Sierra Atlantic’s CRM Driven Automotive Enterprise Solutions

Dears,

Automotive the way we see it

Today’s dynamic and often turbulent automotive environment requires that vehicle manufacturers and dealers take a transformational approach to capitalize on current opportunities, achieve immediate cost savings and ensure long-term business success. Transformation means different things to different people. It really depends on a company’s goals and starting point. To survive and grow profitably automotive companies must change their business models through both innovation and efficiencies. This includes developing new business and process capabilities, and increasing responsiveness to customers and industry shifts. It also requires that a company generate improvements with agile and efficient operations, and improve working capital utilization. Sierra Atlantic, A Hitachi Consulting Company  is pleased to help automotive manufacturers and suppliers transform and perform through our unique CRM Value proposition solution  “The CRM Automotive Enterprise”. Our global automotive practice has automotive specialists working with Automotive Brand Dealers to address complex, technology-influenced business challenges.

The Power of Collaboration

At Sierra Atlantic, we do things differently. Collaboration is part of Sierra Atlantic and our CRM and Automotive practice are the pillars of our service delivery, enriched by our tools and techniques and highly experienced people. Our people listen to what clients say—and work with them to understand the problem before suggesting a solution. Project goals are clear and realistic and everyone agrees on the way ahead. We agree upfront with our clients what constitutes success, and then make it measurable. Effective knowledge sharing makes life simpler instead of more complicated. Sierra Atlantic believes collaborative working is perhaps the single most important factor in achieving competitive advantage and long-term success for organizations. We create the right conditions for automotive businesses to capture the exponential power of cooperation within their own organization as well as in their larger ecosystem.

We hope you will find our Automotive Value Proposition a useful source of information about how Sierra Atlantic is bringing value to automotive companies and providing them with insights and capabilities that boost their freedom to achieve superior results. We look forward to delivering maximum value in every project as we work with you in the future.

Helping Clients Keep Pace with a Changing Landscape

To succeed in today’s automotive climate vehicle manufacturers and suppliers know they must develop an intimate understanding of consumers, improve operational efficiency, reduce costs and grow margins.

Experience Counts

Sierra Atlantic is a front runner in delivering automotive CRM solutions and has successfully assisted clients in transforming their IT and business process capabilities and operations. We understand the automotive business and how to apply that experience to improve performance. Sierra Atlantic currently works with KSA’s leading automotive dealers, helping them optimize business operations, streamline expenses and generate profitable revenue growth.

Delivering Results

We leverage our experience, people and tools to achieve breakthrough results for our automotive clients. Sierra Atlantic’s clients gain the advantage of having an integrated team working with them to provide best-in-class automotive solutions.

Automotive Specific Solutions

Sierra Atlantic provides business process, technology and outsourcing solutions to address auto company needs.

Sierra Atlantic’s automotive-specific solutions focus on critical areas such as Contact Center, Sales and Marketing Requirements, Vehicle & Dealer Management, Customer Delight Index Surveys, Telesales and Service Appointment Process.

Entire Complaint Management process is categorized into two main sub processes

• Managing Inbound Complaints – In this occasion, Customers call up the Call Center directly to report a complaint.
• Managing Follow up Complaints – This can arise from other channels like Survey; Post Service Follow up.

Solutions Designed to Help Companies Compete

Sierra Atlantic’s automotive solutions focus on key issues across the automotive value chain, from suppliers to consumers:

Sales and Marketing: Solutions are focused on helping companies attract and retain today’s demanding and educated consumers. Offerings include:

• End-to-End Lead Management
• Optimization of Dealer-Focused Operations
• B2C and B2B Web Strategy and Implementation

Vehicle & Dealer Management:

Dealer is a franchised business such as a car dealership that is responsible for selling vehicles and providing service to the consumer after the sale, it is both a target account and also a partner company to a manufacturer .In Siebel Automotive, vehicles are a specialized asset. Vehicles can be owned by an account, a dealer, or an individual contact. Vehicles can also be associated in relationships other than ownership. Every vehicle is an instance of a defined product.

Solutions are designed to help automotive companies address cost and price pressures, globalization of the supply base, over capacity, and diversification and operational complexity.

Offerings include:

• Automotive Transportation and Logistics Optimization
• Order-to-Delivery value proposition
• Dealer Relationship Management

Customer Delight Index (CDI) Surveys:

The objective of CDI survey is to give timely feedback to the service center and the service advisor so that specific improvement initiatives can be identified and implemented. The results of this survey will also be an input to the CDI – Customer Delight Index for the service center and the service advisor. In the simplest terms, the process of CDI survey starts with preparing a list of Customers who can be called for the survey

Offerings include:

• Multi Channel Capability and Integration
• Accessibility
• Customer Service
• Service Differentiation
• Employee Engagement
• Service Standardization

Sales and Marketing Solutions

Helping companies attract and retain today’s demanding and educated consumers.

Buying a car used to be a pretty simple process: A consumer would check out some ads, talk to a few friends and head to the dealer for more information. Today that process has grown more complex, as consumers increasingly rely on new tools such as the Internet, blog sites, Web forums and online social networks. This increased sophistication has resulted in changing buying patterns as well as a shift of power in favor of the consumer. Keeping up with the pace of change isn’t easy for many vehicle manufacturers and dealers. Sierra Atlantic’s sales and marketing solutions focus on helping companies attract and retain today’s demanding and educated consumers.

Lead Management

Lead Generation is at the heart of an effective sales strategy. Sierra Atlantic’s research has found Leading Auto manufacturers/Distributors identified lead management optimization as the top priority for Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Sierra Atlantic’s holistic approach is to implement a lead management system that has short-term and long-term benefits, including sales growth, efficiency gains, improved campaign management and fulfillment, automated and improved lead handling, cost reductions, detailed customer knowledge and insight, and a positive long-term impact on a dealer’s operations.

In one example, we worked with a Leading Dealer in the MiddleEast to implement a central, state-of-the-art CRM solution incorporating campaign and sales lead management processes designed to integrate with the processes at dealerships in a closed loop. We implemented a fast-response lead management team answering Web queries through our experience in automotive strategy, process, infrastructure and retail.

Optimization of Dealer-Focused Operations

Retail integration has become a key point of differentiation in the battle for customers and sustainable profits in the automotive industry today. Sierra Atlantic’s experience working with clients demonstrates that improved retail integration can bring valuable benefits for manufacturers and dealers. For example, improving retail IT integration was a key element in bringing to life the global dealer strategy of one major manufacturer. Our work with the company involved the analysis and development of extended dealer IT platforms for several retail business areas, including ordering, sales, service and parts. Together with the client we identified waste time and implemented programs that reduced that waste time (including duplication, redundancy and system downtime) by a significant amount.

The result is a comprehensive extended CRM platform that has contributed to building one of the best retail networks in the industry. By focusing on what will actually sell cars and services at the dealer, CRM processes and IT requirements were designed to ensure a pragmatic and useful CRM fulfillment. Sierra Atlantic’s retail integration approach is one of the core elements of our automotive practice. The program begins the basis for a prioritization process that involves the full 360 degrees view for the Client.

Connecting with Automotive Customers

The 5 Vital Connection Points makes the collaboration with customers effective.

Collaborate Around the Customer

• Build up customer centric value net through on-line collaboration
• Introduce and promote shared services among dealers / dealers-to-OEM
• “Invest” in dealership support, training and infrastructure around owner repeatability
• Arm all who interact with the customer with tools to act  real time

Deliver Brand Value Across Touch Points

• Institute a brand-building and brand advocacy mindset with all partners
• Utilize the ubiquity of the Web to ensure consistent brand positioning, messaging and treatment
• Create linked customer loyalty programs

Drive Customer Business Measurements

• Understand causes of defection and dissatisfaction
• Identify and measure customer fulfillment of customer wants & needs
• Measure long term ROI factoring in Customer Value Management and lifetime customer value not individual transactions 

Know the Customer

• Build enterprise wide household view  to facilitate real and virtual connection with the customer
• Maintain two-way personalized dialogue with narrower segmented customers
• Monitor and address causes of customer defection and dissatisfaction

Organize Around the Customer

• Empower customer-facing representatives to make real time decisions on behalf of the customer
• Implement content mgmt tools to decipher and analyze customer data
• Redesign product design and manufacturing processes to focus on customer flexibility 
• Customer self -maintenance and self help

The next generation of CRM, which has already started to arrive, will be even more sophisticated. It will include features that help you connect your dealership to social media sites, increased cross platform integration, as well as other useful tools such as video email and SMS text messaging.  

There are a lot of options out there for auto dealers with different features, options, and prices.

Drive your Success with our Automotive Enterprise Solution, Safe Journey assured

Loving P&C

DC*

Consumer Goods VanSales CRM Solution

Dears,

In the consumer goods industry, product exposure is critical to increasing market share. As a result, success is driven by the efficiency of van sales and delivery representatives. In fast-moving consumer goods industries such as beverage, tobacco, and snack foods, retail shelves must be stocked with the right products and replenished on a timely basis. For maximum effectiveness, sales retailers must comply with promotion guidelines throughout the life of a promotion. To verify compliance, mobile field representatives must conduct regular audits and assessments of participating outlets. They need to ensure consistent order quality so that shelves are stocked at all times for consumers, and they may also collect competitive information in order to improve product presence.

To be effective in the field, mobile representatives must have the tools to successfully manage the complete interaction with a retail outlet, from conducting basic merchandising activities—including retail audits and assessments—to capturing and fulfilling orders, to managing the invoice and payment process. Mobile representatives must also manage van inventory accurately and efficiently execute each day’s activities. In addition, management needs visibility into this entire process. To ensure the highest levels of customer service and to maximize retail exposure of their products, managers assign activities and accounts to the van sales force at the start of the day and audit van inventory and sales invoice records at the end of the day. By coupling the rich functionality of Siebel Consumer Goods VanSales CRM   solutions with the convenience and familiarity of the Windows-powered platform, Siebel Consumer Goods Sales Handheld delivers the vital information that these mobile professionals need to perform their work more effectively and more profitably. Siebel Consumer Goods Sales Handheld facilitates complete van sales management and retail execution. By enabling efficient store visits and account management, managers can ensure that resources are allocated properly and that store shelves remain stocked.   Siebel Consumer Goods Sales Handheld gives consumer goods companies the tools to capture data and convert it into retail intelligence by tracking orders, managing inventory, and improving overall retail effectiveness and efficiency. This helps these companies achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Siebel Consumer Goods Sales Handheld

Siebel Consumer Goods Sales Handheld offers the rich functionality of Siebel consumer Goods Applications, coupled with the convenience and simplicity of handheld devices. This product gives sales professionals immediate access to critical data anytime and anywhere their business demands. As a key element of a multi-platform Siebel Applications deployment, Siebel Sales Handheld helps sales organizations achieve the goal of seamless customer service and support. Siebel Consumer Goods Sales Handheld empowers sales representatives with comprehensive retail outlet information on a highly portable device. The handheld application supports field responsibilities, such as Merchandising, Pre-Sales and Van Sales/Delivery; it empowers Van Sales Representatives with comprehensive retail outlet and inventory information on a highly portable device. Depending on the business requirements, representatives may conduct retail audits and retail assessments to ensure promotion compliance. The handheld application supports multiple field responsibilities, such as Delivery, and Van Sales. Users may collect and fulfill orders, collect payments, and manage the van inventory.At the end of the day, Sales Handheld users can capture a complete range of retail intelligence data. The handheld also provides sophisticated navigation and print capabilities though the use of buttons. Representatives may print documents such as order reports. At any point in the day, representatives may synchronize using Direct Server Synchronization (DSS) to upload handheld updates and download server updates. The Siebel Hand Held application is optimized for rapid data entry, maximizing Sales Rep efficiency in the store and enabling rapid call times. It mainly covers the following functionalities:

The handheld UI is geared toward User Adoption: Configurable, productive

•          Bar-code record locate

•          Printing

–        Configurable  printer settings

–        Multi-form, multi-quantity

–        Print template enhancements

•          User controlled batch sync

–        Download only

–        Upload only

–        Upload now

–        Full sync

•          Calendaring

–        Time slot views

Its merchandising capabilities Supports changing needs at retail :

Retail Audit

•          Instant appraisal of store conditions

•          Automatically populates with last audit data, limiting input of redundant data

Merchandising Audit

•          Captures qualitative information during a Merchandising Audit

Retail Assessment

•          Captures open ended information about retail outlet

•          Template is associated to the Assessment at the time of creation

Its Pre-sales activities supports obust order-taking, return authorization in highly mobile environment :

Orders

•          Ability to Order in multiple units of measure

•          Last Order Quantities and Suggested Order Quantities to support recommended ordering

•          Authorized Distribution List driven line item population

•          Support for bonus quantities, volume discounting, and taxes

•          Pre-built printed documentation

RMA/Returns

•          Ability to capture and process return requests

Ability to apply appropriate pricing, taxes, etc. to returns

Siebel consumer goods also supports Direct Store Delivery through the following order to cash functionalities:

Inventory

•          Ability to conduct daily or periodic inventory counts and reconcile physical vs. logical as needed

•          Supports multiple inventory statuses (e.g. good or damaged)

•          Pre-built Handheld Inventory Reconciliation report

Orders

•          Ability to view and deliver/invoice orders

•          Automatic decrement of available inventory

RMA/Returns

•          Ability to view and receive/credit returns

Invoices

•          Auto-generation of invoices

•          Cash or credit based

•          Allows for available credit to be checked instantaneously

Payments

•          Allows single payments against multiple invoices

•          Allow multiple payments against a single invoice

•          Shows previous payments that have been made against an invoice

Deposits

•          Associate payments to single deposit transactions

•          Running totals during the course of the day

Loving P&C

DC*

Consumer Goods VanSales CRM Solution

Telecom “CRM” Spectrum, A©rmed for Voice & Data Battle

Dears,

The telecommunications industry is engaged in a number of different battles, each one with a particular history and strategy. At present we have at least two very important battles in place: the voice battle and data battle between wireless, wire line, cable and satellite. The situation inside each battle is very chaotic and complex to analyze. However, we can identify some significant trends inside each battle.

The voice battle

In the voice battle, we can identify at least two very important worldwide trends. The first trend shows the movement from the corporate market to the mass market in the wireless industry, and the second one shows the substitution of wire line by wireless. The movement toward the mass market has been creating cost challenges and changing the CRM processes structures. Many carriers will have to enlist the aid of complex and expensive database CRM tools simply to identify their customers, now concealed among the masses. Now the wireless companies are using many CRM and sales strategies (prepaid, Postpaid,one-rate plans) to acquire new good customers and to deepen the relationship with them. However, one of the most important effects of this movement is a decrease in average revenue per user (ARPU), forcing companies to try to increase their wallet share.

In developing countries the numbers tell the same story, showing that these countries are leapfrogging intermediate technology, going straight to use of state of the art wireless technology and following developed-country trends. One of the effects of the prepaid strategy is the difficulty companies have in identifying prepaid customers. Many times billing systems do not store data about these customers, transforming them into huge anonymous segments. This means that these customers will be harder to identify when carriers try to market news and information services (wallet share improvement campaigns) or unified messaging (fax, e-mail and voice mail). Those add-on applications will be necessary to increase minutes per use, which have been declining.

The data battle

The data battle is the most complex and may be the most important. The complexity of this battle starts with the huge number of players, including wireless, wire line, satellite, cable and companies from different industries such as the IT,Telecom,Hitech industry, all trying to define the standards. The data battle is probably the most important because if we consider voice transmission as a particular case of data transmission (IP telephony, cable phone), this battle could include part of the voice battle. We can split the data battle into two sub-battles, the first focused on mobile data transmission and the second on no-mobile data transmission. To get a better sense of the mobile data transmission sub-battle, imagine a salesperson or an executive, out of the office, trying to connect his or her notebook with the company intranet. He or she can use wire line or wireless technology to make this connection. Forecasts are showing an exponential growth for this kind of mobile data transmission. In the no-mobile side we can imagine a similar person trying to access the Internet from home or from the office. In this case, he or she still has the same first two options (wireless broadband for instance) but technologies like ISDN, DSL, cable modem or satellite dishes (PC Direct) can also be chosen to make the connection.

Telecommunications companies around the world have been trying to adapt themselves to every new market force, constantly changing their organizational structure in order to react quickly and remain competitive. They expect that the changes will stop and the chaos will decrease in the short term. However, this is unlikely to happen, so companies need to continue to adapt. We suggest that a necessary condition for success is to optimize core CRM processes and establish a competitive advantage in each one. The four core CRM processes are:

• Wallet-share enhancement (increase revenue from existing customers);
• Acquisition (new customers);
• Affinity (customer loyalty);
• Retention (preventing customer churn).

Each CRM process has four steps:

• Prioritization and goal setting: deciding what to focus on and building teams that pursue those objectives.
• Modelling: performing segmentation, scoring, and other kinds of analysis that help CRM decide which campaigns to develop.
• Campaign development: choosing, creating and preparing the advertising medium and the message to be delivered to customers, as well as running tests to validate the CRM assumptions.
• Campaign execution: actually sending the messages through the respective media.

Prioritization and goal setting

The CRM process has to deal with many different sources of input, feedback and impetus. In fact, in most telecommunications firms there is so much input, from so many different sources, with so many different and contradictory objectives, that it is easy to lose control over the whole process very quickly. This step may be extremely dysfunctional in some organizations, nonexistent in others, and well run in only a small percentage of cases. Most of the major challenges to the execution of the CRM process occur here, in the area of prioritization and goal settings. During this step of the process, the major components of a CRM plan are assembled. These steps involve identification of sponsors, creation of projects, assembly of teams, identification of objectives, and identification of constraints.

Modelling

Once the project team has been assembled and financed and the objectives have been clearly stated, the team moves from prioritization and goal-setting mode into modelling mode. A model is a proposal of the method that will accomplish the sponsor's objectives and the mathematical proof that shows the proposed solution is reasonable and viable. The goal of modelling is then is to develop a plan, or a series of plans, that will accomplish the goals. The modelling process is where most of the analytical disciplines are employed.

Campaign/programme development

Once the modelling process has been completed and the decision has been made which model to use, the job of CRM shifts from the modeller to the campaign developer. Campaign developers turn the model into a specific, executable plan. There are several processes involved in campaign development.

• Media and message finalization: deciding on the specific message to use and how it will be delivered.
• Media selection and negotiation: choosing specific organizations and individuals to deliver the messages and negotiating the cost of delivery. Media selection is often influenced strongly by the time frame for the message, or the target group.
• Prospect targeting and list scoring. In the case of direct mail and telemarketing, one of the main jobs of the campaign developer is to select the list of prospects and to determine which specific people on that list will be targeted.

Campaign execution

Once the campaign for a given time period (monthly, quarterly or annually) has been developed, the marketer will be responsible for setting it in motion. It may involve nothing more than making a phone call to the advertising agency, or may be as complicated as initiating and monitoring the day to day activities of a call centre or mailroom operation. Once the message is delivered, the company is ready to analyse the results.

The Forces

To continue our effort to construct a logical structure to represent the core CRM processes we need to understand all sources of influence and how they impact these processes. We can categorize the major sources of influence in three different forces.

The support force

The support force works as a floor for the CRM processes. We can split the support force into three different components:

• Techniques: specialized processes, procedures and techniques such as optimization, data mining and data;
• Telecomms CRM skills: specialized skills needed to manage the whole CRM process;
• Technology: the systems tools and data collection necessary to make this happen.

These components could actually be broken down further into different sub-components. For example, the technology component could be divided into a query system, to include the OLAP tools, data warehouses, data-marts and all the legacy systems; analytical systems for all of the optimization, data-mining systems and tools (this subcomponent is very important for defining the optimality of many parts of the CRM process); and finally process management systems, to include systems such as campaign management. The implementation of this particular sub-component is very complex because of the complicated trade-off between the tool and the internal processes of the company. When a telecoms company buys this kind of tool it is really buying a process that often does not match its current CRM processes.

The motive force

The motive force works as an engine for the CRM process. This force is responsible for pushing the whole process forward. The more important components in the motive force are:

• Corporate strategy and goal setting;
• Competition;
• New technologies and innovations;
• Market (customers and prospects).

The influence of the motive force within the core CRM processes is both very important and difficult to analyze. Companies often construct dedicated mechanisms to help them to understand fully all of the different components and how they affect their business environments.

The spoiler force

To understand the spoiler force we need to think of the spoiler on a race car, an accessory that adds to traction and steering capabilities, but can also slow down the car's progress based on its angle and how it is used. This spoiler force can be used to help or hinder the company's CRM progress. Components of the spoiler force include:

• Regulation;
• Network infrastructure;
• Operations.

Each one of these components has an enormous influence on the CRM core processes. For example, network infrastructure can work against marketing by creating a physical constraint for any acquisition campaign, or can work as a competitive advantage, helping marketers in the same kind of campaign.

Well we can go on and on with ways and means to conquer customers in Telecom space provided we have the right CRM path and direction in place

Loving P&C

DC*