A premier car dealership chain engages a dual support team of NetSuite’s Advanced Customer Support (ACS) and NetSuite partner Netsoft to reach peak efficiency across its 14 locations.

Ricardo Perez, S.A. has been in business for 65 years. It holds the distinction of being the sole Toyota dealership in Panama, with 14 locations and about 800 employees who sell, service and support Toyota vehicles countrywide.

The company, which is based in Panama City, has been a NetSuite customer since 2016. Since implementing its ERP system, Ricardo Perez has needed to expand and adjust its operations. So, the team routinely works with NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS) to make sure that it’s using NetSuite to support those changes as efficiently as possible.

“In Netsoft, we have a really good partner who knows how our ERP works and is very savvy in the ways of NetSuite,” said Mayra Milena Julio Morán, IT manager for Ricardo Perez. “In ACS, we have the best practices related to NetSuite and our support and developer team that always considers our ERP’s native capabilities before investing in new development.”

Results In Minutes vs. Days

When Ricardo Perez began its engagement with ACS, the two teams went to work identifying processes that were ripe for optimization. For example, Ricardo Perez used to download data to Excel and then check it against other data from NetSuite and reconcile it. This took days. Now, with a single click, managers can view this data in NetSuite in seconds.

Now as the dealership introduces new initiatives, it consults ACS to adapt its use of NetSuite accordingly. This joint work between Ricardo Perez’s development team and ACS has enabled the dealer to implement projects using native functionalities, minimizing development and taking advantage of NetSuite’s best practices, which results in better performance and shorter implementation times.

In the same way, it has been possible to work with ACS in the development of reports that have given Ricardo Perez the ability to manage information, ensuring the quality and accuracy of its data.

“ACS created a new report for us that only takes minutes to produce,” in one scenario, said Julio Morán. “Our finance team was amazed at the improvement.”

Ricardo Perez is always monitoring and optimizing performance of its NetSuite system, said IT products support supervisor Jayro Jiménez. ACS aids in this effort, helping him ensure that NetSuite maintains peak performance as the dealership grows.

Time-Sensitive Support

Jiménez appreciates that ACS takes the time to understand Ricardo Perez’s processes before offering up additional ways to use NetSuite functionality. There have been several times when he has opened a support case with NetSuite and turned to ACS for backup.

“Sometimes support informs us that a problem is an ‘enhancement request,’ meaning the functionality is not offered yet in the product,” Jiménez said. “Because ACS works with us regularly and knew our account and how we operate, they understood that the need for this functionality was impacting our operations and implemented the requirement by customizing our account.”

For critical support needs, the company immediately contacts ACS, where its designated team and success manager are on hand to resolve time-sensitive issues.

A Two-Pronged Support Team

Ricardo Perez discovered ACS through Netsoft, an award-winning NetSuite partner that supported its ERP implementation. The dealership’s large transaction volume made it an ideal candidate for ACS, said Netsoft CEO Hector Garcia.

“We wanted them to have direct contact with specialists, not in terms of setting up the processes themselves but rather in optimizing the performance of those processes,” said Garcia. “With the dealership having 800 users, we needed the extra support.”

The three teams often work together: Netsoft collaborated with ACS to solve a few of Ricardo Perez’s IT challenges, including performance issues in a business where every second counts. In other situations, ACS has checked Netsoft’s code and recommended modifications.

“Getting a second set of eyes on our code helps ensure that Ricardo Perez’s processes are all running as optimally as possible,” said Garcia.

Netsoft also provides support and development for Advectus, Ricardo Perez’s dealer management system (DMS), which is integrated with NetSuite.

The partnership between the two support teams is integral to Ricardo Perez’s capacity to scale, said Julio Morán.

Growing Forward

Now in its 66th year of business, Ricardo Perez continues to adopt and expand its use of technology. For example, the Ricardo Perez team worked with ACS as a guide to integrate Salesforce with NetSuite. All projects will serve the company’s goal to be “the best in town.”

“After dealing with the pandemic, the automotive market has been recovering,” said Julio Morán. “This combined with the technological improvements we have been working on at Ricardo Perez has resulted in a better customer experience, and without doubt this will assure that we achieve this year’s challenging goals.”

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