​DEAN GOSSI

My Journey

I was approaching my final year of study at the University of Western Ontario Engineering and I was searching for a topic for my Year 4 research paper, a requirement for graduation.  At that time I had been studying network management and the importance of node management in an increasingly internet based operating environment.  My profession Dr. Kutcherovski presented an opportunity to me where I could research and gain experience in the area of network management.  Ford had an opportunity for a number of graduating engineering students to help them roll-out and remotely manage their new DMS (Dealership Management Software) to their network of dealerships, so I enrolled in the program.  The programs initial stages were educational in nature, where we learned about Ford's network, enterprise software and remote management systems. I was able to use Fords corporate remote management implementation as a case study in the development of my research paper. The scholastic year had ended in the early stages of the DMS deployment, as such Ford had hired me to complete the project at Highbury Ford in London, Ontario.

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Top Achievement

Migrated Ford dealerships from AS/400 to Windows NT 4.0 DMS (Dealership Management Software - inventory, sales, financing, accounting, vehicle parts & service, CRM) on Schedule, within Budget without disturbance to business operations.

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Project Scope and Responsibilities

• Attend DMS vendor training, review documentation and formulate user, management, technical requirements and inventory lists to procure.

• Developed project schedule, work packages, resourcing and phased roll-out dates.

• Performed back-ups for all nodes, performed database transforms for import to new DMS using scripted middleware.

• Coordinated and supervised contractor network layer 1 installation of Ethernet and tear-down of token ring cabling.

• Validated delivery of new computing workstations, inventoried and entered into asset management system.

• Installation on new drive images and validated operation of all workstations/servers.

• Installation of all DMS client/server software and validation of operation.

• Phased deployment of solution ensuring redundancy of the system.

• Scheduling and execution of vendor/dealer training programs to all employees on new OS, Workstations software and DMS client.

• Development, distribution of employee survey,  collection and synthesis of data and presentation of final report to dealership management and Ford Canada Management.