.
Computerworld Australia recently profiled homegrown company, Auto I.T, a specialist in car, agricultural, trucking and construction equipment dealer management systems, as a part of its ongoing Homegrown series.