Case Study: B2B Shop Ensures Brand Consistency in the Dealer Network
AUDI produces and distributes premium vehicles. Centralizing showroom furniture from different suppliers on a digital B2B shop makes the order processes more efficient and ensures global brand consistency.
AUDI AG is anxious for the proper equipment of all AUDI dealers worldwide, also regarding the CI and CD guidelines for brand consistency. However, the lack of central product data management led to messy and incomplete data records. This caused many errors and a lot of back-and-forth communication to furnish a dealership. Therefore, central data management for all products was required to solve this challenge.
Customer Details
- Audi AG
Customer Key Facts
Business Needs
The order documents for the equipment of an Audi dealer operation cover more than one hundred pages, since the showroom concept is very extensive. The order process involved a lot of manual work. Dealers downloaded order forms, which they had to print, fill out and send via fax or scan and email. This led to a number of challenges. The back office staff of furniture suppliers had to read and transcribe the handwriting on the forms. This was an error-prone process and led to misunderstandings and high communication overhead. Also, the adjustment of the furniture requires a profound knowledge of the guidelines and the ordering. AUDI AG needed a solution to eliminate manual processes and replace them with automated processes.
Pimcore Solution
After consultation with Pimcore partners incoxx and Elements, a completely new and fully automatic order portal for the installation of Audi dealerships was set up in less than a year. All Audi dealers and importers worldwide have access to the portal. The portal has replaced the manual order process by fax/mail. Each dealer automatically sees the equipment relevant to him based on his contract status.
The suppliers supply the dealers according to a country assignment defined by Audi. The system automatically detects the relevant supplier based on the location of the merchant. The order is automatically sent to the supplier via an XML feed, eliminating manual work on the supplier side. In addition to the manual processes, which are replaced by an automated process, dealers can now also order packages that have been preconfigured by Audi. A product configurator automatically provides a 3D preview of tagging elements such as signposts with individual text. Once a configuration is complete, suppliers receive a file created by Pimcore's database publishing module that can be used directly by the printers.
Pimcore's flexible data modeling capabilities and extensive user role and rights management made it possible to set up individual user interfaces for each market. Each dealer automatically sees the country-specific product portfolio.
Business Results
A single source of supply for all materials needed to fit showrooms worldwide has enabled Audi to make a variety of business process improvements. For dealers, it has become easier to find and order suitable equipment for setting up their dealership. The central office could switch off the manual process of fax transmission from order forms. Suppliers save time as they now receive order notifications in structured files that can be automatically processed by their ordering software. The portal connects the dealers directly with the suppliers.