WARRENVILLE, Ill. — Navistar has gone ‘virtual’ with its annual parts conference and sales expo.

In an effort to reduce costs and keep dealerships fully-staffed, the company held its Power Up conference online this year.

“Virtual is the way of the future and Navistar is well positioned to take advantage of this new technology for the benefit of our dealers, our customers and our company,” said Rommel Miranda, vice-president of sales and marketing for Navistar Parts.

“In the current environment, incurring costs that would have been typical for previous year’s annual sales conferences didn’t fit the lean, responsible model for business that we were striving toward,” added Kathy Seegebrecht, vice-president, marketing and brand for Navistar Parts. “Bringing people together in an online environment — a virtual trade show and education session — made sense for both Navistar and our dealers. It was clearly a win-win situation as demonstrated by the fact that our online participation was three times greater than last year’s in-person attendance, at one-fifth of the cost. ”

Navistar says more than 1,600 International dealers and parts employees participated in the online expo.

“Normally, I would send maybe three or four staff people to the annual conference,” said one dealer. “This year, we had 21 people from our operation take advantage of online education through Power Up. In a year where everyone’s been hit hard, this made a lot of sense.”