Renault to roll out European Intranet

French car manufacturer Renault is to roll out a pan-European dealer network across 14 countries, according to sources close to the project.

Network trials are being set up by business telecoms company Energis, which has won the £1.25m contract to supply Renault UK with a dealer intranet and extranet. The system, which uses Energis' LANConnect service, is based on frame relay over leased lines. Energis claims it is the first dedicated-line dealer service in the country. It has two main applications - a fast track to vehicle registering and a used car locating service.

The service will connect over 200 Renault dealers across the UK, and has a link with the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority's (DVLA) Automatic First Registered Licensing system, at the moment being offered to all car dealers.

The system allows newly bought cars to be registered immediately - saving dealers the time and expense of visiting a DVLA regional office.

The company's dealer network previously used low speed dial-up network connections. "The system was 11 years old," said Gary Farmer, IT manager at Renault UK. "Dealers were lucky if they were getting a data rate of 28.8Kbps."

Farmer explained that the company's dealers were relying so heavily on the network dial-up service, it was becoming uneconomical. "Statistics we had on the use of the network shows that dial up services cost too much, whereas leased lines allow the dealers to be online as much as they like, and can budget for the service."