The automotive retail and service market has been subject to a massive transformation during the last few years. The Europe-wide liberalisation – facilitated by incremental modifications of the block exemption regulation - as well as increasing competition and cost pressure caused and are still demanding a sustainable and continuous optimization of structures and systems.

Retail will have to optimise and streamline its processes and systems to benefit from these changes. The manufacturers must redefine the relationship with their retailers and adjust their retail-oriented systems and vertical processes accordingly.

The current situation - especially for retail groups - is affected by three central challenges:

• Competition
  The liberalisation of the market and omnipresent overcapacities have significantly increased the stress of competition. Top priority must be given to the consistent exploitation of the market and margin potential while optimising cost structures at the same time.
• Expansion
  Concentration within automotive retail has tremendously accelerated. The dynamic market often requires the next move towards expansion before the organisation has handled the current one.
• Control
  Heterogeneous systems and complex business processes make the management of retail groups significantly more complex. Sustainable competitiveness requires an efficient controlling of the entire company.
  

Business processes and the corresponding IT systems play an decisive role in this situation. They represent the basis for all activities in the market place. Accordingly, there is a major need for action in this area.

The operational procedures within automotive retail groups have to be harmonised across branches, locations and brands. The full potential for rationalisation must be identified and tapped. The organisation has to find its individual trade-off between the reduction of costs through centralisation and the proximity to customers by the use of decentralised expertise.

At the same time, the Dealer Management Systems (DMS) in use are often out of date and do not fulfil the functional requirements of complex organisations. The typical IT landscape consists of multiple DMS and additional applications such as financial accounting, management information systems, sales assistants and CRM applications. The large number of OEM systems - connected via interfaces - increase complexity even more.

To support effective innovations and strategic changes to automotive retail groups in this environment, we rely on the symbiosis of process and IT consulting. We guarantee our customers the best possible support through the unique skill mix of our people. Our consulting teams consist of experts who have gained a long lasting experience from former jobs at automotive dealerships, OEMs, system vendors, as well as IT and management consultancies.

We focus on two fields of activities:

• Retail Business Consulting: we provide concept oriented consulting services around processes and systems at the automotive retail and the corresponding interfaces to OEMs – regardless of the software vendors involved.
• SAP Solutions: we offer the entire range of business services around the adoption of SAP solutions at the automotive retail.

We consider our strength to be the combination of extensive knowledge of the automotive retail business and a long lasting experience in the realisation of complex SAP and consulting projects. Our consulting services and products provide the perfect combination of flexibility and independence on the one hand and reduced costs through standardisation on the other hand.

Consequently, we are able to specifically help dealer groups and other complex automotive retail organisations to leverage the current shift in the market place.