C9 now provides a number of points of automated integration for Honda dealerships.  Key items are:

• Sending orders to honda from within c9
• Importing received spares invoices into c9
• Automatically send service and dealer stock data to Honda

Initial Setup

To setup you need a couple pieces of information.  Honda dealer code and a API key

Honda Dealer code. Normally your dealer code is a 4 digit number from Honda.  But for this service Honda require an extended 5 digit dealer code. Which is your 4 digit code + one additional number depending on what type of dealership you are. At this stage, the 5th digit is always 9.

• '1' is for Motorcycles
• '2' is for Power equipment
• '3' is for Marine
• '9' is for Spare Parts.  Make the value '9'

For example, if your dealer code is '1234' then code Honda Integration requires is '12349'

API Key.  API Key is like a password.  To get your API key, login to Dealernet and goto 'Dealership' tab. There is an option for API key there. Click on it to get your API key

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Alot of helpdesk/support problems are typically solved over the phone using tooling within c9 itself. Though occasionally we need to take full control of a computer in order to help resolve some issues.

TeamViewer seems to be the standard toolset used by most IT support people in the industry.  Though ongoing dispute with TeamViewer over their deceptive pricing model has marred our experience with them and attempts to get them to provide the service that c9 paid for have been fruitless.

I've finally moved onto a new toolset, the new toolset has a number of advantages.

• Download from our website is >10 times faster
• No longer require ID or Password from teamviewer to work
• No longer tripping over incompatible versions of teamviewer, which can be a real pain when teamviewer is installed as a windows service

Fiddling around with Raspberry Pi for something unrelated to c9, I put c9 onto the Raspberry Pi just to see how it would go.

C9, which is based on Java will run on pretty much anything. Although all bike shops run windows, c9 is equally at home on Mac or Linux.  All software development done within c9 is on linux workstations actually.  C9's database, PostgreSQL is also able to run on most anything too.

So $50 computer the size of a wallet, running linux and drawing less than 2 Watts.  Got c9 up and running in about 30 minutes.  Doesn't run terribly fast compared to a basic office workstation (Key problem is SQL databases are not at all optimised to run off SD cards, an external SSD or HDD would be the go here, or maybe something better than the cheapest SD card in the shop). Still pretty cool I think.

A new change to c9 smartens up it's barcode scanner integration so c9 is able to detect when you have used a barcode scanner and it handles part adding in a way that makes sense for barcode scanning as opposed to manually keying in the part number.  C9 will add one onto the invoice straight away. If part was already scanned, it will increment the quantity of that part.

To enable this you need to configure transmission of STX  on your barcode scanner. Your barcode also requires transmission of either ETX or a enter key at end of the barcode scan.  Generally recommend enter key though there are some circumstances where you may prefer ETX. This cover enter key only, which generally barcode scanner will do out of the packaging anyway.

STX = Start transmission (0x0b Hex or Ctrl+B).

See your barcode user manual on how to do this. For example for the barcode scanner with model MJ-4209.  The user guide which you print out contains barcodes to scan to program the barcode scanner. So print this and scan the below codes to enable STX.

This assumes that the barcode scanner will transmit the following:  the STX, then the barcode then Enter key

C9 now includes modifications to more easily fulfill legislative obligations under the Anti SPAM act.

Essentially you are not allowed to send bulk emails or SMS without prior consent of recipients or some sort of well defined mechanism for allowing recipients to opt out of receiving such messages.

For notifications such as workshop service completion and spare parts order : these are considered alerts and are exempt from such considerations.

Bulk SMS notifications sent via miner though are subject to this law.  C9 now includes the following changes:

• Recipients to sms messages sent via Miner can now respond to those messages with 'STOP'. This will automatically prevent such users from receiving similar messages again.  STOP only applies to miner type SMS messages.  Such customers will still continue to receive alerts such as spare parts orders, but they will no longer receive miner based SMS messages when they opt out.

• The SMS you compose must contain words such as 'Reply STOP to Opt-Out' or something similar.  C9 will not allow you to send an SMS unless these (or similar words) are included in your SMS message.

Bulk Email is also subject to this law, though there are no changes yet to c9 to help/enforce this. It is up to you to include a such a notification in your bulk emails and take action. C9 customers have a marketing flag which you can toggle in response to requests to opt out of bulk emails (and SMS).

Note that the nature of these recent c9 changes require updates to your c9.  Dealers that do not to update c9 will find that SMS notification facilities in their old version of c9 have been heavily throttled back with strict constraints on how many SMS messages they can send a minute.  Update c9 to get unthrottled SMS capabilities that provides mechanisms to allow you to more easily comply with anti-SPAM legislation.

We will be trialing a new SMS partner during the coming weeks.  C9's technical systems have now been modified so it can route SMS to two different providers. We will run them head to head and measure performance of them both.  There have been some lingering concerns that reliability of SMS delivery for our existing provider is not where it should be. This trial will allow us to see if this is indeed the case and if we can improve upon reliability.

It is expected that a percentage of SMS messages will fail : because of wrong/invalid number.  Also it is expected at a percentage of SMS will not be receipted because although the number is valid the phone is switched off or out of service range for an extended duration.  The figures for our deliveries in past 12 months seems typical for delivery rates, though it never hurts to try and improve.

Figures around 96/97% seem fairly typical based on my prior professional experience in mobile telephony.  December is low possibly because lots of dealers did SMS based compaigns to their customer database.  Campaigns are expected to to yield lower success rates compared to say workshop service/parts order notifications as you'd expect the quality/accuracy of your phone number database for active customers waiting for notification to be much higher than a database that include old customer contact details.

Also 2013 figures are quite good compared to previous years figures suggesting that our existing SMS provider has made steady improvements to their infrastructure, particularly with unreceipted messages. We also made changes to our own systems to more thoroughly search for delivery receipts for messages which have not been properly receipted to help bring unknown % rate down.

Still we will try and see if a new provider improves things for us and work with the best.  We can now retain two different providers for redundancy.

Note that c9 only bills for successful SMS deliveries. A successful SMS is an SMS that is receipted by the mobile phone. A receipt is a signal/notification sent from the mobile handset back to us where the phone acknowledges receipt of the SMS. It is possible that a handset will receive an SMS correctly but the receipt does not make it back to us.  For these SMS's  c9 errs on the assumption the phone did not receive the SMS and dealers are not billed for these.

This morning we have commissioned more web database servers.

The servers provide us with more storage capacity and more redundancy.

Also you should notice that  web page load times feel more responsive especially parts diagrams should now feel near instantaneous.  Previously load times were approx 1 second to load a parts diagram onto the screen.  Load times are now several times quicker than this.  There are further things we will be doing over the coming weeks to improve this even more.

Parts Magician queries can now provide info for stock availability for dealers who are offline.

So when you send a parts magician request, other dealers do not need to be online in order for that request to be instantly answered.

The system only works for c9 dealers that use c9's online backup service.

The best of both worlds : the accuracy/relevancy of realtime enquiries combined with the availability of a 24x7 database

C9 has provided the industry online OEM diagrams and shopping since 2011.  We now have over 20 dealers running OEM shopping websites with OEM parts from over a dozen different manufacturers. C9 is, by a huge margin, the market leader in providing modern technology designed for a modern retail environment in the motorcycle industry.

Recently Suzuki Australia has began to offer their own solution, in conjunction with a 3rd party web site designer Fox Digital Web, giving dealers more choice for online EPC.    A dealer can assess which solution they feel works best for them.  We believe that c9's solution is a better solution for dealers.  Some of the reasons why we believe our offering is best:

1. Price:  A small setup and training fee ($400) and an ongoing cost of $50 a month
2. Delivery:  Can be setup very quickly, especially if you just want to include OEM diagrams on an existing website.  The system can be up and running in a few hours
3. Features:   Diagrams are hotspotted so users can click on the diagram to select items.  Shopping is integrated into the c9 dealer system so orders appear in c9's point of sale instantaneously.  Pricing and available quantity information is integrated and real-time up to date.  Change a price in your DMS and it automatically instantly updates the price on the website.  C9 website also allows you to list accessories, bikes and other website content.
4. Quality and Relevance:  C9 includes all models available from the dealers EPC resource, including 2013 and at time of writing some 2014 models.  As at time of writing,  Suzuki has a much shorter listing of 2013 models though they are slowly completing the list.
5. Other Suppliers: Include other diagrams from other suppliers on your website without additional cost

Parts Magician is a service created 9 years ago to allow motorcycle dealers query one another for obscure parts to help reduce dead stock.

The service was moderately successful, but not nearly as successful as we originally hoped.  Though in the last 18 months two distinct things have happened that have triggered a dramatic increase in usage and in particular have delivered alot of value to c9 customers. (Parts magician is not just a c9 product BTW, it is used by many dealers that do not use c9 as their DMS).

• Improved integration into the c9 DMS means that with a single button press (F12) in point of sale you can check query a list of other dealers who stock the item being queried
• Automated integration into distributor inventory systems (only Butmac (KTM + Husaberg) and McLeods at this time).

Parts Magician was originally designed on an open architecture and openly encouraged all DMS vendors to provide automated integration because we recognized early on that this is a key ingredient for success.  No DMS vendor took up the offer.

An important recent learning which we did not realise then is that the integration needs to connect all the way into actual point of sale; a single button press provides instantaneous Australia wide query.

Other organisations, a car industry consortium, whose name I've long forgotten, offered alternative approaches though their technology was extremely cumbersome, complex and created risky network security profiles for dealers also tried and failed.  Some suppliers have tried web based upload and query solutions with very limited success.

It is heartening to see that 9 years on, parts magician over the past 18 months has finally unlocked a means to significantly increase it's value to those who use it.

Options feasibly exist for us to build further on parts magician technology to include modernised integration techniques (i.e. web services), and to build upon recent learnings.