The fact that technological advances have tripled within the last 40 years compared to the 40 years before is astounding. While some of these advances may have made distractions at work a little more prevalent, it has also opened up the workplace to exciting new ways to conduct business and think about new ways to reach the consumer.
However, dealers have long heard about breakthroughs making it easier for them to get ahead in the industry. But just want do all these "breakthroughs" allow dealers to accomplish? Many want to know just how these technological advances can help them grow their businesses-and compete with the power channel.
Web Sites Pay Off
Of course, one of the major advances in the workplace was the everyday usage of the Internet. Although the Internet has been around for decades, it only became a workplace necessity in the 1990s. This is when companies realized that they could much more quickly-and cheaply-reach their target audience than through other traditional media sources.
The Internet has opened many doors in terms of innovation as well as the transportation of data between disparate systems. XML (extensible Markup Language) was developed as a means to pass information between those systems. Not only is the data contained within the XML format, but also the means to describe the data so that any system reading it can understand the nature of the data. As an adjunct to this, the development of Web Services, with XML at its core, allows these disparate systems to not only share data, but also share functionality. With Web Services, one system can ask another system to perform complex tasks for the other and share the results, thus making the requesting system more robust to its users.
"ECi takes advantage of XML and Web Service technologies," stated Kyle Kappahahn, Vice President of...

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