Driving Dealers

Founded
in 1945, Tata Motors is India's largest and only fully integrated automaker,
with 22,000 employees; 1 mn customers; and annual sales of approximately $3 bn
in commercial vehicles, utility vehicles, and passenger cars. Tata Motors holds
a major share of India's market for medium and heavy commercial vehicles, with
global sales that rank it among the top six manufacturers of commercial vehicles
worldwide. Although the company only entered the passenger car business in the
late 1990s, it has already captured a 16% share.

“Globalization has
changed the entire business environment for our organization,” says KR
Sreenivasan, head of the CRM and dealer management system project at Tata
Motors. “We have developed strategies to pursue our goal of becoming a more
global company, while continuing to grow domestically.”

To address its
competitive challenges, Tata Motors began standardizing its customer-facing
business processes company wide, laying the foundation for stronger dealer
relationships, improved operational efficiency and effectiveness, and a better
customer experience. This posed serious challenges, as it involved working with
250 dealer organizations and more than 1,600 locations staffed by over 10,000
sales people across India.  In
conjunction with its reengineering effort, Tata Motors deployed a robust
technology platform to improve the flow of information across the enterprise.
The platform consisted of an innovative dealer management system, which helped
individual dealerships with everything from inventory management and credit
reporting to calculating commissions, and Siebel Automotive, a comprehensive CRM
solution designed specifically for companies in the automotive industry.

By tightly integrating
Siebel Automotive and its dealer management system, Tata Motors has streamlined
transactions and ensured that dealers capture customer data as part of their
normal operations. The solution provides a 360-degree view of customers to the
extended organization, with appropriate visibility controls to ensure that one
dealer is not privy to information from another. To further enlist dealer
support, Tata Motors involved dealers throughout the solution configuration and
deployment process.

Tata Motors has taken a
phased approach to the implementation, with the goal of achieving success in
each phase before moving forward. Phase 1 focused on capturing customer and
vehicle data and automating routine tasks.
Phase 2 focused on leveraging data to improve customer interactions and
streamline product development and planning. The focus in Phase 3 was on tuning
the system and delivering additional value-added services to customers.

Siebel Automotive has
been closely integrated with a wide array of SAP back-office applications,
including applications inventory management, fulfillment, and parts location.
Pricing and tax calculations can be adjusted for each dealer's requirements.
In addition, comprehensive sales and reporting functionality built into the
solution enabled Tata Motors to distribute sales targets to its dealers and roll
up sales numbers across the country.

The solution has
delivered benefits for Tata Motors' dealers throughout India. “Overall, the
solution has transformed our organization and made it truly customer-centric,”
says Sreenivasan. “We have overcome the challenges of relying on disparate
sources of information, as well as having inconsistent business processes.

Team DQ 

mail@dqindia.com