Wireless PDA solution from CGI gives GreenLeaf Auto's buyers quick and easy remote access to critical decision-support data

"CGI's innovative use of wireless technology is providing a big payback for GreenLeaf. In addition to drastically reducing our operating costs and making it much easier for our buyers to do their jobs, the new system has significantly enhanced our competitiveness."

Scott Spiek, CIO, GreenLeaf Auto

The Client
Founded in 1999 as part of the Ford Motor Company, and later spun off as a private company, GreenLeaf Auto provides high-quality recycled and reclaimed original equipment manufacturer (OEM) auto parts to auto mechanics and body shops throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. GreenLeaf is headquartered in Arlington, Texas and operates 26 of the largest auto parts recycling and reclamation facilities in the industry. With more than two million parts in stock for all makes and models of domestic and foreign vehicles, GreenLeaf is the world's largest supplier of exclusively OEM recycled and overrun original manufacturers' parts.

The Challenge
GreenLeaf's business is based on buying wrecked cars – vehicles designated by insurance companies as "non-drivable" – and reclaiming and recycling the usable, in-demand parts. These vehicles are bought by 50 or so experienced GreenLeaf buyers at auctions taking place throughout the U.S.A. The parts are primarily sold to mechanical repair and body shops encouraged by insurance companies to keep repair costs down by using recycled OEM parts, a far cheaper approach than buying brand new OEM parts from auto parts manufacturers.

The Pinnacle™ auto parts dismantling and recycling application from Actual Systems of America – an 'ERP' for the auto parts recycling industry – is used by GreenLeaf as a decision support system to manage the buying and selling of parts and to store and manage large amounts of data related to auto parts, including sales and demand data. GreenLeaf buyers use special application software, called PinPad, running on notebook PCs to connect the Pinnacle system remotely from the field to input data on what vehicles are being auctioned and what parts appear to be salvageable; and to get information back from the system on which parts are in demand and the maximum amount they should bid for each particular vehicle.

These notebook PCs were bulky and heavy however, and often suffered from poor battery life, so it was not always convenient for buyers to drag them around to the auctions. As a result, auction preview information – such as year, make, model and condition of the vehicles for sale – being gathered by buyers wasn't always captured electronically for uploading to the Pinnacle system. And because the notebooks didn't have wireless capability and it wasn't always convenient for buyers to return to their hotel rooms twice a day to use dial-up to access the Pinnacle system, the database was not always kept up to date with the latest information on vehicles bought and parts available for re-sale.

To get around these problems, the buyers were phoning a central GreenLeaf Call Center, where operators would take the preview and post-sale information over the phone and enter it into the system. Before long however, GreenLeaf found itself with a 20-person Call Center that existed for the sole purpose of handling the high volume of calls from all the buyers and enforcing the process of keeping the system up to date with current buying information. A more-efficient and less-costly approach was clearly needed.

The Strategy
"We decided that some form of wireless solution would make it easier for the buyers to access the Pinnacle system directly, and eliminate the need for the Call Center," says Scott Spiek, CIO at GreenLeaf Auto. "We turned to CGI for help because they had been doing our contract development work, including a recently completed project to consolidate the data from our five regional Pinnacle systems into a single, central datamart," adds Spiek.

CGI developed a wireless decision support solution for GreenLeaf consisting of three components:

• Modifying the decision support 'buying algorithm' that extracts and analyses data from the Pinnacle database to develop bid recommendations for the buyers;
• A Web-based mobile application, to replace the previous PinPad application, that enables GreenLeaf to present data and the bid recommendations directly to buyers via wireless PDAs (personal digital assistant); and
• Data synchronization capability that takes data coming back from the buyers via the wireless PDAs and uploads it into the Pinnacle system to update the database.

"Offshoring can be either a success or a failure; but due to the CGI Project Manager, who orchestrated a flawless effort, the offshore development approach was just what we needed for this project and the aggressive, fixed-price contract fit our budget," enthuses Spiek.

While the team was developing the Web application, GreenLeaf was still evaluating which mobile devices to purchase for its buyers, and depending on which wireless carrier they used in different parts of the country, different types of PDAs might be involved. To ensure the application was device independent, the CGI team used the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit, which defines the framework and the user interface for a mobile Web application so that it will be compatible with any mobile device.

The biggest challenge to overcome, however, was coping with the PDA screen size, which is much smaller than on the notebook PCs the buyers had previously been using. In order not to degrade the user experience, some unique interface design effort was required on the part of CGI to collapse the presentation screen size and re-map the information onto the smaller PDA screen – while ensuring that the most relevant data was readily available to the buyers. Even though the application functionality was the same as before, many of the buyers had never used handheld devices, and the smaller screens and stylus took some getting used to.

Before rolling out the new system, a pilot test conducted with five remote buyers enabled GreenLeaf to work out problems associated with selecting the best wireless service provider in each region of the country and gave CGI a chance to resolve any software problems.

Commenting on the added benefits of the pilot test, GreenLeaf's Scott Spiek adds, "the CGI folks made good use of real feedback from the users to continue the process of collapsing the presentation screen size and further improving the user interface."

The Technology

• Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit & Visual Studio .NET
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft PocketPC operating system
• Various vendors' wireless PDA devices
• Various vendors' wireless telecom services

The Results
Whether it's in the blazing heat of summer or the deep cold of winter; in the upper reaches of Washington state or the southern tip of Florida; GreenLeaf's new wireless decision support tool gives buyers clomping around the auto auction yards of America much more convenient and faster access to accurate, timely data.

"Through CGI's development efforts, our new decision support algorithm meets our needs far better than the previous one," says GreenLeaf's Spiek; "and with buyers using their new wireless PDAs to update the database on a more consistent basis, we're now working with more accurate and current sales and demand better," he adds.

Having access to better data and more functionality gives buyers better control over the buying process, enabling them to do their jobs more effectively and make better deals, which in turn produces better financial results for GreenLeaf. And because the PDAs enable buyers to access and upload decision support data directly, GreenLeaf expects to eliminate more than half of its Call Center positions, saving the company a significant amount of ongoing operational expense.

Commenting on future opportunities, Scott Spiek speculates, "with CGI's continued support, and the experience provided by this project, we now have a foundation for bringing wireless technology into a number of other application areas, such as the inventory system we use at our recycling facilities to manage the dismantling of the cars.

"Even though GreenLeaf is one of only two national companies in this business, we still need to stay effective and competitive. By enabling us to move our application from an environment where some buyers used the call center, some used notebook PCs and others used nothing at all, to an environment in which all buyers work on a common wireless platform, CGI has helped us gain significant efficiencies and reduce our call center staff, providing an immediate ROI," comments Scott Spiek on the project overall. "CGI was wonderful to work with. The original release was scoped and delivered correctly and on time, and the subsequent releases have added additional productivity we never imagined when we first started," he concludes.