SAP Solution Brief SAP for Automotive

SAP DEALER BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Tune Up Your Dealership

Companies in the automotive industry face a struggle for market share, constant pressure on margins, and well-informed customers with unprecedented power in the marketplace. To differentiate in this environment, dealerships are focusing on sales and service processes the key to providing a highquality customer experience. An enabler for growing in new and existing markets, the SAP Dealer Business Management solution is a proven and affordable dealer retail solution that focuses on driving customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and profitability while providing lower total cost of ownership.

Across the OEM-to-dealer value chain, the increasing amount of friction created by business process and communication breakdowns is causing automotive manufacturers (OEMs) and dealers to expend substantial resources to market, sell, and service motor vehicles. This situation is manifested in significant numbers of unsold vehicles and parts as well as poor scores for customer service and sales satisfaction. As a result, manufacturers and dealers are burdened with additional costs that impact profitability, brand equity, and, most importantly, customer value and retention. Motor vehicle dealerships are facing numerous challenges. In Germany, the economic engine is misfiring, price competition is high, and profit margins are shrinking. However, through the Block Exemption Regulation enacted across Europe in 2002, dealerships can sell a variety of brands, creating additional sales potential. In North America, automotive dealerships have seen significant consolidation, with increasing power of multistore, multibrand dealer groups. With intense competition, dealers are attempting to improve customer satisfaction in a variety of ways, ranging from test tracks and climbing walls to increasing dealer capacity by expanding the number of service bays or serviceparts storage locations. However, standard dealer management systems are preventing dealerships from taking full advantage of these trends: they cannot handle more than one brand, and the day-to-day service requirements have outgrown them. To exploit the potential of the market and accelerate your day-to-day business, you need

more horsepower and more capabilities under your companys hood a powerful engine that delivers optimum performance and efficiency. Give your company the tune-up it needs to enhance todays business processes, generate additional revenue, and accelerate past the challenges of the industry.
The deregulation of the automotive retail industry in Europe and continued consolidation of dealers in North America will result in increased competition, growing market complexity, and economic uncertainty . . . A comprehensive dealer management system will be the foundation for creating consistent processes that will meet customers needs and maximize dealer profits.
Thilo Koslowski, Principal Analyst for Automotive, Gartner G2

Vehicle sales and administration

By linking customer requests and vehicle orders with existing stock at their site, within the enterprise, and in the pipeline, dealers can streamline administrative, financial, and daily operational activities. They can compile vehicle history with data from planning, sales and distribution, and after-sales processes involving warranty claims, service, trade-in, and resale. They can perform tax calculations and satisfy legal requirements by country, region, and state. Vehicle service Dealers can schedule service, process service orders, and optimize technicians, tools, and parts as well as their deployment and scheduling. With links to OEM systems, they can access parts and job catalogs, vehicle history files, and warranty systems. They can increase service capacity utilization, improve efficiency, and decrease operating costs by monitoring service and expanding visibility into fixed operations. Parts management Dealers can plan and procure parts, manage inventory, perform cross-location availability checks, and conduct counter sales of service parts. They can collaborate with business partners, such as regional parts depots, suppliers, and other dealerships, as well as monitor and analyze parts operations. SAP Dealer Business Management supports the growing needs and volumes of any size automotive dealership from a single, independent location to a large multibrand, multilocation dealer group. By utilizing a single, integrated solution, dealers and their partners can execute more efficiently across multiple brands, territories, and dealer locations to better serve customers. Dealers can drive improved margins with processes that make it easier for customers to buy vehicles and acquire needed services, parts, or accessories.

SAP Dealer Business Management a New Class of Solution

The SAP Dealer Business Management solution triggers a fundamental shift in managing dealer operations for both OEMs and independent dealer groups. Integrated with the mySAP ERP solution, it provides support for every function of a dealers operation, including: Customer management To optimize existing customer relationships and attract prospects, dealers can make critical vehicle, sales, and customer information accessible to sales personnel. Using integrated office functionality, they can manage customer appointments, record customer comments, and use workflow triggers for follow-up activities. Dealers can leverage data about sales transactions, contacts, customers, and vehicles to create targeted marketing activities.

As part of the SAP for Automotive solution portfolio, SAP Dealer Business Management contains comprehensive integration and scaling tools. Because it is based on the SAP NetWeaver platform, you can easily integrate SAP Dealer Business Management and even third-party systems into your own and your partners system landscapes. Moreover, several brands, locations, and countries can be integrated quickly and easily on a single system. The result: transparent, efficient business processes that will make your operations more effective.
Transparency at the Touch of a Button

A Standardized Platform Offering for Dealers and Manufacturers

Many manufacturers, importers, and suppliers already interact with both SAP and non-SAP solutions; however, integration may not include the dealer network. To order a new vehicle, process a warranty claim, or order parts, you may need to use complex and custom interfaces that require significant maintenance and may be difficult to use. SAP Dealer Business Management solves this problem by providing a standardized platform that enables you to optimize internal processes and collaborate with business partners. The SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure component gives you a powerful integration technology that makes communication processes run faster and more securely. Integration gaps become a thing of the past, as does duplicate data entry into multiple applications. Sales and service processes are more efficient: for every vehicle sold, SAP Dealer Business Management passes customer data directly to the service area. Moreover, vehicle-related process information about vehicle inspections or repairs flows directly into master data records.
A Tune-Up for Your Business Processes

SAP Dealer Business Management simplifies business processes, such as financial accounting and controlling, and gives you complete visibility of your companys activities and a standardized database across all your sites. Creating service parts invoices, for example, is simpler and more cost-effective than ever. The solution records and checks goods receipts automatically as soon as they are received, eliminating the need for manual data entry. The horizontal integration of quantity and value flows ensures enhanced levels of process transparency. For example, when you remove a service part from your warehouse or facility, this movement is recorded immediately in the financials solution. This means that invoices and payment receipts can be processed with real-time accuracy, and you will always have current, actionable figures. SAP Dealer Business Management lets independent, dealer-group, and company-owned dealers manage inventory, marketing, finance, and new- and used-vehicle sales, and work seamlessly with partners to create customer-centric processes that can deliver a consistently high level of service. They can handle a variety of after-sales service activities synchronizing service schedules with available resources, booking service tools and workshop equipment, and ensuring that parts are available when needed while offering value-added complementary services such as extended warranties, insurance coverage, and financing.

Existing dealer management systems may impede the way you conduct business. If an error is made during data entry, it can become a huge task to cancel or work around processes directly related to that data, since conventional solutions are often lacking when it comes to usability. To gain the full benefit of an IT system, it needs to be easy to use: SAP Dealer Business Management meets this requirement. Your sales and service employees use role-based user interfaces to access the applications they need to do their jobs in their given areas of the business. Industry-specific input templates are designed to be easy to use and intuitive, giving you complete control over your day-to-day business. All process steps can be cancelled at any time, if necessary. And no prior knowledge of the solution is needed. This leads to better acceptance of the solution by your employees and simplifies implementation of SAP Dealer Business Management at your company.

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The Benefits in Brief

Work with a Reliable Partner

SAP Dealer Business Management integrates dealers, importers, and manufacturers by providing a common, scalable platform and ensuring transparency across the value chain. It enables horizontal and vertical integration of information flow. With SAP Dealer Business Management, you can make your internal processes more efficient, optimize collaboration with stakeholders, and exhaust the potential in todays retail environment. You can effortlessly incorporate multiple brands, locations, and partners. And the increased speed of running processes means that youll conserve valuable resources to focus on the core business of selling and servicing customers. SAP Dealer Business Management enables you to perform the following: Improve responsiveness to consumer demand because of greater transparency into demand, capacity, and inventory throughout the OEM and dealer network Increase sales and service margins with processes that make it easier for customers to buy vehicles, service parts, and accessories Lower cost of ownership by replacing multiple, fragmented dealer applications with a scalable solution that keeps pace with growth Ensure faster, better-informed decisions due to integrated, automated, and standardized business processes that reduce friction between dealers and OEMs Enhance global brand execution with the ability to centrally manage multiple brands, locations, currencies, and languages With SAP Dealer Business Management, you can: Increase profit margins Keep an overview of all business processes Improve efficiency Meet customers wishes Increase profitability

In todays environment of over-promising and under-delivering, SAP Dealer Business Management is the smart choice, with proven results and quick implementations that support both new and existing IT landscapes. With access to 24-hour support, you can benefit from the knowledge and experience of the worlds leading provider of business solutions and gain a dealer management solution that covers the full list of motor vehicle retail requirements. Better transparency, higher efficiency, and quick return for investment will ensure success for many years. Find out more about SAP Dealer Business Management and take hold of the full potential for your dealership. Visit our Web site: www.sap.com/automotive.

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