Forward to friend Subscribe contact OATS alt oats OATS Company update Bulletin. Issue 87 – October 2007

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Click on any of the story titles to go straight to the news item.
1 . An OATS update
2 . EARL B2B and B2C websites are the top sellers
3 . Check out the facts at the Brussels Forum
4 . TEMDOX – Technical and Marketing Documentation Service
5 . EARL System developments
6 . OATS’ new Global Updating System (GUS) speeds EARL growth through direct user input,
7 . Two major improvements for Range Manager
8 . Getting more out of EARL with special market analyses
9 . EARL continues to grow at around 9,000 new models per year



1. An OATS update

Over the last 6 months or so OATS has been very busy, behind the scenes, developing further improvements to EARL – both the Online and Desktop (CD) editions – and in finalising TEMDOX, a major market service innovation.
This Bulletin will bring you up-to-date on all the main developments and give you links to sources of more information. And, of course, I would be delighted to hear from you directly if you have any questions or suggestions about any aspect of our business. (Even better if you can come to our Brussels forum — see story 3.) My email address is scrawshaw@oats.co.uk

Best Wishes

Sebastian Crawshaw

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2. EARL B2B and B2C websites are the top sellers

Web vs desktop
Over the last year or so the balance of new EARL installations has swung in favour of websites rather than the traditional Desktop (CD) editions, with over 100 websites now under management. Why should this be? There are probably two main reasons :– functionality and economics. EARL Online B2C and B2B sites can now do just about all the tasks that the CD product delivers so well. And many OATS clients have found that websites can provide their end users with an equivalent level of service to what they were accustomed to getting from staffed Help Desks – but at significantly lower costs, quite apart from 24 hour and 365 day availability. One EARL Online client averages 5,000 consumer enquiries per month on their B2C site. If his Help Desk had to handle these calls instead, at a typical cost per call of $20, then those enquiries would cost $100,000 per month!
Click here to register for the demo EARL Online website. Demo request

Sample screen illustration from the new EARL Online brochure

New brochure
OATS has recently published a new brochure on EARL Online. Click here to download a pdf copy. EARL Online brochure

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3. Check out the facts at the Brussels Forum

Senior OATS staff will be giving their next familiarisation forum in Brussels on November 28th. Many of the product and service developments described in this Bulletin will be demonstrated there in detail.
Range Manager See a practical demonstration of the speed and accuracy of ‘TDS branding’.
Global Updating System Watch a live demo of how you can input your own data to the EARL system.
TEMDOX Is this the only practical future for lubes product management? Test the concept for yourself.
EARL Online Hear how a Swedish company expanded their business dramatically when OATS set up an EARL internet site for them.
Your own ideas The OATS forums have always been an excellent source of ideas about ways of improving or extending the world’s No 1 lubes reference database. Come along and swap ideas with other expert users.

The Brussels Forum will be free, as ever, but numbers may need to be limited to give all attendees a chance to talk as well as listen. So, if you’re interested, please email André Dekerf now for a copy of the programme and to reserve a place for yourself and/or some colleagues.

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4. TEMDOX – Technical and Marketing Documentation Service

Introducing TEMDOX, a new approach to creating and managing essential documentation.
TEMDOX is a proven set of content management tools, optimised for the lubricants industry. TEMDOX permits easier creation and maintenance of the documentation required by lubricants professionals to support their product marketing. TEMDOX will help oil companies to streamline their workflows and even to save costs.

TEMDOX uses a web interface – to make it independent of geography, software or system issues – and a content management regime to create, edit, store, share, update, access and display the main categories of lubricants support documentation:

The package is completely modular so each of the support documentation categories can be added to the process individually.



How does TEMDOX work? TEMDOX is a web-based system that holds all the data components centrally – whether text, logo or graphics. Those components are called up and allocated to a document at the point when it is requested by an authorised user or customer. This means that the content is always fully up-to-date. It also means that any original material or revisions need to be input once only – the system ensures all relevant documents display the current text or graphics.

To learn more about the revolutionary TEMDOX service please contact your OATS Account Manager or click here to download a pdf copy of the new brochure.  TEMDOX Brochure

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5. EARL System developments

OATS is very much aware that the lubricants industry is going through a period of significant change. At one level the market is becoming more global, whilst becoming more segmented at a local level. As part of the response to those divergent trends the company has introduced a new way of presenting the many elements of the EARL System to help companies identify the best mix for their own circumstances.
For example, Global organisations need co-ordinated solutions for their international strategies whereas Local organisations need flexible tools to provide customer support in the right format for their channels. Based on experience, OATS has established a series of services for each type of oil company:

And, at a more detailed level, there is a useful selector chart in the new EARL System brochure – click here to download a pdf of the chart. EARL Matrix And click here for a pdf copy of the new EARL System brochure. EARL System Brochure

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6. OATS’ new Global Updating System (GUS) speeds EARL growth through direct user input,

OATS’ Global Updating System (GUS) is a universal data entry system that allows customer-partners, as well as OATS’  staff and contractors, to enter locally-sourced models into the EARL database over the internet. GUS means that local models can be added to the core EARL database in exactly the same format as all the other EARL data.
All new content is then validated by OATS’ OEM team before it goes ‘live’. For example, vehicles or equipment that are important – but only within a geographically restricted area – can be swiftly added to the EARL database. This will ensure that engineers, help desk staff and marketers all work with wholly consistent data, whatever its source.

GUS uses a straightforward data entry screen that can be accessed, over the internet, by any authorized user. Once the data has been submitted OATS’ experts will check it before authorizing its inclusion in the next regular EARL update.
Obviously the confidentiality of any supplied data is imperative and OATS has provided GUS contributors with the option of restricting any proprietary data to their own company websites or CDs or of making it available to the global EARL community.
More at  www.oats.co.uk.

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7. Two major improvements for Range Manager

On-line branding saves time
A recent improvement to the branding process (where EARL users match their branded products to the OATS codes) has been the introduction of on-line branding. Unlike the quarterly CD branding process, there are no time constraints or aggravation with postal delays with the Citrix on-line service which connects directly to the OATS Range Manager server.
There are no additional charges for using on-line branding and many EARL branders have already found the service much more efficient and convenient. And initial connection takes no more than 5 minutes. Please contact your OATS Account Manager if you would like to switch to on-line branding.

Batch branding using TDS content
OATS is already working on a new edition of Range Manager that aims to halve the time required to do an update. When EARL branding was first published electronically there were only 400 grade/viscosity combinations. Today there are nearly 6,000 of these codes in the database. In order to radically improve the management of this quantity of data OATS has been running a major upgrade to Range Manager which is due for release in early 2008.
The huge reduction in time needed to complete an update will be achieved by attaching the API/ACEA/OEM codes to the individual products before the branding process starts. TDSs are expected to be the best source for generating this new pre-match.
A new auto-fill procedure will then automatically allocate the product to every occurrence of its code within the database. And a further level of sophistication means that up to 3 product quality levels can be given the same code which will then generate a tiered Good-Better-Best output.
A fuller description of the improvements to Range Manager will be published shortly.

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8. Getting more out of EARL with special market analyses

With data from over 1,500 OEMs and lube specs for over 230,000 compartments EARL is a very powerful source of research information on the lubes market. But, as some OATS clients have found, there is even more information available by interrogating the source data directly – such as sump size trends or introduction rates for recent API or ACEA specs. Going a stage further one can then match the EARL source data to parc stats to arrive at servicing volume predictions for example.
So, if you have any gaps in your knowledge that could be supplied through OATS’ knowledge of the lubes industry, then drop your OATS Account Manager a line or email David Burn on dburn@oats.co.uk to start things going. You can download a pdf copy of the OATS Research datasheet here.

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9. EARL continues to grow at around 9,000 new models per year

OATS has had another very productive quarter on data gathering and there will be around 1,300 new models added to the EARL database with the next quarterly issue (6.07). Over the last 5 years the database has grown by 3½ times – now delivering data on 231,000 lubricated compartments.
(See the GUS story above for more on data growth.) The OEM Team are on target for adding a total of 9,000 models during the course of this year.

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