Is the end at hand? 

The auto industry is battling its way through an unprecedented crisis in spending (and lending) confidence. As major players fight for funds and achievement of streamlining goals, the pressure has increased dramatically within JATO-using analytical departments across the world. Despite rising workloads in most markets, JATO has maintained fast delivery and high quality product to assist critical decision-making processes at its customers. That is good. 

Quite new is the level of demand on JATO to support a range of (mostly short term) client needs. Decision timelines are tight and the JATO Consult area, for example, has found itself rising to the challenge of generating a wealth of targeted advisory and reporting documents for its customers. In particular, JATO is now working closely with several key clients to provide a second analytical “line of defence” to those product and pricing areas which now have to operate with much leaner staff teams. 

Critical new contracts have been signed to provide fast-response customer support in areas such as incentives, TCO, emissions and price movement assessments. JATO is pleased to report not just this strong growth in new and high-responsibility assignments, but also a number of critical mainstream renewals at major customers in the automotive manufacturer and leasing areas. These latter renewals are strong votes of confidence for JATO from major market players who know that they cannot afford the risk of basing their decisions and investments on suspect, incomplete or late data.

So no, the end is not at hand, far from it – but economic realities are clearly driving a wave of efficiency and productivity demands throughout the JATO customer base – resulting in higher pressure but a satisfying order book for JATO’s customer-facing operations.