In the driving seat
In the driving seat
Jan 01, 2005: Premium performance for Subaru is not just about the cars-it is also about customer and network support, and the communications systems that are so important to providing that support. For Subaru and its retail dealer network, much of that communication is now based around its portal. Rodney Appleyard reports on how this new portal has improved the service provided by Subaru, for both customers and the staff.
For over 50 years Subaru vehicles have been designed and built by Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI) in Japan. With a proud heritage in aircraft development, FHI has had deep involvement in the development and manufacturing of Boeing commercial aircrafts, taking part in both the 767 and 777 projects and the pending 7E7 "Dreamliner." Subaru's automobile engineering pursuits are based on the same concept of dynamic stability that has been used with the aerospace engineering.
Subaru has also enjoyed great success in rally driving, highlighted by its many Australian and World Rally Championship titles. The Subaru Rally Team Australia has won more championships than any team in the history of the domestic competition.
But the company has not been so ahead of the field in recent years with it use of IT systems. Indeed, it has fallen somewhat short, particularly in the area of addressing dealer and customer support, because information used to be split across different systems which were not connected. This made it difficult to find information needed to help each customer and also slowed down the communication between Subaru and the dealer network, as well as between dealers.
This was until Subaru introduced the dealer portal, called Subaru Central, provided by Plumtree. This is the communications base for all information required by the retail network, including bulletins, vehicle and product information, service, parts, accessories and finance information, and vehicle inventory and supply chain detail. Much of the vital information is integrated into "dashboards" or relevant home pages for specific user groups.
92 Subaru dealers across Australia are now connected, which means that each dealer has access to the latest information about each car, including inventory details, order status and promotional programmes.
Adam Walters, the regional consulting manager at Plumtree for the Asia/Pacific Region, explains why he thinks this new system is the most forward-thinking portal concept in the market.
"Traditionally, portals were created to provide good presentation for companies, but nowadays customers expect much more from their portals. Our new charter allows a number of different databases to be joined together and accessed via an easy to use portal that can be seen remotely from anywhere."
"With Subaru, we have allowed dealers to get access to their ERP databases without having to use SAP. A dealer can find out about stock inventory; as well as associated marketing programs and vehicle logistic (arrival and availability dates) details".
Australia is the third-largest market in the world for Subaru, after Japan and the US, with about 30,000 units of sales made annually. Plumtree has worked hard to support Subaru's initiative to remove paper based, faxed and emailed communications streams, introducing the portal to allow users to pull information as required.
The portal was created after 12 months of research that ended in October 2004, which involved Plumtree asking its customers and analysts about how they could provide a portal that would really help each dealer. The research was aimed at ironing out portal problems of the past so that new beneficial services could be created.
Walters says that having so much access to this kind of valuable information via the portal allows the company to conduct its business much more easily without the use of faxes and telephone calls.
"We built the system on open standards at the back-end so that we could keep modifying the technology, although we used Microsoft and Java tools at the front-end. We have been very pro-active in finding exactly what is wanted from portals, so we are confident that the Integrated Activity Management platform will meet those needs more so than our competitors."
The system has been built using the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite, which manages all of the intranets, extranets and web applications in the enterprise as elements of one environment, instead of separate entities.
Through Plumtree's concept of Integrity Activity Management, the company has integrated all of the information and activities for every user group, with applications that match and fit in with each user's normal activities.
The availability of a Dashboard Application means that each Subaru user group can customise the portal to provide information that is most useful to those people. Gary Watson, the national sales manager for Subaru, explains how this application has increased efficiency. "Dealers used to rely on telephone access to our business managers every day asking, for details on essential and simple metrics, such as availability of a specific car to satisfy a customer enquiry, or how many cars they have that are approaching a critical age. They need this information because they rely on it for customer service, and because they're measured, and paid on it, but there was no easy way for them to access it themselves."
"Now that the portal is in place, many of those types of calls have been replaced by dealers actively seeking the information themselves, allowing Subaru business managers to focus on higher level customer support. In fact, we now receive many calls asking for even greater dashboard functionality."
The executive dashboard not only provides basic reporting, but it also drills-down into different systems integrated into the portal, and brings together key documents from across the business, with enterprise-wide searches from content repositories.
It can provide reports on vehicle sales figures; a list of current ordered vehicles; the status of cars in the dealership and their delivery dates; and promotional details including model specifications and pricing guides. In addition, it contains guidelines for promoting Subaru's brand; a calendar of sales appointments shared with Subaru employees (including action items to be addressed before and during those appointments), and dealer bulletins.
Watson adds: "Customers are always anxious to know when their new car will arrive, especially if they have custom ordered it to meet their exact tastes. Using the dashboard in the portal gives the dealer better visibility into our production and delivery timelines, which makes for happy customers too."
In the past, communication between dealers used to take place through three separate lines of business, managed by different employees in the spare parts, services and sales departments. These channels have now been consolidated via the central dealer dashboard and portal so that dealers can now access critical information at any time, which helps them with planning, management and their ability to satisfy the customer. At the same time, the channels have retained unique areas with a greater depth of research information available for the people that work in those areas.
Subaru dealers in Australia hope that this level of satisfaction will help elevate the company's image for service up to the dizzy heights it currently holds for rally driving.
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