Attached is the report you requested outlining a computer system, with costs, for your dealerships.
We are recommending a microcomputer solution that uses polling technology to retrieve information from the various stores at the end of each business day. Since much of the processing your business does is concerned with centralized functions at the flagship dealer (including payroll for all locations, maintaining customer information, ordering inventory for all dealerships), that computer will be the largest and the workhorse of the solution, although we are not proposing a true "network."
Each of the dealerships will have a smaller microcomputer that will process information during the day and which can be used to print invoices and customer contracts. When the central system polls each store during the night, information about the day's transactions will be uploaded, and new information from the headquarters (such as rebates or new employee information) will be downloaded.
The costs included at the conclusion of the report are based on current retail prices; additional discounts can probably be obtained since you will be purchasing multiple quantities of both hardware and software.
We invite you to contact us if you have any additional questions regarding the report.
A centralized system is recommended, using microcomputers as the primary hardware. Each store will have three basic 486 systems installed, with 250Mb hard drive, 4Mb memory, color monitor, modem, and 3.5" floppy; these will be 66Mh machines. One of these will be designated the "server" using a Lantastic or similar simple network. In addition, dealerships will have a dot-matrix printer which can handle the multi-part forms critical for processing customer contracts and invoices.
The central headquarters will have a Pentium machine as the server, with 32Mb memory, one gigabyte hard drive, external cache of 256K (minimum), color monitor, modem, and 3.5...