How can business transformation help the automotive industry?

Improving the specialist expertise of particular people and departments within the entire international structure is one of the most frequent steps towards business transformation. By harmonising their processes, large companies can create models of best practices for specific business areas: marketing, sales, finance and controlling, product development, production or centralised accounting and HR departments.

Digital Transformation and best business practices

In order to efficiently achieve its business objectives in modern times, a company has to build its processes around IT solutions. These solutions, in turn, force the company’s employees to adopt the expected behaviours (‘best practices’) in the given area.

Organisations frequently seek assistance with business transformation because they hope for quick growth or because they are getting ready for market expansion. It is at such times that it becomes necessary to standardise the company’s operations – creating new subsidiaries or taking over new companies may make it necessary to implement uniform rules for all teams in charge of specific processes throughout the organisation.

Developing a best practice model

In such a situation, developing the best practice model requires collecting various practices from a particular area of the company and using them to create an adequate, efficient and optimised procedure. At Hicron we carry out approximately 2 business transformations every year, worth several million Euro. We do this for large companies, frequently representing different markets, continents or cultures. Creating and implementing the model enables quicker and better integration on several dimensions: e.g. internal integration of all entities belonging to a particular group, or external integration of the business partners involved in a logistics chain around the processes critical to the business. When designing the best practice model, it is necessary to consider the legal environment and aspects specific to a particular market that may affect the business. Consequently, the model has to be flexible enough to enable development in any direction without adversely affecting the entire solution, which is very often implemented as part of a single system.

Business transformation and the automotive industry

A Qatari company, Abdullah Abdulghani & Bros Co. W.L.L. (AAB) – one of the largest independent distributors of Toyota and Lexus brands worldwide – needed precisely such an implementation as well as a best practice model as part of the business transformation due to its dynamic growth. The process also involved subsidiaries of the company. The entire project included areas such as: sales and purchases of cars, long-term car rentals, purchases and sales of used cars and sales of car parts and fluids.

We were awarded the top spot at the SAP Quality Awards – Excellence in Implementations 2015 – for our holistic approach to this project. The AAB Group also presented the tangible business benefits recognised by the board and employees after the business transformation:

• 80% of users of the solution satisfied with the effects of the implementation,
• improvement and acceleration of processes,
• reducing customer service time from 20 to 3 minutes,
• reducing customer flow time from 80 to 10 – 15 minutes,
• enabling management of the service appointment schedule,
• generating sales documents directly into the system,
• increased transparency of business processes,
• integration of the car rental system.

Our experience is backed up by the finalised business transformation projects at many international automotive companies. We have been working with such global market leaders as: Subaru Europe, Louwman, the above-mentioned AAB group from Qatar and a renowned manufacturer of sports cars. At this time we are implementing business transformation projects in the Balkans, in Japan and in the Middle East and Australia. We are also preparing for further projects in Asia and Oceania, not to mention other industries .

The typical scope of business transformation

The business transformation should involve improvement of areas such as logistics, including the supply and sales chain and integration between the dealer, distributor and the manufacturer, which on the one hand enables the dealer to flexibly create offers for customers, while on the other hand allows the manufacturer to plan demand in the long term. There are also controlling and finance tools or CRM solutions, helping with handling customer relations and many other aspects that make the business entity more competitive on the market. It is worth emphasising that at Hicron we are a well-known supplier of such change management services, which is also trusted by enterprises located in very distant regions of the world. Our work is appreciated because we provide specialist expertise and, consequently, guarantee the security of the project.