|
|
Oracle / Siebel Files Automotive
 DaimlerChrysler Provides Unparalleled Service
DaimlerChrysler
DaimlerChrysler Corporation Auburn Hills, MI www.daimlerchrysler.com DaimlerChrysler Provides Unparalleled Service
"Oracle has helped us expand our business, and we are relying on it
to help take us further.” – Thor Tielemans, Chief Information Officer,
DaimlerChrysler Customer Assistance Center (CAC)
“We decided that what we
wanted was software that was able to cover the whole customer Robust Software Platform
Thus, the CAC is not just a call center, but truly a customer assistance
center. Invaluable Information
Since implementing Compass, DaimlerChrysler CAC has seen a marked
improvement in service quality. There has been significant improvement
in service levels for the period between2003 and 2005, with 72% of calls
answered within 20 seconds in 2003, rising to 87% in 2005. The scope of
services provided has grown considerably over the past few years. Since opening in 1998, the CAC has solved almost 5 million “cases.”
These cases can be requests for roadside assistance, as well as customer
inquiries, complaints, comments, and suggestions. All the cases have
been brought to the CAC’s attention by a staggering 1,810,675 letters,
809,918 faxes, and 905,922 emails to date, as well as approximately
9,262 inbound calls per day. Customer Satisfaction “Oracle has helped us expand our business, and we are relying on it to
help take us further. We are currently rolling the Siebel-based Compass
solution out to our dealers so that we have yet another means of
capturing information from our customers. We will have 500 dealers
online next year and ultimately we will have 2,000 across Europe,”
Tielemans said. DaimlerChrysler CAC also plans to use Siebel in its Market Performance
Center. This is the division that has responsibility for sales and
marketing across Europe, as well as for the retail network. The CAC’s strong focus on customer satisfaction ensures that customers
receive the highest level of service that is associated with the
DaimlerChrysler brands. DaimlerChrysler now has the most impressive
product range and the most valuable brands in the automotive industry. Why Oracle? Implementation Process
|
 Saab Cars USA, Inc.
Increases Lead Follow Up and Customer Satisfaction from 38% to 50%
SAAB Cars USA Saab Cars USA, Inc.
Norcross, GA
www.saabusa.com Saab Cars USA, Inc. Increases Lead Follow Up and Customer Satisfaction from 38% to 50% “Based on our parent company’s experience with Oracle [Siebel], we knew that Oracle’s Siebel solution offered the rich, industry-specific functionality we needed.” – Robert Henry, Manager of eCommerce and CRM Solutions, Saab Cars USA, Inc.
Key Benefits:
Saab began its CRM implementation with Siebel Call Center, which provides Saab’s call center employees with a 360-degree view of each customer, including prior service-related questions and all the marketing communications they have received.
The benefits of TouchPoint have been immediate and measurable. In addition to increasing the follow-up rate on leads, the company has been able to reduce its total direct marketing budget by more than 5%. “The ability to increase sales while simultaneously reducing marketing costs is an incredible accomplishment given the current competitive environment,” Fontova said.
Building on the Siebel
Call Center deployment, Saab began rolling out Siebel Dealer to its 220
U.S. dealers in July 2002 after a successful pilot during the spring.
|
 Mitsubishi Motors Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. Enhances Customer Service and Reduces Costs with Integrated CRM Initiative
Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. Cypress, CA
www.mitsucars.com Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. Enhances Customer Service and Reduces Costs with Integrated CRM Initiative “The savings should be tremendous! We expect a significant return on our CRM technology investment.” – Robert Costantino, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mitsubishi Motors Credit of America, Inc.
Since implementing Siebel CRM, cost per call has dropped by 38%, and MMCA’s abandon rate has improved by 8%. In addition, the system allowed MMCA to significantly increase its customer service-related productivity. Even though incoming call volume has risen 75% over the past two years, MMCA has been able to handle the expanded volume with virtually no increase in staffing levels.
Implementation Process |
 Ford Motor
Company The Customer Ford Motor Company Oracle's
PeopleSoft Enterprise products give Ford the ability to operate globally
as one company, with accounting, analysis, GAAP reporting, and statutory
reporting on one system. Business Challenge
Ford Motor Company
Drives Consolidated Global Financials with PeopleSoft
Ford Cuts Energy Costs Using Real-Time Consumption Data Ford
Motor Company mGenk, Belgium Industry: Automotive Annual Revenue: More
than 1 billion Employees: 300,000 Ford Cuts
Energy Costs Using Real-Time Consumption Data
|
|
Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Powering the Finance Transformation Toyota Motor Sales CFO Tracey Doi on the Toyota Way and creating enterprise value Ask any CFO what's at the top of his or her agenda, and the likely answer will be value creation. According to the CFO Executive Board, a Washington DC-based research organization representing CFOs from the world's top 500 corporations, more than two-thirds of global CFOs are now engaged in finance transformation strategies to move their teams away from mundane tasks like account analysis and transactional processing, toward more value-creating activities that can influence corporate strategy and impact enterprise performance. The most-successful strategies that CFOs have adopted to transform finance are focused on providing expertise and assurance at the corporate center in tax, treasury, accounting, and other compliance-related processes; embedding finance managers in lines of business to influence outcomes and help drive value creation; and moving toward a shared services or outsourced environment to drive costs out of finance and free up managers to focus on more value-creating activities. Value-driven CFOs have also moved to adopt a single instance of their financial applications, coupled with performance management applications to improve decision support and align finance to corporate strategy. Transforming Finance at Toyota Motor Sales Among those companies considered leaders in finance transformation, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. (TMS) stands out for its unique approach. The U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation is revolutionizing its finance operations by combining the latest enterprise software and business process reengineering techniques with decades-old Japanese business practices based on respect for the individual and the Kaizen system of continuous improvement. It's a powerful combination that is being emulated around the world, as companies compete to find ways to differentiate themselves on price, quality, and customer service. TMS was founded almost fifty years ago as the sales, marketing, and distribution arm of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC). TMS opened its doors for business in 1957 at a former Rambler dealership in Hollywood, California, selling only 287 Toyopet cars (one of the earliest Toyota cars) and one Land Cruiser during that first year. Almost half a century later, TMS has transformed itself into a US$50 billion force in the American automotive industry, dominating the U.S. passenger car market and winning top awards for vehicle quality and reliability. Although the Toyota and Lexus brands are perennial favorites, TMS has experienced red-hot growth in recent years with new entries into the market like the Prius hybrid vehicle and the Scion line of youth-oriented cars. Helping manage Toyota's torrid growth is a challenge most CFOs would envy, and no one knows it better than Tracey Doi, group vice president and chief financial officer for TMS. Doi, a California native and Japanese-American, grew up very close to the Toyota campus, never dreaming she'd have the opportunity to be part of the Toyota family. She joined TMS in 2000 as its corporate controller, following finance stints with L.A. Cellular and AT&T Wireless, and assumed responsibility for core accounting, treasury, tax, customs, and financial and business planning with her rise to the CFO post in 2003. In both roles, Doi's main task has been to scale her organization to support Toyota's rapid expansion in North America, yet stay true to Toyota's Lean operating philosophy. "Toyota's growth has been phenomenal in the United States," says Doi, "but the challenge we face now is how to make that growth sustainable and profitable, while keeping our infrastructure costs as low as possible." It's a challenge as complex as the automotive industry itself, with its dealer networks, finance incentives, and credit and insurance services. In addition to the Toyota organization, Doi's finance team supports the Lexus and Scion divisions that coordinate sales, service, and parts for Toyota's 1,200 Toyota dealers and 210 Lexus dealers across the United States. Driving for Higher Performance Soon after she began working for the company, Doi realized that the finance organization at TMS needed to get closer to its divisional business units, rather than just delivering financial information to the parent company in Japan. Having been indoctrinated into the Kaizen system of focusing on people, process, and technology to drive continuous improvement, Doi launched a pilot transformation project within the Accounting department she called Driving for Higher Performance. The cornerstone of that project was an upgrade to a full suite of Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management applications. "My vision for the finance organization was to simplify our business processes, align ourselves with our internal customers, and help provide them with the right information to support our growth objectives," recalls Doi. "We chose PeopleSoft to help us do that." Doi opted for a plain-vanilla implementation to take full advantage of the finance best practices embedded in PeopleSoft Financial Management Solutions. She recommends that other CFOs go vanilla as well: "I strongly encourage leveraging the best practices that PeopleSoft has learned from all the other major companies—that's a huge benefit." The first wave of Doi's efforts to reengineer business processes using Kaizen methodologies and PeopleSoft finance best practices brought impressive results. PeopleSoft's single source of information and automated transaction efficiencies helped drive down U.S. monthly close times to three days—considered world-class by the Hackett Group—and shave financial reporting time to Japan down by 40 percent. TMS has also achieved best-in-class benchmarks in areas like invoice processing: Since 2001, Doi's team has reduced costs per transaction by 40 percent, despite processing 70 percent more invoices. Doi also used Lean accounting techniques to reorganize all the company's financial data by profit center, so that executives could look at the numbers on a divisional basis. "As a result of that effort, we are now able to zero in on where there are major fluctuations against the plan, or drill down on variances that could impact the forecast for the balance of the year," says Doi. "The way we've structured the financial data using PeopleSoft lends itself to a higher level of profit center accountability." Enhancing Finance for Value Creation When she became CFO in 2003, Doi looked to the Toyota Way for inspiration on how best to take her finance transformation initiative to the next level. "I'm very fortunate in that the two main pillars of the Toyota Way—respect for people and Kaizen—have been a good cultural fit for me," she says. "The whole idea that you're never satisfied with the status quo aligns with my feeling that I've never wanted to be in a maintenance-like role." For Doi, moving beyond the status quo meant finding ways to address new challenges such as compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and heightened demand in the U.S. for new models like the Prius hybrid and the Scion tC. She drew upon her experiences attending the Toyota Executive Development Program at the Wharton School of Business and her involvement in professional organizations like the CFO Executive Board to launch the next phase of her finance transformation initiative, Enhancing Finance. Doi used the name to symbolize the continual improvements she envisioned in areas like cost reduction, corporate compliance, and value creation. Providing assurance from the corporate center in areas such as tax, treasury, and accounting is a finance transformation best practice, according to recent CFO Executive Board research. Providing that assurance not only helps deliver the expertise necessary to support the CFO missions of cost reduction and value creation but also provides the oversight necessary to ensure corporate compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S. and global regulations like International Financial Reporting Standards. "We've provided corporate assurance from a controllership perspective by centralizing our foundational accounting activities, defining our corporate policies and procedures, and standardizing our processes with PeopleSoft," explains Anthony Salcido, vice president and corporate controller at TMS. "Examples of how we use Kaizen and PeopleSoft to standardize our processes and drive continuous cost reduction include things as basic as procurement cards, debit cards, and even how we store data." Salcido and his team point to the success of Toyota's debit card program as a good example of the impact Kaizen and PeopleSoft have had on providing assurance from the corporate center and enabling cost reduction at the same time. "Before launching our debit card program, we used to process checks to our dealers manually," says Salcido. "We've now distributed debit cards to our dealer network and replenish them electronically, cutting way down on processing costs while improving dealer satisfaction. To strengthen our oversight over dealer programs, we track all those debit card transactions through PeopleSoft Accounts Payable and General Ledger." Compliance is also a top priority at TMS and TMC. As a foreign company with American Depository Receipt listings on the NYSE, TMC will be subject to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in fiscal year 2007. Doi and Salcido have focused finance team members on preparing for that date, using PeopleSoft's embedded best practices and automated controls to drive further process improvements in core compliance activities such as financial reporting, tax, and treasury. An additional half day was shaved off of the company's three-day monthly close, in order to prepare for faster reporting requirements under Sarbanes-Oxley. Additional functionality within PeopleSoft Financials has also been used to strengthen internal controls, notes Salcido: "The only way we can make Sarbanes-Oxley compliance sustainable is to improve our processes and develop the right balance of preventive and automated controls. We look to our PeopleSoft applications to help us in that effort." Embedding finance managers in the lines of business is another finance transformation best practice cited by the CFO Executive Board and the No. 1 priority of CFOs involved in finance transformation efforts in 2005. Value-driven CFOs use their embedded teams to align finance with corporate strategy, providing decision support to help business units improve their enterprise performance and profitability. It's a practice Doi embraced early on to better support the division heads at TMS and to show management the value that finance can bring to Toyota overall. Although she reports into the CFO's office, finance manager Kelly Foltz has been embedded with the Lexus division for almost five years, providing support to the division as well as analyzing valuable financial information on Lexus for business planning, budgeting, forecasting, and strategic projects. She relies on Kaizen techniques and PeopleSoft to help move the finance transformation effort at TMS forward. To support process improvements, Foltz and the other embedded members of Doi's finance team use PeopleSoft to obtain information that is timely, accurate, and relevant. "My team monitors the financial performance of the Lexus division and shares that information with Lexus management," notes Foltz. "We use PeopleSoft to efficiently drill into the details of Lexus income and expense trends and the actual-versus-budget performance at various account and project levels." Foltz also relies on Kaizen to achieve improvements beyond those delivered through automation and standardization. "Using Kaizen within our Enhancing Finance initiative has made me much more productive, forcing me to reexamine all of the activities in my area," says Foltz. "Is there a better way for me to do the sales incentives report? Is there another database that I should use for the marketing report? Kaizen is making sure that I look at everything every day and improve it." Foltz is one of the 96 percent of employees within TMS Finance who have been trained on Kaizen up to this point, with the goal being continuous training for everyone in the organization. Empowering enthusiastic employees like Foltz with Kaizen and cutting-edge PeopleSoft software is one reason why finance transformation at Toyota Motor Sales has been so successful since Doi first launched the program in 2000. Between 2001 and 2005, general and administrative expenses as a percent of TMS sales declined, even as retail sales in the U.S. grew by 30 percent. In the 2005 Toyota Associate Opinion Survey, the TMS finance division associates scored at a 95 percent engagement level, significantly above the norm of high-performing U.S. companies. Associates with high engagement are stronger, more innovative contributors, and the result is better productivity and ultimately higher profitability. Despite these achievements, Doi and her team are always focused on the next milestone in their financial transformation process. "I don't think you'd find anybody within the company who doesn't think there's room for improvement," she says. "Our culture is to keep it simple, keep it visible, keep the customer top of mind, and you'll never feel complacent." Moving Forward Years from now, business-school students and executives will be reading case studies about Toyota's phenomenal growth. Reflecting its Moving Forward marketing campaign, Toyota has a vision of how it can use technology to make the world a better place, from green technologies designed to boost fuel economy to intelligent systems that help drivers avoid collisions. Because Doi and her team operate in the world's richest and most dynamic car market, they have an opportunity to help Toyota executives worldwide understand and act on consumer lifestyle and technological trends in the U.S. that could influence Toyota's global direction. As part of that effort, Doi and her team use the transactional data within the PeopleSoft system to create executive dashboards used by division heads and management to identify what those investment opportunities are, going forward. "Using the transactional data we get from PeopleSoft, we provide our executives with timely market information on the risks and opportunities, and where we should be strategically investing for the future," concludes Doi. "My top mission is helping our executives and business partners see where the opportunities for profitable growth are, and I rely on PeopleSoft to help me in that effort." Snapshot Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.www.toyota.com Headquarters: Torrance, California Founded: In 1957 as the sales, marketing, and distribution arm of Toyota Motor Corporation Oracle products and services: Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management applications, including Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Asset Management, Billing, Cash, Commitment Control, General Ledger, Inventory, and Procurement Beyond Manufacturing Lean across the enterpriseIn his international best seller The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer, University of Michigan Professor Jeffrey K. Liker attributes Toyota's success to its unique ability to empower employees and engage them in a continuous quest to cut costs, improve quality, and eliminate waste across the enterprise, from the production floor to the boardroom. Toyota's success in Lean manufacturing has spawned a worldwide revolution, with industry leaders like Dell, Caterpillar, and Boeing among the more than 40 percent of U.S. manufacturers now using some form of Lean manufacturing techniques as their path to process improvement. Toyota's Kaizen management principles are also revolutionizing the back-office operations of global businesses, and not just those involved in manufacturing. Liker's book is required reading among India's leading IT services providers, many of whom use Toyota's Lean techniques to streamline back-office processes like payroll, accounting, and call centers. By allocating costs and analyzing profitability by value streams and business processes rather than departments or functional silos, Indian outsourcers such as Wipro have improved productivity by almost 50 percent in some finance processes. Across all industries and nations, companies are discovering that the Toyota Way can help them improve balance sheets, increase productivity, and deliver better customer service. Innovation. Savvy companies like General Electric (GE), Google, Starbucks, Toyota Motor Sales USA all know that innovation is critical to help companies grow in every aspect of their organization. Read how each of these firms is putting innovation into practice. GE credits its "Imagination Breakthrough" program for sparking creative ideas. Each month CEO Jeff Immelt reviews between 8 and 12 proposals deemed worthy of competing for internal "venture capital." The deciding factor is whether an idea has potential to generate US$100 million a year. The company generates about US$3 billion in annual revenue from portfolio of projects generated by the program. At the same time, GE's financial executives follow solid procedures, routines, and controls so that money is not spread around randomly without keeping track of it. Google is a multibillion-dollar company that grew by 70 percent in the third quarter of 2006 and has a goal to maintain its phenomenal growth rates globally in terms of revenues, hiring, numbers of subsidiaries, and investments in capital expenditures. The firm has a rigorous set of financial planning and analysis tools and accounting controls that allow it to track and monitor the key performance indicators for its business. For its part, innovation is part of Starbuck's overall measure of the success of its business. The company works at a small level to test the technology of potential innovations, then the operational feasibility, and then customer insights starting first with one store, then 100, then 500 before taking the innovation company-wide. Starbucks also realizes that to be a high-growth company, they have to make long-term investments ahead of the curve. Toyota Motor Sales USA also has its eye on innovation. The company has a recognition program that rewards individuals for ideas, large or small, that lead to enhanced customer service, revenue generation, cost efficiency, or people development. However, Toyota keeps a sharp on key performance indicators that are measure internally with external monitoring, as well. Toyota wants to expand efficiencies and allocate the correct resources to support profitable growth that is sustainable. Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. With a budget of US$28 million each day for R&D, Toyota is always in the market for new ideas, but the emphasis isn't always on big. "The two major pillars of the Toyota Way are respect for people and continuous improvement," says Tracey Doi, chief financial officer at Toyota Motor Sales USA. "The two are very closely aligned because if you are respectful to people and their voices are heard, you will get creative ideas." A recognition program rewards individuals for ideas, large or small, that lead to enhanced customer service, revenue generation, cost efficiency, or people development. "It bubbles all the way up to the President's Award," notes Doi, "where our CEO hands out rather generous checks to associates, recognizing them publicly for their innovation." Watching the Numbers When Toyota introduced Scion in 2004, financial return was just one component in Doi's view of a successful new brand launch. "It was also about the customer experience," she says. "We wanted to approach a younger buyer and bring new owners to the Toyota family. The median age of Scion buyers is 30, which makes us the youngest brand in the industry, and four out of five Scion owners are new to Toyota. Scion was, and still is, considered a laboratory for us." But numbers do matter. Supporting the full panoply of product lines is an enterprise wide scorecard based on metrics associated with growth and strategic initiatives. Key performance indicators are measured internally, with some external monitoring. "My role is to make sure we balance short-term and long-term objectives effectively," says Doi. "We must continue to increase our efficiencies and allocate the right resources to support sustainable, profitable growth. The human capital, engineering, manufacturing, sales and marketing, IT, and capital investments all need to be integrated to ensure a successful outcome. I strive for finance to be a strategic business partner." The Long View "Ultimately, what Toyota stays focused on is building products that customers can live and breathe with, that are part of their lifestyle," says Doi. "It's very, very tangible at all levels that there's a high level of desire to do whatever will make the customer happy." "We're like any other company. There's always room for improvement. We're not perfect. There's always challenge, and there's always opportunity. That's what makes it exciting."
Toyota Motor Europe
Magazine Article Toyota Motor Corporation is a leader in the automobile industry with a reputation for reliability and outstanding customer service. The firm attributes much of its success to the Toyota Way, which is the foundation of its famous Toyota Production System, or Lean manufacturing techniques. Information technology is an invaluable tool in Toyota's ongoing efforts to be Lean. One example of Toyota's further realization of Lean is Toyota Motor Europe's new Oracle-based vehicle-order-management system. Ludo Vandervelden, Toyota Motor Europe's vice president of Finance and Accounting for the Information Systems Group and Vehicle Logistics Group, contends that the basic principal of Lean is to avoid waste in order to gain time and reduce costs. If an organization is Lean, then it has opportunities for continued improvement. Toyota decided that Oracle E-Business Suite would be at the heart of its new vehicle management system because of Oracle's technology and applications, as well as its flexibility and ability to adapt quickly to change. Learn how the new vehicle management system helps Toyota maintain Lean management and Lean operations while maximizing customer satisfaction. Ready to Roll Lean is driving more than manufacturing at the company that created the Toyota Production System. No wonder Toyota Motor Corporation is the envy of other manufacturers. The quality and reliability of its vehicles are the gold standard of the industry. Customer loyalty is so high that Toyota can make money without offering extreme discounts. Globally, the company's net income for fiscal year 2005 (which ended March 31, 2005) rose to US$10.9 billion—more than the profits of GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler combined. But, arguably, the crown jewel of Toyota is neither its products nor its profits. Rather, it is something less tangible but more essential. Called the Toyota Way, it is the foundation of the Toyota Production System, or Lean manufacturing techniques. In the largest sense, it is a mindset or management philosophy that becomes apparent when you talk to Toyota executives such as Ludo Vandervelden, who practically lives and breathes it. Covering a Lot of Turf It's a good thing that Ludo Vandervelden, who is based in Brussels, Belgium, is in the car business. He has lots of territory—and kilometers—to cover. As Toyota Motor Europe's vice president of Finance and Accounting, Information Systems Group and the Vehicle Logistics Group, Vandervelden travels frequently, supporting the activities of 26 national marketing and sales companies (covering 48 countries) and a pan-European network of 2,988 dealers. Most of these dealerships are independently owned. Altogether, Toyota Motor Europe employs more than 55,000 people either directly or indirectly through its dealerships. Toyota Motor Europe's head office in Brussels houses key activities for both Toyota and Lexus, serving as the nerve center for all European operations, including manufacturing and engineering, marketing and sales, network development and brand management, strategic and product planning, logistics, and customer service. Now in his eighth year at Toyota, Vandervelden was initially hired to coordinate and improve Toyota and Lexus distribution in the European market, including increasing the timeliness and quality of delivery, improving safety during the transport of vehicles, and reducing the space needed for storage. It wasn't long before Vandervelden's role expanded to include information technology—basically to ensure that Toyota Motor Europe's Information Systems Group would support and enhance the company's delivery and logistical capabilities. Since the beginning of this year he also oversees the finance and controlling activities of marketing and sales. Considering the large number of vehicles, organizations, and stakeholders involved, coordinating logistics is no easy feat. In 2005, Toyota Motor Europe sold 964,208 vehicles, an increase of 5 percent over the previous year. And the company aims to sell more than one million vehicles in 2006. Somehow all these vehicles have to find their way from the factory to the customer—and in the fastest, safest, and most efficient way possible. That's where Vandervelden and his team must work their magic. Promoting a Win-Win Philosophy "We want the customer to receive the car they want, when they want it, without additional delays or quality issues. My philosophy has always been that you can increase customer satisfaction while at the same time reducing costs," says Vandervelden, who defines a satisfied customer as one who returns. "I believe that is what really makes Toyota unique among manufacturers—namely, that we have a primary focus on making the customer happy, and this is the long-term perspective for all our actions. At the same time, we plan for the needed profitability and reasonable payback on all the projects we undertake—but without losing the ability to come up with creative ways to make customers happy." For Vandervelden, it's all about win-win, not only for the company but also for the customer. "People might be astonished by this: Very often in Europe, manufacturers believe that you need to spend more if you want to make your customers happy," notes Vandervelden. "But we have proven quite to the contrary that you can achieve cost reductions and, at the same time, make your customers happy—through the implementation of smarter business processes." Vandervelden also takes a holistic and long-term view of the way processes work, rather than looking at things from the viewpoint of a single functional area or with the aim of achieving only short-term gains. "We have a vision for logistics that integrates the total selling process, from the customer, to the retailer, to the national marketing and sales companies, to the European headquarters, to the factories—then back into the supply chain, from the factories, to the retailers, and so on," says Vandervelden. He looks at business flows throughout the extended enterprise, including the web of interrelationships between customers, retailers, and distributors, with an eye toward managing the whole process in a way that maximizes value to the customer. Fostering an Environment of Respect— and Respect for the Environment Being customer-centric is part of the Toyota Way, which is based on "pure logic and pure respect," according to Vandervelden. "We define respect in the broadest sense—respect for customers, respect for colleagues, respect for the community, and respect for the environment." Toyota positions itself as an environmentally conscious company, and it has the track record to prove it. In 1997, Toyota created the Prius, the world's first mass-produced hybrid car. (A model is called a hybrid when it uses at least two types of energy sources; the Prius has both a gas engine and an electric engine.) The Prius is fuel-efficient and made of 90 percent recyclable materials. Toyota is driven by the vision of a sustainable future. If the typical company thinks ahead in terms of the next fiscal year, Toyota thinks ahead 5 or even 50 years, in terms of its commitment to preserve the environment for future generations. Progressive companies like Toyota have discovered that Lean initiatives and green initiatives can work together to reduce waste and conserve resources. Increasingly, the "industrialist versus tree hugger" mentality that has typified many manufacturers is starting to become a relic of the past. Indeed, with worldwide material shortages and record-high fuel prices, thinking "green" or "clean" may be the only way that companies will be able to achieve long-term sustainability. (See "Running Lean and Green".) "Aside from respect for the community and the environment, the idea of respect as part of the Toyota Way is also valid and applicable toward the way that we work internally with our colleagues on projects and on activities," says Vandervelden. He adds that the Toyota Way is based on "clear and open communication, but with a challenging spirit." For example, Toyota highly values the input of its employees, all of whom are trained in the Toyota Way. "We have to get 100 percent consensus on all projects, including IT projects, thoroughly considering all options." And, what's that about a "challenging spirit"? For one thing, it means that Toyota employees are continually challenged to find new strategies for reducing waste. Employing technology in the Quest for Excellence "The basic principle of being Lean means that you avoid waste. By eliminating waste, you can gain time or reduce costs or avoid wasting other people's time," explains Vandervelden. "If you apply this basic principle vigorously and logically, then your organization becomes Lean. And once you're Lean, you still have opportunities for improvement." That's what Toyota means by Kaizen, or continuous improvement. "It is an ongoing drive for excellence," he says. "You're never finished." Toyota views IT as an indispensable tool. "In all our activities, we look at IT as an instrument for the further realization of Lean," says Vandervelden. One clear example of this is Toyota's Oracle-based vehicle order management system: "You cannot deal with the complexity or the number of product models that we have on the European market—with so many different spec codes and different pricing levels—without having an appropriate IT system." With the vehicle order management project, Vandervelden's goal was to reduce the time it took between placing a customer order and delivering the vehicle to that customer. At the same time, he sought to reduce errors resulting from inaccurate creation of data in the planning or ordering processes. Errors, after all, are another form of waste that must be eliminated. "If you have an inaccurate planning or ordering process, then you have a big risk of ending up with a yard full of vehicles for which you have no customers. That yard might be very vast, but it will need to be expanded every time you make an error," he elaborates. "Now, if you have better control of the planning data and better transparency into the delivery data, then you can avoid waste by reducing the space that is required to store the vehicles in the intermediary step in the delivery to the customer." Ultimately, the idea was to provide the distribution channel with the most-accurate availability information to aid retailers in ordering and selling. What kind of system would allow Toyota Motor Europe to accomplish this? Rolling Out the Vehicle Order Management Solution After considering solutions by other applications vendors, Toyota Motor Europe's project team arrived at a consensus. It would go with Oracle E-Business Suite as the center of its new vehicle order management solution. Why Oracle? The key differentiator of Oracle technology and applications, according to Vandervelden, is flexibility, or the ability to adapt to change rapidly. It also helps that Oracle technology and applications can be easily integrated with legacy and third-party systems. Both capabilities are critical when you're dealing with so many independent dealerships and national marketing and sales companies, all of which still maintain separate IT systems, running on a variety of platforms. Toyota, with the help of Oracle Consulting, defined and refined a plan during an extensive proof-of-concept period. Then Toyota worked with Oracle to build the "European footprint," or the core of the solution, aiming to cover at least 80 percent of all solution requirements while still allowing the different countries the flexibility to configure 20 percent of the solution to their specific needs. Toyota Motor Europe's Oracle-based vehicle order management system encompasses several business processes. It all starts with the customer choosing a car and considering all the various options, such as tinted windows, air conditioning, and a navigation system. The dealer configures a car with all its possible options in front of the customer, prices the car and options, and locates the best available car and options in the supply chain—extending, if necessary, to future production—and places the order through the national distributors. The national distributor consolidates the order with those of its other retailers and, in turn, places an order through Toyota Motor Europe, which, after other levels of consolidation, places an order with the factories. The national distributors can also manage their supply chain against the orders of different dealers and can, for example, "swap" cars with their various retailers. The car is then shipped and invoiced—factory to HQ, HQ to national distributor, national distributor to retailer—and all accounting processes are automatically triggered. This is possible because the vehicle order management system is integrated with the financial applications of Oracle E-Business Suite. Beyond that, the system also tracks the car and its history, throughout the entire lifecycle. Plus, it supports the monthly planning and forecasting cycle. With the assistance of Oracle Consulting, the pilot was successfully launched in Sweden last year. Already, according to Vandervelden, the solution is making "a good contribution in terms of net present value." Toyota plans to roll the system out to the other European countries, so that it will eventually support the sale and management of a stock of more than a million cars per year through the pan-European network of 3,000 dealers. Always Looking Ahead: Aligning Production with Demand For Toyota, aligning production with customer demand is critical. Its "just-in-time" supply chain concept has revolutionized the entire manufacturing industry. The Toyota Production System calls for the end product to be "pulled" through the system, starting with the customer order. The idea is to eliminate the large product inventories required by conventional "push" systems. But to produce the right product in the right quantity at the right time requires good planning. Vandervelden, in fact, plans to use the vehicle order management system for enhancing the planning process. "Basically what we do is ensure, through a planning process, that we know what is happening in the market and that we correct—constantly, if possible—the supply situation in alignment with the market situation. The biggest waste that you can have is a vehicle that is built for which you do not have a customer, because that vehicle has the risk of ending up on the yard without ever finding a customer. So, as part of the Toyota philosophy, we have to make sure that we only build vehicles for which we have customers." How can you do that? According to Vandervelden, "It requires a very strict alignment process in planning and collecting customer contract data. Based on that, you need to make a fair assumption about the trends in demand, in the months and years to come. Now, the vehicle order management system, as we have developed it, will be a tool through which we could manage that part of the process, in a better, more structured way than we have done up to now, which would then in turn help in our activities, allowing the manufacturing units to plan better for what would be required." Not only that, but the vehicle order management system will also lead to better allocation, Vandervelden asserts. "With improved information transparency, we would be able to better readjust, on a short-term basis, our allocation of available product to the markets that would be in high demand, as compared to those that would not be so interested in receiving additional production of a specific model type. It will also allow us to reduce stock by helping us do a better job at sharing stock in the allocation process." "Our new Oracle-based vehicle order management solution is the vehicle management system that is comparable to the Toyota Production System for ensuring Lean management and Lean operations while maximizing customer satisfaction," says Vandervelden. And, given Toyota's standards of excellence and its relentless pursuit of perfection, those words speak volumes. Snapshot Toyota Motor Europewww.toyota-europe.com Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium Oracle products and services: Oracle9i Database; Oracle E-Business Suite, including Order Management, Financials, Quoting, Advanced Pricing, Inventory, Configurator, Bill of Materials, Advanced Product Catalog, Master Production Scheduling, Installed Base, Workflow, Sales Online, Customers Online, Trading Community Architecture, CRM Foundation, Marketing Online, and Costing; Oracle XML Gateway; Oracle InterConnect; and Oracle Consulting. Other products: IBM RISC servers
|
|
Infosys Implements PeopleSoft
Enterprise Applications at Nissan North America Specifically in this deployment, Infosys implemented PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (HCM) 8.8. The new PeopleSoft deployment includes PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Resources, Base Benefits, Benefits Administration, ePay, eProfile, eCompensation, eBenefits, eRecruit and eDevelopment. This PeopleSoft implementation is designed to give employees greater visibility into their payroll, benefits and other related HR information. "In order to thrive in the new 'flat world', companies must not only change their strategies and operations, but also embrace a new, globally-oriented way of doing things," said Franco Gonsalves, Vice President, Automotive and Aerospace Unit, Infosys Technologies Limited. The new platform implemented by Infosys is designed to streamline HCM processes, enhance reporting capabilities and improve productivity and global decision making. A consolidated system of this nature makes it easier to manage inter-company operations and improves the ability to respond to changing business dynamics. "Our PeopleSoft HCM solution enables companies to align human resources with their strategic business goals and achieve true workforce excellence," said Folia Grace, Vice President, Oracle ERP Product Marketing. "This Infosys-led implementation is a perfect example of cases where our joint clients are seeking the benefits that can be achieved with an end-to-end HCM solution and proof positive as to why Infosys is one of our most valued partners." "Large scale HCM implementations like this are highly complex in nature, especially when they are multi-lingual, multi-currency and span different locations. However, by leveraging Infosys' proven processes and global delivery model, we are able to reduce the duration for such roll-outs and regularly meet aggressive go-live timelines," said Chandra Shekar Kakal, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Limited. "Companies who install large scale HCM deployments can typically expect streamlined HCM processes, improved productivity and enhanced reporting capabilities." Infosys is a Certified Advantage Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork. About the Oracle PartnerNetwork About Oracle About Infosys Technologies Ltd. Infosys Safe Harbor
|
SsangYong Motor Company SsangYong Motor Company
SsangYong Motor Company Seoul, South
Korea www.smotor.com SsangYong Motor Company For more than five decades, SsangYong Motor Company has been manufacturing autos and trucks, establishing a reputation for innovation and quality. Founded in 1954, it began business as a manufacturer of commercial vehicles--including trucks, buses, and special purpose vehicles such as cement mixers and fire trucks. SsangYong Motor later became one of the first Korean automakers to introduce a line of sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Today, Ssang Yong is Korea’s leading manufacturer of SUVs and recreational vehicles.
|