How Firm Approached (Or Should Approach) CRM, The Specific CRM Strategy? How It Dovetails With The Business Model Why This Particular Strtaergy?

How firm approached (or should approach) CRM, the specific CRM strategy?
How it dovetails with the business model

Why this particular strtaergy?
Tata Motors implemented Oracle's Siebel Automotive, a comprehensive customer relationship
management (CRM) solution designed specifically for companies in the automotive industry.
Seamlessly integrated with Tata Motors’ dealer management system and SAP back-office applications,
Siebel Automotive has delivered significant benefits across the extended organization, including
improved customer satisfaction, increased revenue and productivity, and reduced costs. By tightly
integrating Siebel Automotive and its dealer management system, TATA has streamlined transactions
and ensured that dealers capture customer data as a 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.
“Integrating Siebel Automotive with our dealer management system ensured that our dealers would
immediately see the value in the solution,” Sreenivasan explains. “This has helped us overcome the
usual resistance to change and gain rapid acceptance from our dealers.” 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 Siebel
Automotive enables TATA to distribute sales targets to its dealers and roll up sales numbers across the
country.
Tata Motors also liked the fact that Siebel Automotive provides multi-organization support, can be
deployed easily over the Internet, and provides robust partner management capabilities—ideal for
Tata Motors with its far-flung dealer network. Further, the user-friendly interface has simplified the
process of training Tata Motors’ 10,000-plus dealer sales force. Covering a country with an area of 3.3
million square kilometers (or about one-third the size of the U.S.) also required an innovative
communications solution. Tata Motors links its 1,600 customer touch points with its centralized data
center in Mumbai using a combination of VSATs and high-speed virtual private networks. Siebel
Automotive has already begun to deliver benefits for Tata Motors’ dealers throughout India. “Overall,
Siebel Automotive has transformed our organization and made it truly customer-centric,” says
Sreenivasan. “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. “One of our first dealers to install Siebel Automotive said that his sales
volume doubled in three months without the need for additional manpower,” he continues. “Another
dealer said that for the first time he was able to view his entire stock of vehicles and how his inventory
was aging, improving his control.” Siebel Automotive has also 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. “These numbers should increase considerably over time.” He concludes, “Siebel has been
very committed to helping us in all aspects of the project. Combining Siebel Automotive with our
dealer management system is unique, so we have needed quality support. Siebel has played a major
role in getting us to where we are today.
Earlier, Tata Motors was using a manual DMS in which every dealer managed
details. There was no common database and distribution systems were not
standardized. To have all customer-centric transactions on one common hosted
system, Tata Motors rolled out a CRM system. Being implemented in phases since
2003 the combined on-line CRM-DMS initiative now supports over 15,000 users,
within the company and among its channel partners in India and abroad, to conduct
all customer-facing transactions. The project uses Oracle Siebel CRM applications as
a Web-based centralized dealer management system (DMS). The project has
improved demand forecasting, planning, logistics management as well as inventory
management. It is based on a B2B model with channels where a single application
works for users from multiple organizations.
Tata Motors’ integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM)—Dealer
Management System (DMS) initiative has crossed the significant milestone of
covering 1000 locations in India and abroad. Being implemented in phases since
2003 the combined on-line CRM-DMS initiative now supports over 15,000 users,
within the company and among its channel partners in India and abroad, to conduct
all customer-facing transactions.
The real time availability of customer and product information is enabling the
company and its channel partners to improve response time and customer service.
The success of this complex implementation extending across geographies is being
made possible by strong partnerships with CMC, IBM, INCAT & Tata Technologies
Limited (TTL), Oracle, Mercuri International,
Quality Kiosk, TCS, Tata Indicom, TIVS (Tatanet) and VSNL. Tata Motors has built its
DMS using Oracle’s Siebel verticals and uses Siebel CRM and Siebel Analytics for all
pre and post sales operations. The unique outside-in approach adopted by Tata
Motors and the extended use of Oracle’s Siebel CRM makes it one of the most
sophisticated and largest Siebel CRM implementations globally.
The implementation on IBM's high-end Power5 servers & enterprise storage is the
largest centrally hosted implementation of Siebel CRM worldwide within the
automotive industry. Tata Motors has also partnered with IBM to become IBM's
first automotive on- demand client in India, taking benefits of the Global Service
Delivery Centre based in Bangalore.
Tata Motors chose Siebel for its CRM programme, which with its user-friendly
interface simplified the process of training the company’s 15,000-plus dealer sales
force. To support each dealer — who is actually a business partner representing the
company
with the end customer — Tata Motors involved dealers throughout the
configuration and deployment process.
“Integrating the Siebel Automotive CRM with our system ensured that our dealers
would immediately see the value in the solution,” says KR Sreenivasan, head of
CRM and DMS. “This helped us overcome the usual resistance to change and gain
rapid acceptance from our dealers.” Its CRM-DMS initiative, which has cost Tata
Motors about Rs35 crore to date, has enabled the company to connect with 1,200
dealers online (the number is expected to rise to 1,600 in the next few months) and
has allowed it to monitor finances and inventory at the dealer level, and services,
spares and complaints at the customer end.
CRM-DMS has helped Tata Motors enormously in getting a firmer handle on its
business. The system was implemented in three phases, the objective being to
achieve success in one before moving on to the next:
Phase 1 focused on capturing customer and vehicle data and automating routine
tasks.
Phase 2 this data was used to improve customer interactions and streamline
product development and planning. ·
Phase 3, now underway, concentrates on tuning the system and delivering
additional value-added services to customers.
The CRM-DMS platform has been integrated with a wide array of back-office
applications, including inventory management, fulfilment and parts location. Pricing
and tax calculations can now be adjusted for each dealer’s requirements. The
comprehensive sales and reporting functionality built into the Siebel solution allows
Tata Motors to distribute sales targets directly to its dealers and roll up sales
numbers across the country in real time.
Tata Motors' dealers are a happy lot, too. The dealer management system has
meant a gross reduction in the amount of working capital needed to run their
businesses.
Transactions between the company and dealers, which earlier took up to 60
days, are now completed online and sealed in under seven days.
Even the service bays at the workshops have happy stories to tell. The system-
based job card enables the mechanic to follow a checklist and diagnose faults
through a process of elimination of probable causes, slashing diagnosis time.
Simultaneously, the stores manager uses the system-based job card to assort a
basket of the spare parts needed to fix the fault, and they are ready for pickup
even before the mechanic walks into the stores. With zero waiting times built
into the service process, the system generates a dashboard for the workshop
supervisor, indicating idle capacity and process times, and highlighting
bottlenecks to optimise the use of service bays. The recent implementation of
an SMS capability means that the system directly pings the customer when the
job card is closed on the system and his vehicle is ready.
The company can also now track each vehicle right through its operating
lifetime, giving it valuable insights on product performance over time (earlier
this was limited to the warranty period, after which scant information was
forthcoming). “Overall, we have transformed our organisation and made it
truly customer centric,” says Sreenivasan. “One of our first dealers to install
the system doubled his sales volume in three months without the need for
additional manpower. Another said that he can, for the first time, view his
entire stock of vehicles and see how his inventory was ageing.” But, as the old
cliché goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The real reward comes
from the customer. With a product line spanning commercial, utility, and
passenger vehicles, Tata Motors is on the road to forging ever stronger
relationships with the people who have bet their money on the company’s
products.

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How it dovetails with the business model

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