22.11.2001
40 days countdown to the euro

To-date, over 80 percent of GME dealers throughout the EMU countries have migrated their business to the euro. The remaining dealers will have completed their transition by December 31, 2001. All NSC's internal systems have been ready since July 2001.

GME's conversion to the euro is progressing: To date, over 80 percent of dealers throughout the EMU countries have migrated their business to the euro. It is expected that the remaining dealers will have completed their transition to the euro by December 31, 2001.

Even though GME started early to train the dealer network in order to get them ready for the conversion, there were some notable peak activities in the markets during the last couple of months. As there are only 40 days left, the time pressure is increasing.

"Dealerships and the NSCs have been making significant progress until now", explains Ersin Gunoy of GME's Dealer Network Development, "but there is still work to be done until every one of our dealers is prepared - and time is running short."

For GME and the dealerships, IS&S and EDS have worked together to ensure that GME's and its dealers' systems will be ready for the currency transition with no business disruption. This strategy allowed for the greatest flexibility in changing GM's internal systems and the dealers systems independently.

In a first step, GME created awareness through its "Euro Welcome" initiative more than two years ago. This initiative provided communication guidelines to the NSCs, NSOs and its dealers. So-called "Point of Sale" material was developed and distributed to the dealers.

IT solutions ensured that the dealer-facing systems were euro compliant by July 2000 and the dealers were able to migrate their business to the euro from August 2000. All NSC's internal systems have been ready since July 2001.

In addition, there has been a more important aspect to the Euro migration than the technical - each dealer's business needed to be able to deal with the euro before migrating. Through dedicated initiatives, including a computer- based training program, customer-facing retail staff in the dealerships have been trained to counteract any uncertainty and fears and to answer a wide variety of customer questions. By proving their competency and reliability, customer-facing staff has been contributing to boosting confidence in the dealership and the currency. As they have been ensuring a smooth transition with no impact they have also acted as a true retail partner to the customer.