| The system is currently installed at 4 of the Company’s dealership locations |
For more than 40 years Northtown Automotive Companies, Inc. has provided a hassle and pressure free automobile buying experience to its Western New York State clients. Starting with a single Toyota dealership, the Company now includes 17 separate franchises including Toyota, Mazda, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, Lexus, Subaru, Hyundai, Land Rover Range Rover, Volkswagen, Kia, Scion, Volvo, Porsche and Fiat, showcased at eight state-of-the-art facilities in the Amherst Tonawanda area; just a short drive from almost everywhere in Western New York. With more than 625 employees, Northtown Auto has received numerous customer satisfaction accolades including the Elite of Lexus, Chrysler 5 Star Certification and Time Magazine's Quality Dealer Awards.
Automated access control system
Several years ago Richard Pieri, Facilities Manager for the Northtown Automotive Companies decided that he needed a cost effective way to control access to the dealership facilities. “With the number of employees we have it is important to ensure that everyone who needs access to the Company’s various facilities can have it when necessary. It is also important to us to make sure that only the people authorised in specific facilities are actually getting in.”
In the past providing access to the locations appropriate to specific individuals created a challenge in managing the distribution and retrieval of keys in a constantly changing mix employees and schedules. Re-keying was an ever present issue, both time consuming and increasingly costly.
A decision was made to employ an automated access control system to address these issues and as Facilities Manager, the task of selecting and implementing such a system fell to Richard Pieri.
Northtown utilised a local locksmith company for their traditional lock and key needs and asked that company for an opinion as to what they might look at in the automated access control arena. The locksmith suggested ISONAS. “We decided to try the ISONAS system at one location to determine if it would satisfy our needs,” says Mr. Pieri. “We started with our Toyota dealership and fell in love with the system.”
The system is currently installed at 4 of the Company’s dealership locations with plans to secure the additional dealerships in the future.
Installation
According to Mr. Pieri, “We have decided to do the ISONAS installations ourselves. One of the nice features about the ISONAS system is that we can do it a door at a time and with a single CAT5 cable providing both the data and the power to the card reader and the lock, the installation itself is relatively easy.” The system was also attractive in that it requires no separate control panel hardware and plugs into the existing network infrastructure already at each location.
Mr. Pieri ‘s staff also uses the ISONAS EasyWeb application to manage day to day additions and deletions of permissions for individual employees as they come and go. “I now have the tools to get a new reader up and running on my desk before we put it in. Simple to install and simple to manage!”
The ISONAS system had provided significantly better facility security and control at the most affordable cost available in the industry for a successful automotive dealership company.