Case Study - Manufacturing

About Asbury Automotive

Asbury Automotive Group is a Fortune 500 company based in Atlanta and was founded in 1995. The company is the 5th largest automobile retailer in the United States and operates approximately 90 retail auto stores in 10 states, encompassing more than 120 franchises for the sale and servicing of 35 different brands of American, European and Asian automobile makes. Asbury’s strategy to drive operational excellence is to centralize, streamline, and automate processes by investing in technology. With increased productivity, Asbury strives to provide an exceptional customer experience. Learn more at www.asburyauto.com

Challenge: support 100 sites across 10 states

Asbury Automotive Group is the 5th largest U.S. based franchised auto retailer. Asbury operates approximately 90 retail auto stores, encompassing more than 120 franchises for the sale and servicing of 35 different brands of American, European and Asian automobile makes.

Carl Vannest, Senior Manager of the IT support team at Asbury Automotive Group, described their environment: “We have 100 sites spread across 10 states. Each store ranges anywhere from 20 PCs all the way up to about 250-260 PCs. We have about 6,500 PCs in total that we manage on a daily basis Our team of 16 oversees all of that.” Carl Vannest and his team tackle a daily average of 220-250 support cases.

Before Goverlan, the IT support team used VNC to remotely access user machines. “We used VNC to remote to the machine and central repositories to grab software. It’s all we had in the past, was that simple ability to remote out to their machine and work on it from there.”

Implementing Goverlan

With 16 years of IT experience, Mr. Vannest has worked with a variety of other solutions, including LANDesk, ManageEngine, and Symantec Client Management Suite. In comparison, he notes: "When you can put a program on a technician’s desktop, and they can open it up and use it with little to no training, it’s a win-win. LANDesk and ManageEngine aren’t like that. When performing complex tasks with Altiris, it’s not simple and not easy."

"The intuitive layout and design of the GUI makes learning Goverlan a simple task. We took 14 technicians and set them up on Goverlan in a matter of an hour. Extremely simple to implement, extremely simple to use," stated Mr. Vannest.

"We were 100% operational the same day we downloaded the trial installation. The only way it would have been easier is if someone was clicking “NEXT” for me on the installation package."

Results: Time-to-Resolution Halved

In just a couple of months of using Goverlan, Mr. Vannest and his team have already perceived considerable benefits. “It’s been a complete 180 on our support metrics … The ability to reach out to a customer through Goverlan, the ability to see what computer that person is logged into, the pushing of a small software package, all that Goverlan provides to us today that we did not have in the past. It’s fantastic.” He estimates that Goverlan has slashed their resolution time in half. Mr. Vannest noted these specific cases:

• When adding a printer or adding a shared drive, we can now do it behind the scenes with Goverlan and not interrupt the user. Before, it would take us 20 minutes on average to add a printer and now it only takes 5 minutes.” Those extra 15 minutes meant less productivity and possibly lost revenue for the company.
• Being in the retail automotive business, once someone reports a problem, it’s hard to get them back on the phone. Before Goverlan, it could take 3 hours to get them back on the phone to troubleshoot. With Goverlan, we can see where they’re logged into and help them in a matter of minutes. That’s where big time savings come in.
• We absolutely love the ability to add a machine to the domain or rename it right through Goverlan. Since we don’t have an IT presence on the ground at every store, it was a huge issue for us before. We’d have to dispatch somebody to join/unjoin domains.
• We used Goverlan’s Scope Actions to deploy the latest, greatest Flash player and Adobe reader. It was very simple to set up, very easy to run and it worked flawlessly. Before it would have taken probably a week to get everybody on it. With Goverlan, we did it all overnight. Scope Actions has been one of the biggest wins for our department in the past 3 years.

Currently, the Asbury IT team has no imaging solution. Their field engineers use a thumb drive. PJ Technologies response, “Disk imaging is currently not supported, however, Goverlan can assist with the post imaging process by applying various configuration management options.”

Mr. Vannest commented on his customer experience, “The PJ Tech team is extremely responsive to their customer’s needs. The experience so far through trial, setup and purchase has been without an issue and we continue to enjoy the relationship we’re building with the PJ Tech team.”

Conclusion

Asbury Automotive Group is the 5th largest U.S. based franchised auto retailer. Their IT Team of 16 supports 100 sites spread across 10 states, managing 6,500 PCs on a daily basis. By implementing Goverlan, the IT Team reduced their case close time in half. They are now able to perform actions behind the scenes, such as software installations, without involving users and remote troubleshoot, eliminating on-site visits, saving the team approximately $240,000 in man-hours per year.