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MSX International and Xtime Team To Improve Automotive Dealer Service Profitability

Posted on: Monday, 6 April 2009, 07:00 CDT

Comprehensive Solutions Enables North American Dealers to Improve Customer Service and Achieve and Sustain Higher Service Department Revenues

WARREN, Mich. and REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., April 6 /PRNewswire/ -- MSX International, Inc. (MSXI), a leading provider of outsourced business solutions and services to the global automotive marketplace, and Xtime, Inc, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for dealership service operations, today announced an agreement under which the two companies will jointly market MSXI's suite of dealer service business processing outsourcing (BPO) solutions and Xtime's online ServiceCRM(TM) solution to dealers in North America.

MSXI's BPO solutions drive higher service department revenue and profitability, and include: Retail Growth Accelerator (RGA), Sustain Service Profits (SSP), ShopFlow, and ServicePulse. Xtime's ServiceCRM enables automotive dealerships to generate, capture, and manage more service orders per day, driving profitability through increased customer-paid service.

"Our alliance with Xtime allows us to strengthen our BPO solutions portfolio with a complementary, best-of-breed customer lifecycle management tool that facilitates revenue growth by providing dealerships with a convenient and easy-to-use method for capturing more service business," said Peter M. Leger, MSXI president and chief executive officer. "As a result, we can now provide dealers with a comprehensive suite of outsourced tools that have been proven to maximize service department revenue, which is increasingly important in today's challenging economic environment. The alliance also provides both companies with access to a broader dealer customer base in North America."

"Automotive dealerships and manufacturers currently only capture a fraction of the total market for maintenance and repair services, and capacity utilization rates in dealership service departments are often under 60 percent," said Neal East, chief executive officer of Xtime. "Teaming with MSXI enables us to expand our product offering and provide our customers with a wide array of solutions that will allow them address these issues, and further improve service operational efficiencies throughout the dealership."

About Xtime's ServiceCRM

ServiceCRM is a unified, Web-based solution for service departments that includes:

• Online Scheduling: 24x7 access to online scheduling, pricing, promotions, recommended services, service history, and real-time shop availability. Generates and manages automated appointment confirmations, reminders, and service status.
• Dealership Scheduling: Supports service advisors, call coordinators, and dedicated service BDCs. Key features color-coded, daily, weekly and monthly shop ledgers with at-a-glance shop loading and point and click appointment making.
• Service Marketing: Notifies customers of upcoming services, no shows, and first-time visits via emails that contain an online booking link.
• Shop Control: Support for teams, loaner/rental capacity management by day and time slot, waiter appointments by day/time slots, variable greeter capacity by time slot, dynamic carryover of appointments and adjustment of appointment durations.
• Service Catalog: Includes a full factory recommended online service catalog for all major makes.
• Management Reporting: Automatically generates key business metrics at various levels ranging from the dealership to an OEM level across all dealerships.
• Certified DMS Integration: Integrates with the leading DMS platforms, and includes 24/7 monitoring of all DMS connections and individual transactions.

About MSXI BPO - Dealer Service Offering

MSXI offers a full range of BPO solutions to automotive OEMs and their dealer communities that optimize the automotive retail and logistic processes by improving the customer experience, increasing dealer profitability, and helping the dealer recruit, train and retain a highly skilled workforce. The company's Dealer service BPO solution includes five modules that address key challenges in the dealer service department. In addition to ServiceCRM, MSXI's Dealer Service BPO solutions include:

• Retail Growth Accelerator: A world-class service selling system for retail growth and customer handling that drives increased parts and labor sales.
• ShopFlow: A comprehensive solution that provides effective methods for maximizing capacity and efficiency, and improving customer satisfaction.
• ServicePulse: An interactive and easy-to-use tool which tracks Dealer Service department performance against detail objectives on a daily basis.
• Sustain Service Profits: MSXI's experts continually assess the Service department performance against dealer objectives on-site or remotely. Customized action plans and weekly collaborative discussions with the dealer help maintain the gains from training and process improvements.

About MSXI

MSX International (MSXI) is the leading global provider of outsourced business solutions to the automotive industry, integrating automotive best practices, technology, and information. The company's products and services are focused on dealer development and process improvement, warranty management, technical support and information management services. MSXI also provides staffing, vendor management, and procurement solutions. The company is headquartered in Warren, Mich., and has 3,800 automotive experts based in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Asia. For more information, visit www.msxi.com.

About Xtime

With over 1,500 dealerships enrolled and over 6 million appointments booked in the last three years, Xtime is the leading provider of Online Service Retailing (OSR) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions for automotive service departments. Xtime combines OSR and CRM into a unified product called ServiceCRM(TM) that is delivered via the Internet to consumers, dealerships, and OEMs. Privately held, Xtime is based in Redwood Shores, Calif. and can be reached at (650) 508-4300 or www.xtime.com

SOURCE MSX International, Inc.

Source: PR Newswire

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