Program Overview

Why was the Strategic Alliance Program Started?
In the power products industry, dealers are faced with doing business with a large number of different suppliers and OEM brands. With so many dealers being small businesses, this has created a real barrier to the use of computers by dealers and their use of electronic communications with suppliers. Consequently, suppliers have been slow to provide dealer communications systems (DCS) since an individual dealer could not be expected to learn so many different proprietary systems. This has been a daunting problem - since having to deal with such a broad mix of products and brands increases the need for being able to look up and order products and replacement parts integrated with electronic purchase order processing.

To assist the dealers in providing high-quality, readily available service for any Kawasaki product or engine, KMC has made a commitment to work with software vendors that provide application suites to power product dealers. These strategic marketing alliances make it possible for dealers to gather information and conduct transactions with all suppliers while using just one system. In other words, dealers no longer need to be burdened with learning and maintaining multiple DCS platforms for each OEM supplier.

The result - better, faster, more reliable service from the suppliers to the dealers and finally to their customers.

How Does it Work?
Snap-on Business Solutions provides a transaction engine called "eConnect™" with middleware extensions called "toolkits" at the dealer side and "agents" at the vendor side. BMS systems using the toolkit (eConnect enabled) communicate with participating industry trading partners seamlessly in real-time by means of an XML transport. Snap-on Business Solutions provides to the BMS vendor, at no charge, their toolkit and integration support, enabling inventory queries, purchase orders and warranty claims directly from the BMS system to KMC via any Internet Service Provider (ISP).

KMC has partnered with Snap-on Business Solutions to provide to KMC's direct, power equipment dealers, real-time inventory availability, electronic parts catalog and e-business processing services at the Kawasaki Power Products website. In addition, KMC ordering can take place by way of seamless integration with a dealer's eConnect compliant BMS - eliminating time-consuming "double entry" for the dealer. This not only gives the dealer access to KMC's electronic services but also those of other distributors and manufacturers in the outdoor power, marine, RV and powersports industries.

Why is this important to this industry?
Snap-on Business Solutions'  core eConnect transaction engine connects manufacturers, distributors, suppliers and dealers in a seamless end-to-end business to business system. Snap-on Business Solutions' dealer side toolkit is the connector between the dealer and eConnect. This gives the dealer the potential of seeing the supplier world through one set of eyes…those of their business management system.