With so much activity and options in the marketplace, there is no reason to "re-invent the wheel" - instead, benchmarking is utilized to gain valuable insight. Through benchmarking, remarketing teams learn from their competitors' mistakes and successes and ensure they are not only keeping up with the competition's solutions and products, but are indeed leap-frogging them. Our clients maximize valuable time by not attempting to reinvent what is already tried and true. It also allows them to identify key areas for further differentiation.

Emercent Solutions assists organizations in determining best practices, industry trends, and how each organization compares to its competitors.

Benefits of a benchmarking initiative, at a high level, are:

• Gain insight into how competitors operate.
  
  
• Identify best practices.
  
  
• Determine innovative approaches and technologies.
  
  
• Identify existing or potential efficiencies and deficiencies.
  
  
• Collect an unbiased evaluation of dealer and customer satisfaction.
  
  
• Inventory tools or systems that are used in remarketing processes.

With so many opportunities in the market to focus upon, restricted operational budgets, and a limit upon the amount of change an organization can handle, it is critical to identify the fundamental areas of focus and to prioritize remarketing initiatives in that context. In response to a dynamic market environment, increased competition, and a desire to take advantage of technological developments within the remarketing space, many organizations have defined the need to create a strategic plan. Emercent has significant experience defining these types of strategies, which include short- and long-term objectives for optimizing technology utilization, leveraging existing systems and infrastructure, and implementing cost-effective changes for the future.

A Remarketing Project Portfolio Strategy answers: What projects will the remarketing group focus on? What infrastructure is required to support these? How do the project support the broader organizational goals? What are the costs, efforts, complexities, and dependencies of each of these initiatives? What is the high-level scope of each?

Initiatives and approaches identified in the Remarketing Project Portfolio Strategy are designed to:

• Support corporate goals - including a focus on customer loyalty, vehicle sales, and brand strength.
  
  
• Integrate industry best practices.
  
  
• Streamline and synchronize communication channels - dealer and customer.
  
  
• Heighten connection and relationship with dealers.
  
  
• Create internal efficiencies by automating core processes.
  
  
• Identify specific initiatives that are both feasible and desirable.
  
  
• Centralize data as needed for insights and analytics.
  
  
• Create a reasonable plan for risk averse, return maximization.

New remarketing opportunities could represent fundamental changes that significantly impact business operations. The question is: Is the business ready? Through a structured approach, Emercent Solutions assists organizations in assessing their readiness and in aligning for success. Emercent examines two fundamental components:

Organizational Readiness: Emercent examines people, processes and infrastructure to determine what gaps may exist. Specifically, we examine remarketing, end of lease, auction, and field and dealer service departments to compare these to the fundamental requirements necessary to implement a new remarketing opportunity - from selling vehicles upstream to customer relationship management (CRM). Special focus is placed upon the efficiency and effectiveness of the client's processes and tools, the impact of change, and internal and external readiness.

Technical Readiness: Emercent examines systems, infrastructure, and data to determine what gaps may exist. Specifically, we examine remarketing, asset management, auction, vehicle, and dealer systems, as well as the data specific to these systems, in order to compare these to the fundamental requirements necessary to implement a new remarketing solution - from managing vehicles by exception with a new asset-management system to directly integrating with all players in the value chain. Special focus is placed upon the extensibility of business rules, centralized data, and an open system architecture.

The output of these two assessments is a readiness document that summarizes current state, future state required (based upon Emercent's proprietary industry knowledge and best practices), gaps that exist, and recommendations to close these gaps. By engaging in a readiness assessment prior to considerable expenditure on a new process or system, our clients are assured to have a well-thought approach that aligns with the organization's needs and capabilities.

To champion a new remarketing initiative and obtain sponsorship, a solid business case needs to be created. Emercent works closely remarketing departments to build a business cases that enables approval on the initiative by providing executive management with costs, returns, and the enterprise scope and perspective. By working with project sponsors, Emercent defines the vision and scope of the initiative, identifies dependencies and initial scope, estimates preliminary impacts and costs, and calculates potential returns. This information is frequently packaged into board presentations as part of strategic planning.

Before any solution is implemented, it is important to define a Product Strategy. A product in this case might be as far-reaching as an enterprise-wise customer relationship management system, as highly visible as a Customer-Facing Remarketing Internet presence, or as innovative as a real-time digital dashboard of data insights and asset management.

In any of these cases, it's important to define up-front and on paper exactly what is required of the solution, what is expected to be achieved, and how the solution would be rolled out - before significant investment is made. A Product Strategy answers the questions: What specific features and platforms will be included? How will requirements be phased? What are the long-term considerations in terms of market and technology? How does this product intersect with other enterprise initiatives?

Defining a Product Strategy ensures that the initiative:

• is aligned with business goals.
  
  
• is accepted by dealers.
  
  
• customers as well as internal users.
  
  
• is built to support future expansion with limited investment and rework.
  
  
• minimizes risk in implementation.
  

Through Emercent's remarketing and technical knowledge combined with our structured Product Strategy development approach, we are able to deliver cost-effective Product Strategies that provide the roadmap for the future - both short and long term.

A typical Product Strategy includes:

• short- and long-term goals for the solution
  
  
• prioritized features
  
  
• target audience limitations and expectations
  
  
• rollout and promotion plans
  
  
• product releases
  
  
• benefits and impacts
  
  
• phased product plan
  

By focusing on the Product Strategy, an organization is able fully define the product's value from the start, prior to committing any resources. Emercent's clients use the Product Strategy to guide and direct them throughout a solution's tenure in the organization. The strategy serves as an orientation, guidebook, roadmap, and rationale that has purpose and use in the short and long term.

Defining the tactical implementation plan for a large initiative is always challenging. The addition of significant organizational, technical, customer and dealer impacts makes this plan even more critical. As a natural off-shoot of the full-scale Product Approach, the Project Approach then defines the tactical plan in answering:

• How will the projects be run? Processes? PM tools? Standards?
  
  
• What are the specific requirements and scope of this release?
  
  
• How will the project be approached from a technical perspective?
  
  
• Who are the resources?
  
  
• What are the detailed costs and timelines for the specific release?
  
  
• What are the risks, dependencies, and mitigation plans?
  

All of these upstream plans result in smoother project implementations, on time / on budget delivery, reduced costly downstream issues, and clearly set executive management expectations.

Project Strategies are fundamental component of Emercent's proven project-management methodology. Emercent has years of experience developing Project Strategies - specifically for high-risk, high-visibility, multi-phase initiatives. And, with strong industry expertise and specific remarketing tool knowledge, we can ensure our clients deliver to their plans.

Before a tool, software product, or solution can be chosen or built, it is important that requirements are defined. These requirements should include functional requirements (like the ability to place a vehicle on the block in an online auction) as well as non-functional requirements (like the availability of the system and its uptime). Only by defining the organization's requirements for a given end-of-lease/remarketing solution can it be truly ensured that the selected tool will meets short- and long-term needs and it is a low risk, high-value decision that meets everyone's expectations. Emercent uses a 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 requirements, collecting all requirements, and working closely to prioritize them, Emercent analysts package requirements into a document that is easily understood - a document that provides a foundation for the project.

With so many options to choose from, how can it be ensured that the selected tool will meet short- and long-term needs in the most cost-efficient manner possible? Emercent Solutions utilizes its proven vendor review and selection process to help make these critical decisions.

In a typical vendor review engagement Emercent facilitates:

• prioritization of requirements and review criteria
  
  
• creation of a weighted review matrix
  
  
• identification of appropriate tools
  
  
• creation of an RFP and collection of results
  
  
• vendor presentations
  
  
• final decision complete with financial impact and return
  

Emercent assists with buy vs. build analysis, as well, determining if it makes sense for an organization - from a total cost of ownership perspective - to build a solution rather than purchase software. Often times, depending on the area of focus and the specific organizational requirements, it may be more feasible to build the solution, rather than purchase it. Sometimes, no solutions are available that meet the requirements, and other times, building the solution may simply be more cost effective or meet fundamental non-functional requirements like security and data sharing policies. Well-defined, prioritized functional and non-functional requirements are paramount to this process' success.

When an organization is already underway with a product or project, oftentimes it is difficult to assess the health of the initiative. In many cases it is simply good practice to obtain a third-party evaluation.

Benefits of having a third party evaluate a specific project are:

• Keeping the big picture in the forefront
  
  
• Ensuring innovation from others in the marketplace is constantly introduced
  
  
• Making sure expenditures are aligning with plans
  
  
• Learning from industry and IT best practices
  

On a large-scale, longer-term initiative, keeping an eye to the benefits above is very challenging - particularly since it is unlikely that the organization has historical experience implementing or integrating the specific solution into its environment.

Leveraging Emercent's experience building and implementing solutions that run remarketing processes makes good business sense. Emercent assesses projects that are in any phase of the lifecycle, identifies potential areas of risk and concern, determines suggested mitigation plans, and ensures that initiatives are well-aligned for success. Within three to four weeks, Emercent performs a project assessment by looking at the four key areas to a project's success: Business Factors, Product Factors, Project Management Factors, and Technology Factors.

Once a project has been initiated, a team constructed, and a product or vendor selected, a flurry of activity ensues. The organization must be made ready to support changed processes, leverage new opportunities, and meet customer/dealer expectations while ensuring a seamless transition. The implementation of the initiative must be coordinated with fundamental business units including marketing, end of lease, remarketing, dealer services, IT, as well as partners such as auctions, transportation companies, and inspection companies. Process and system changes must be well documented, fully approved, and feasible before development even begins. These same changes may need integration with the technical systems that run credit, funding, customer service, and pricing; and will need to be well coordinated and then thoroughly tested. Not to mention that acceptance at an organizational, technical, customer, vendor, and dealer level is absolutely key to success.

With so many things to think about and manage, how will the project best be delivered without consuming critical resources and missing key steps? The answer is simple: The project will best be delivered by utilizing an organization who has done it before. Emercent has managed full implementation efforts end-to-end, as well as the complete development of remarketing tools. We bring this knowledge, our structured processes and tools, and our methodology into client environment to ensure they deliver high-visibility initiatives successfully.

Offering new solutions to internal employees, dealers, and customers oftentimes requires integration between new tool/process and existing internal systems - pricing (bulletins), loan origination (credit application), funding, vehicle information, portfolio management, dealer, A/R, auction, asset management and/or imaging systems. Electronic data must be passed from these systems to dealer-, employee-, and customer-facing systems and from these back into the organization. This electronic exchange must occur real-time, must be reliable, and also, must be consistent with business rules and processes. Before data is inserted directly into operational systems, it must be validated to ensure accuracy, completeness, and lack of redundancy. Additionally, the organization may need to provide vehicle, dealer, portfolio, pricing, and customer data in a specified, centralized manner to a provider. It is critical that all of this occur in an automated manner that is auditable, managed, and secure.

Integration is a many times considerable portion of an implementation effort - and possesses significant technical challenges. Understanding potential roadblocks, security concerns, risk, and quickly changing compliance can speed the integration process.

By utilizing a proven framework and extensive domain expertise, Emercent ensures that our clients' 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. Data centralization from a customer, dealer, portfolio, and vehicle perspective are all areas that Emercent has a significant amount of experience.

An organization's data is one of its most valuable assets. Gaining critical business insights by harvesting data intelligence allows organizations to make critical decisions at market speed. Given the disparity of internal systems, as well as the amount of external data that exists, most organizations do not have all the information necessary to make educated decisions focused on maximizing profit while managing the portfolio at both a micro and macro level. And, realizing the complexity of the market that is impacted significantly by manufacturer incentives, new model launches, pricing, residual-value setting, and even dealer inventory, the ability to analyze historical data becomes even more valuable.

Emercent's business intelligence services improve decision-making by allowing consigners to: determine if the vehicle should be sold (as well as when and for how much) to the lessee and dealer, determine how and when to sell the vehicle, assign to auction, profile dealers and attain the right audience for open and closed sales, set floor prices, make reconditioning decisions, determine residual values, track assets through the process, and manage exceptions. Data from external purchased sources, historical internal data, and data from partners, when integrated and analyzed in an automated manner, are all used to maximize opportunities and manage the portfolio.

Implementing a new Remarketing solution (strategy, processes, or software) means a significant change upon your organization - change that is most successful when properly communicated and managed. New strategies represent the ability to refine end-of-lease and disposal processes, streamline operations, and gain efficiencies. These changes may also introduce new processes, tools, communication and approaches requiring different skill sets, different systems, and training. To fully gain the benefits of a new solution, it is critical that our clients evaluate and re-engineer their processes as may be dictated by an evaluation of strategy, processes, technology, organizational, and cultural change.

Through strong process knowledge, remarketing tool experience, and domain expertise, Emercent helps clients optimize processes and teams, defines new approaches, and re-engineers existing infrastructure of support. Emercent performs a process and team assessment, compares this against industry best practices and Remarketing implications, provides recommendations regarding optimization, then works closely to champion change and implement efficiencies.