Study Phase

In 2002, the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) Board assigned a dedicated team to examine the feasibility of a common data transfer standard that could be used by business system vendors, OEMs, aftermarket and allied trades companies to accommodate all of their various divisions such as auto, marine, snowmobile, outdoor power, etc.

Major manufacturers including BMW, Honda, Kawasaki, KTM, Suzuki, and Yamaha funded a six-month study to document the current processes for transferring business transaction data between dealers and suppliers. In addition, the study aimed to identify any technical challenges or political barriers and prepare a model that would support adoption and address change management.

The study team conducted in-person interviews with industry executives at OEMs, dealer service providers (DSPs), and aftermarket companies. Also, the study team conducted a survey of 150 dealers and reviewed empirical industry data. The team spent hours sitting with individual dealers to record the current processes being used to carry out business transactions, starting with parts related transactions.

Study results showed that the industry had no set transaction communication standards. It is not unusual for a dealer to carry several different brands and order from numerous distributors or sources. A dealer sending an order to different suppliers has to know the method and file format each supplier requires to receive their order. There are also a number of suppliers that take fax orders or phone orders. The dealer must know which method and format each individual supplier expects. Once the supplier processes the order, any information that needs to go back into the dealer's business management system (such as "part # 0652 is backordered") has to be keyed in by hand. It became obvious that dealers lose a lot of time managing the transfer of data. Dealers must transmit business data to each supplier using a different method. It was estimated that a communications standard would save the total industry many millions of dollars per year in areas related to:

• Increases in order accuracy
• Order processing efficiency
• Training efficiency
• Systems development
• Sales force effectiveness
• Systems support
• Directed IT planning

Analysis and Design Phase

MIC members agreed that working with the Standards in Technology for Automotive Retail (STAR) organization would allow us to adopt a standard that was compliant with methods used by some of their auto divisions. STAR standards support a set of options for transport, security and data formats including DTS flat files, XML, ebXML, and Web services. Based on the review of options available in STAR standards and an assessment of the current environment in the Powersports industry, the study team recommended an approach that used Web-services to connect dealers and suppliers. This architectural approach allows OEMs, aftermarket companies and dealer service providers (DSPs) to maintain their core, proprietary applications for processing data. Their only requirement will be to transform data to standard STAR XML documents and use the standard transport to exchange the document with other business partners.

MIC's PSP team documented pros and cons for each of the choices STAR supports for transport, security, authentication, routing, etc. and recommended a narrowed version of STAR for the Powersports industry. This set of specifications is referred to as Partners Standard Protocol (PSP).

Proof of Concept

The next stage of development involved a proof of concept (POC). An important requirement for the standard was that dealers must be able to communicate directly with suppliers in real time. Two OEMs, Honda and Kawasaki, and two dealer service providers (DSPs), ADP Lightspeed and MIC Systems/Brainstorm participated in the initial POC. The POC participants agreed on a specific method for transport, security, and authentication. Honda created and hosted a PSP defined Web service and Kawasaki used a Web service that MIC Systems temporarily hosted to demonstrate that an intermediary could be used. Each of the DSPs wrote code to route, deliver, and transform their current parts order formats into a standard XML parts order document. In 2003, two demonstrations were conducted onsite at dealerships in Corona, California and Denver, Colorado. As part of the demonstration, dealers created a parts order using their current dealership management system (DMS) and went through the steps required to transmit an order to Honda and Kawasaki. Also the same orders were sent using a test version of their dealership management system (DMS) that incorporated PSP.

Parts Order Example:

PSP Benefits:

• The dealer NEVER left their dealership management system (DMS)
• The backorder information AUTOMATICALLY POSTED back to the DMS
• The ordering process was approximately SIX TIMES faster using PSP
• Changes to supplier business rules could be AUTOMATICALLY UPDATED in the DMS

Results from the POC showed:

• The dealership management systems used the same code base to send the order to Honda and Kawasaki
• The suppliers could host one Web service that was used by both dealership management systems
• The Web service could be hosted by the supplier (Honda) or by an intermediary (for example, the Kawasaki Web service was temporarily hosted by MIC)
• Messages could be routed to the correct supplier using the PSP UDDI registry

The PSP team recognized that even though standard file structures can be used, supplier specific requirements for exchanging data exist. For example, different suppliers:

• Do or do not take credit cards
• May use particular shipping carriers or
• Sometimes accept a minimum or maximum number of order lines

In order to accommodate these supplier specific business rules, the PSP team defined a standard method for dealer service providers (DSPs) to discover these rules and enable them to automate changes to their software interface. This facilitates validation of the data before it is sent to the supplier.

As part of an additional POC, c-Systems Software and Kawasaki wrote proofs to demonstrate business rules at an MIC Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting. When Kawasaki changed the list of shipping carriers at their location, the c-Systems Software dealer's interface immediately displayed the new carrier in the list.

At the end of May 2005, the MIC Board of Directors approved funding for early adopter implementation feedback and creation of guidelines, sample code, and other support materials to facilitate adoption of PSP. In order to minimize the need for point-to-point testing, MIC built services to test and certify PSP adopters. These support activities provide quality assurance for PSP.