CNH Industrial North America Successfully Digitize their Dealer Application Process with APEX

CNH Industrial is a world-class global equipment and services company for the agriculture and construction sectors encapsulating well recognized and respected brands including Case IH, Case Construction and New Holland, sustainably advancing the world of agricultural and construction workers.

Since establishing in 1842, CNH Industrial has grown its North American operations to a sizeable network of over eight hundred independent dealer owners. With such a large dealer network in the U.S. and Canada, CNH Industrial was constantly looking for a solution to effectively manage processes for various dealership transactions such as new dealer appointments, approving buy-sells, relocations and several other similar activities.

Limited by cumbersome and manual systems of managing complex processes using Word, Excel and Emails to create and get approval of dealer applications, CNH Industrial was looking for a way to digitally streamline and strengthen their entire process.

In their search for a system, CNH Industrial wanted to work with a vendor with a proven solution and experience working with similar manufacturers, ultimately selecting Optimum Info’s APEX Dealer Package Management Solution.

What was most appealing in the beginning was that Optimum Info already had a solution that was tried, tested and proven with large OEMs. We didn’t have to recreate the wheel. They already had a system we wanted that was proven in the marketplace, said Heidi H., Manager of North America Network Administration and Controls at CNH Industrial.

CNH Industrial is a multiplex company with multiple brands and unique ways of contracting with dealers.

There is a natural level of complexity that comes with the implementation of the first dealer application management system for an organization of this magnitude, but Optimum Info took the time to carefully analyze each hurdle and developed a plan that would work.

Optimum Info did a fabulous job rolling with the punches for all the things we were throwing at them. That was very impressive. Sometimes we may have moved slower than we wanted, but Optimum Info made sure we were doing things correctly. We didn’t move onto the next step until we got the current situation under control, recalled Heidi.

Optimum Info not only incorporated the entire dealer application package life cycle covering multiple countries and multiple brands into one single integrated application, but also developed solutions to significantly improve CNH Industrial’s existing dealer application review and approval processes.

After identifying repetitive steps that CNH Industrial dealers were performing during the submittal process, the corporate team was advised with a new way of shortening it.

Heidi stated, Sometimes we had our blinders on because we thought, ‘This is how it’s supposed to work’ and then Optimum Info would look at different solutions and come back to us with ‘What if we did this instead?’ which ended up being a better way of doing it.

CNH Industrial expected to get their system up and running first before implementing their executive summary and approval process in the workflow.

They were pleasantly surprised when Optimum Info recommended launching the system, workflow and approval process all during the pilot phase.

According to Heidi, It took me by surprise that we were able to do all of this at one time instead of chunking it all out. The teams that work with the tool appreciated us taking the time to put together everything all at once.

Among the variety of APEX’s industry-leading features, CNH Industrial benefited the most from the following:

Five months since the launch of APEX, 80-90% of the dealer application package workflow CNH Industrial conducts is now digitized instead of a manual paper process.

CNH Industrial projects this percentage to grow even higher as people become more familiar with the new system.

Heidi predicts that overall, APEX will help them cut down and improve lead time and turnaround time.

This is just the beginning of the partnership between CNH Industrial and Optimum Info.

Looking towards the future, CNH Industrial foresees an opportunity to add a dealer prospecting workflow into APEX, which Optimum Info will undoubtably incorporate to continue enhancing this one-of-a-kind system.