eContracting represents a fundamental business change that will significantly impact your business. Is your organization ready to implement eContracting? Through a structured approach, Emercent Solutions will assist you in assessing your organization's readiness to align you for success. Emercent will examine two fundamental components:

Organizational Readiness: We will examine your people, processes and your infrastructure to determine what gaps may exist. Specifically, we will examine your marketing, credit, funding, dealer service departments and those applicable processes and support infrastructure and compare these to the fundamental requirements necessary to implement an eContracting system of your choice. Special focus will be placed upon the efficiency and effectiveness of your processes and tools, the impact of change, and dealer readiness.

Technical Readiness: We will examine your systems, your infrastructure and your data to determine what gaps may exist. Specifically, we will examine program & pricing, credit, funding, vehicle and dealer systems and data and compare these to the fundamental requirements necessary to implement an eContracting system of your choice. Special focus will be placed upon the extensibility of your business rules, centralized data, and open system architecture.

The output of these two assessments will be a readiness document that summarizes current state, the future state required based upon our proprietary industry knowledge and best practices, gaps that exist and recommendations to close these gaps.

To champion an eContracting initiative and obtain sponsorship, a solid business case needs to be created. Emercent Solutions will work closely with you to build a business case that enables your organization to obtain approval on the initiative by providing executive management with costs, returns, and the enterprise scope. By working with project sponsors, Emercent will define the vision and scope of the initiative, define dependencies and initial scope, identify preliminary impacts and costs, and define potential returns. This information can be packaged into a board presentation as well.

Before any tool is implemented, it is important to define the Product Strategy for eContracting. This strategy includes your organization's short and long term goals for the solution, prioritized features, target audience limitations and expectations, roll out & promotion, product releases, benefits & impacts and a phased product plan. The definition of the product strategy for eContracting ensures that the initiative is aligned with your business goals, is accepted by your dealers, and minimizes risk in implementation. Through Emercent's eContracting and industry knowledge and structured approach, we can deliver a cost-effective strategy that provides the roadmap for the implementation.

Defining the tactical implementation plan for a large initiative is always challenging. Adding the significant organizational, technical and dealer impacts makes this plan even more critical. The project strategy defines your release strategy, your project organization, hierarchy, roles and responsibilities, your staffing / partnering approaches, infrastructure and technical approaches, implementation standards, project management tools, processes and policies (if necessary), detailed effort estimates, costs and timelines, dependencies, critical success factors and metrics, and communication approach. All of these upstream plans will result in smoother project implementations, on time / on budget delivery, reduced costly downstream issues, and clearly set executive management expectations. Emercent has years of experience developing project strategies - specifically for high risk, high visibility, multi-phase initiatives. And, with our strong industry expertise and specific eContracting tool knowledge, we can ensure your organization delivers its plans.

Before a tool can be chosen, it is important that you develop your requirements. These should include functional requirements (like the ability to modify a contract prior to submission) as well as non-functional requirements (like the availability of the system and its uptime.) Only by defining your organization's requirements for eContracting can you truly ensure you are selecting a tool that meets your short and long term needs and you are making a low risk, high value decision that meets everyone's expectations. Emercent will use their structured methodology to gather necessary information in an efficient accurate manner. By leading JAD sessions, providing insight into industry best practices, interviewing key subject matter experts to develop your requirements, collecting all requirements and working closely to prioritize them, Emercent analysts can package requirements into a document that is easily understood, providing a foundation for the project.

With so many options to choose from, how can you ensure that the tool you select can meet your short and long term needs in the most cost-efficient manner possible? Emercent Solutions will utilize its proven vendor review and selection process to help you make this career-building decision. Emercent will assist in the prioritization of requirements and review criteria, the creation of a weighted review matrix, the identification of appropriate tools, creation of an RFP and collection of results, coordinated vendor presentations and a final decision complete with financial impact and return.

After a tool is selected, a flurry of activity ensues. The organization must be made ready to support the changed processes and dealer expectations, the implementation of the tool must be coordinated with marketing, IT, dealer services, credit and funding, any modifications required must be performed and tested, the changes processes and systems must be fully tested end to end, changes will need to occur within your systems, data and infrastructure, the tool must be integrated with many of your technical systems including credit, funding, portfolio management, pricing and vehicle, the new offering must be promoted and rolled out to a pilot group as well as the organization, feedback must be gathered, and then, the new offering can be fully rolled out. Acceptance at an organizational, technical and dealer level is key to eContracting's success. With so many things to think about and manage, how can you ensure you deliver this successfully without consuming your critical resources and missing key steps? By utilizing an organization who has done this before. Emercent has managed full implementation efforts end-to-end, not to mention the complete development of an eContracting tool. We can bring this knowledge, our structured processes and tools, and our methodology into your environment to ensure you deliver this high-visibility initiative successfully as well.

Offering eContracting to your dealers requires integration between your eContracting tool and potentially your pricing (bulletins), loan origination (credit application), funding, vehicle information, portfolio management and imaging systems. Electronic data must be passed from these systems to your dealer facing eContracting system and from this system back into your organization's systems. This electronic exchange must occur real-time, must be reliable, and also, must be consistent with your organization's business rules and processes. Understandably, before data is inserted directly into your systems, it must be validated to ensure accuracy, completeness, and lack of redundancy. Additionally, your organization will need to provide vehicle, dealer, credit, funding, pricing, and customer data in a specified manner to your provider. It is critical that all of this occur in an automated manner that is auditable, managed and secure. Integration is a considerable portion of the implementation effort - and possesses significant technical challenges. Understanding potential roadblocks, security concerns, risk, and quickly changing compliance can speed your integration process. By utilizing a proven framework and extensive domain expertise, Emercent can ensure your organization's integration is compliant, secure, cost-effective and fast. Emercent analyzes all points of integration, identifies options, works with your organization to determine the most efficient approach, gathers requirements, builds/leverages integration components and fully tests the integration - all with an eye to reduced maintenance costs and future reusability.

The most challenging integration effort with an eContracting solution and your system is in the area of funding. Every organization's business rules differ when it comes to funding deals particularly when you consider the complexities different products and different states adds to the process. Most of these rules exist in your funder's heads during the funding process and some are even judgment calls. To automate the funding process and accept eContracting data, this funding decisioning and validation process must be automated as well. Contracts must be passed through a Business Rule Engine that applies these validations, calculations and rules to the contract data, ensuring a contract meets all of your organization's requirements and funding validations. Think of it as an extension of your funding department's staff; now your organization can spend its time managing exceptions, rather than validating contract data. Emercent has developed a business rule engine framework that allows configurations specific to your environment. This engine then sits between your eContracting tool and your funding system, ensuring you are automatically booking the deals - saving you time and money and increasing dealer satisfaction - without incurring any additional risk.

Implementing an eContracting solution represents a significant change upon your organization's processes and team - changes that are most successful when they are properly communicated and managed. eContracting represents the ability to refine your funding and contracting processes, streamline your organization, and gain operational efficiencies. It also introduces new processes, tools, communication and approaches requiring different skill sets, different systems and training. To fully gain the benefits of an eContracting solution, it is critical that your organization re-engineer its processes. Through strong process knowledge, eContracting tool experience, and domain expertise, Emercent can help you optimize your processes and your team, define new approaches and re-engineer your existing infrastructure of support. Emercent performs a process and team assessment, compares this against industry best practices and eContracting implications, provides recommendations regarding optimization, then works closely to champion change and implement efficiencies.