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''CRM towards better service''

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CIOL Bureau
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Tata Motors-one of India's largest integrated automaker with over 60% of a market share in the commercial vehicles and 20% of India's passenger car market-has one million customers, 22,000 employees, and annual sales of approximately $3 bn in commercial vehicles, utility vehicles, and passenger cars.

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The company implemented Oracle's Siebel Automotive-a comprehensive CRM solution. To address competitive challenges, Tata Motors began standardizing its customer-facing business processes companywide, laying the foundation for stronger dealer relationships, improved operational efficiency and effectiveness, and a better customer experience. This posed numerous challenges, as it involved working with 500 dealer organizations and more than 1,600 locations staffed with more than 10,000 salespeople across India, said head of CRM and DMS Project, Tata Motors, KR Sreenivasan.

In tune with its reengineering effort, Tata deployed a technology platform to improve the flow of information across the enterprise. The platform consisted of an innovative DMS, which helped individual dealerships with everything from inventory management and credit reporting to calculating commissions, and Siebel Automotive. By tightly integrating Siebel Automotive and its DMS, the company was able to streamline transactions and ensure that dealers capture customer data as a part of their normal operations.

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"Siebel Automotive has transformed our organization and made it truly customer-centric"

-KR Sreenivasan,
head of CRM and DMS Project, Tata Motors

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"Integrating Siebel Automotive with our dealer management system ensured that our dealers would immediately see the value in the solution," Sreenivasan explained. "This has helped us overcome the usual resistance to change and gain rapid acceptance from our dealers."

Phased Approach

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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 are adjusted for each dealer's requirements. In addition, comprehensive sales and reporting functionality built into Siebel Automotive enabled Tata to distribute sales targets to its dealers and roll up sales numbers across the country.

Sreenivasan said, "Siebel's proven SAP connector was a key factor in our decision-making." The company also favored Siebel Automotive because, he explained, "The user-friendly interface simplified the process of training of Tata Motors' 10,000-plus dealer sales force." Covering a country with an area of 3.3 mn sq km also required an innovative communications solution.

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On the Success Road

He further said that the solution helped dealers respond to customer queries regarding vehicles that aren't in a dealer's stock, but which can be ordered directly from Tata Motors.

"Within the first year of implementing the solution, we are targeting improvements of 5 to 10 % in customer satisfaction, revenue growth, operating cost reduction, and productivity gains," says Sreenivasan. He expressed optimism that these numbers will increase considerably over time, with the implementation of the solution.

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Team DQ

Source: Dataquest



maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in


Sreenivasan claimed, "Overall, Siebel Automotive has transformed our organization and made it truly customer-centric...We've overcome the challenges of relying on disparate sources of information, as well as having inconsistent business processes. Today, our employees and dealers are much more responsive and can serve customers more efficiently and effectively-drawing upon real-time, centralized customer and vehicle data."The company took a phased approach to the implementation, with the goal of achieving success in each phase before moving forward. Phase I, currently under way, focuses on capturing customer and vehicle data and automating routine tasks. Phase II will focus on leveraging data to improve customer interactions and streamlining product development and planning. Phase III will focus on tuning the system and delivering additional value-added services to customers.