The global automotive sectors have experienced a roller coaster ride of market forces from growth, to contraction of order books. As the Far East churns out increasingly high volume, high quality vehicles, and parts, at highly competitive prices, European auto-enterprises are striving to compete and have the added disadvantage of relatively high labour costs: difficult currency rates and excess capacity and stocks.

As reliability and sophistication of the product grows, the importance and value to the customer of good service has grown commensurably. The customer will not tolerate poor service and their growing demands have put a great deal of pressure on dealers and manufacturers alike, to provide high quality service.