Distance Education and Training
CASE STUDY
MERCEDES –BENZ USA:
INVESTING IN IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Executive Summary:
Mercedes‐Benz first entered the US market in 1952. MBUSA is responsible
for the sales, service and marketing of Mercedes‐Benz products in the United States.
Customer service is the top priority for everyone at MBUSA. To guarantee high quality customer service, the company’s 1200 employees provided focused support of recruitment services, marketing and sales programs, and product training to
16000 employees at 313 privately owned dealerships nationwide.
Greg Settle is currently the national manager technical services for MBUSA.
His corporate mandate is to create the most efficient and effective training program in the automotive industry. MBUSA is showing continuing strong new vehicle sales in 2002 as their mid‐year sales have shown. The dealership technicians are needed to support these increased sales and an expanded product line, as MBUSA had recently added the M‐Class and the C230 Sports Coupe. As a result more coursework and class time were required to maintain the technicians knowledge base because of these technical innovations.
Currently Settle is considering using streaming media combined with
distance learning as a supplement to class‐room based education. He believes that by pursuing this option he can reduce in‐class time by 20‐25%. His primary concern is that this IT investment could have a negative effect on the company’s reputation of providing the highly successful training to its technicians as recognized in JD
Powers survey. He is currently in a position of having to evaluate the e‐learning option, including selecting between two vendors, Real Networks and Microsoft.
Under option 1, Settle could request the budget to
MERCEDES –BENZ USA:
INVESTING IN IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Executive Summary:
Mercedes‐Benz first entered the US market in 1952. MBUSA is responsible
for the sales, service and marketing of Mercedes‐Benz products in the United States.
Customer service is the top priority for everyone at MBUSA. To guarantee high quality customer service, the company’s 1200 employees provided focused support of recruitment services, marketing and sales programs, and product training to
16000 employees at 313 privately owned dealerships nationwide.
Greg Settle is currently the national manager technical services for MBUSA.
His corporate mandate is to create the most efficient and effective training program in the automotive industry. MBUSA is showing continuing strong new vehicle sales in 2002 as their mid‐year sales have shown. The dealership technicians are needed to support these increased sales and an expanded product line, as MBUSA had recently added the M‐Class and the C230 Sports Coupe. As a result more coursework and class time were required to maintain the technicians knowledge base because of these technical innovations.
Currently Settle is considering using streaming media combined with
distance learning as a supplement to class‐room based education. He believes that by pursuing this option he can reduce in‐class time by 20‐25%. His primary concern is that this IT investment could have a negative effect on the company’s reputation of providing the highly successful training to its technicians as recognized in JD
Powers survey. He is currently in a position of having to evaluate the e‐learning option, including selecting between two vendors, Real Networks and Microsoft.
Under option 1, Settle could request the budget to