As one of the top 10 car manufacturers in the world Nissan is part of a highly competitive industry.  Margins are constantly declining as companies find new ways to gain competitive advantages and reduce their overhead.  Nissan's National Sales Company in Greece, Nic. J. Theocarakis S.A., with 100+ dealerships is no exception, and the employees of Nissan Greece are always looking for ways to reduce costs.

Nissan Greece’s Challenge:Simplify Access to Information

Nissan Greece’s warehouse personnel are required to provide support to dealers who call with questions regarding their orders and for information about spare parts availability.  Office administrators were spending a lot of time helping warehouse personnel to locate information regarding dealers’ telephone numbers, contact people, zip codes, etc.  Such inefficient communications were making dealer support a very costly endeavor.

To compound the problem, office administrators often found themselves answering the same questions over and over again.

Michalis Moraitis, head of Nissan Greece's Information System department, knew there must be a way to increase efficiency and improve service.Michalis decided the solution lay in leveraging their existing Sametime enterprise IM environment.

Instant Solution:Instant Agent Framework

• Wizard-like Configuration:  Build bots in minutes - no programming experience required.
• Built-in Logging:  See which bots are being used, when, and by whom.
• Flexible Queries:  Query Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, and other data sources supported by Microsoft's ADO.
• No Client Installation:  Users already have Sametime clients on their desktops - that is all they need to access bots created by Instant Agent Framework.
• Mobile Access:Available from mobile devices such as PDAs, or cell phones.
• Automatic Sorting:Result sets are automatically sorted and grouped into page sets for quick navigation.
• "Who Can See":  Easily configure a 'who can see' list to control access to the bot.
• Highly Configurable:  Easily configure the text resources, field layouts, and database queries.
• No Per Bot Fee:  Design and run as many bots as you need.
• Increase Employee Productivity:  Provide your employees with quick access to important information they need to do their jobs effectively.
• Query Without SQL Statements:  Easily develop a query against a single table without any SQL statements.
• Query With Custom SQL Statements:  Use your own SQL statements to develop more complex queries that access multiple tables.

The Results:  Instant Improvements in Efficiency and Customer Service

Instant Agent Framework was a perfect match for Nissan Greece, as it met all of Michalis Moraitis' requirements.  Bots created through Instant Agent Framework are able to perform a wide array of queries that give employees instant access to relevant information from Nissan's Domino databases.  And with the use of STlinks, customers can access bots through the Nissan Greece website.  Enabling people to quickly locate answers to common questions has vastly reduced the frequency of administrator-assisted inquiries.  Better yet, Nissan Greece’s IM bots were developed and deployed in as little as 20 minutes—with no complex programming.

“Employees quickly adopted the new system and found that it was a much more efficient means of accessing information,” says Michalis.  “And because we are able to track bot usage through Instant Agent Framework's logging and administrative tools, we can identify areas to improve our processes.”

“The bots we’ve created with Instant Agent Framework have vastly reduced both telephone traffic and the time our staff spend looking up—or waiting for—information,” continues Michalis.  “Everything is now readily available to all employees and customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.”