Automotive & Manufacturing
For over 100 years the automotive industry has been a bellwether and driver of the global economy.
Given the fiercely competitive nature of an industry working to balance demand in new markets with overcapacity in others, effective use of information is vital to success. Our company has served automotive clients since the 1990′s, giving them access to that information in forms that support the long term goals and needs of these massive clients. Dataspace’s client list includes two of Detroit’s big three automotive manufacturers as well as one of Europe’s leading automotive firms.
A sample of automotive problems successfully attacked by Dataspace consultants include:
Preemptive Warranty Analysis and Cost Reduction
Dataspace consultants implemented the BI portion of a Quality system with the goal of providing a global data analysis tool that correlates module diagnostics and parametric data with warranty, sales and Telematics data. This system is part of an overall strategy for Quality and Warranty analysis. The project supports and enables warranty cost reduction efforts. This system is planned to eventually integrate data from various disparate manufacturing systems.
This system supports over 2500 users in production saving the customer over $200 Million after only 2 months of use. The BI interface offers the access to detailed data that yields valuable information about root cause, and diagnostics that improve the quality of the manufactured components, reduce warranty charge-backs, and improve the customer experience. These analytics also provide the foundation for the next generation of manufacturer-to-vehicle communications and diagnostics.
In order for business users to perform their analysis, this system receives data feeds from multiple, geographically dispersed sources.
Master Data Consolidation
The US branch of a German auto manufacturer was suffering from a situation in which its ordering, sales, and various delivery systems were entirely unintegrated. As a result, product data which should have been shared was manually duplicated in these systems, sometimes with near-disastrous results. For example, when product definitions changed at the factory in Germany, those changes were not always duplicated in the US systems. Thus, the US organization sometimes mistakenly ordered product that was not saleable in the markets for which it was intended.
Dataspace consultants were engaged to analyze this situation and develop a plan for integrating US product data with related data from the parent company in Germany. The result was a strategic approach and plan for master data management that is currently being implemented.
Telematics Subscriber Tracking and Customer Retention
This customer was in the difficult position of not being able to accurately count the number of subscribers for each of its services. Multiple systems captured the data used to track customers, vehicles, subscription service contracts, and payments. When users tried to combine data from those systems to create a consolidated picture of subscription revenue and subscription renewals, they were left with a significant number of unexplained inconsistencies. These inconsistencies were at the root of three separate audit issues within the client’s corporate environment. The company’s auditors gave IT only three months to address these concerns.
To address this problem Dataspace successfully managed the demands of three concurrent, interrelated projects, delivering each ahead of schedule and under budget. The audit issues are now resolved and company management now receives subscription data it can trust.
Legal Department Case Management
Dataspace has worked extensively with executive management to define, develop and implement high level analysis, financial consolidation and dashboard reporting for the Legal department of a Big 3 automobile manufacturer. Dashboard reporting is used by executives to monitor metrics and analyze initiatives used to control all aspects of the legal process. The dashboard reports have provided the following benefits to the customer:
- Substantial savings in human resources that were previously required to generate these metrics manually. These reports are now automatically generated and distributed to the appropriate users.
- Metrics that often took substantial time to manually create are available near real-time.
- The metrics that are monitored are now thoroughly and consistently defined and documented. During the manual creation of these metrics, different interpretations and inconsistent values were often generated.
- Less maintenance is required because the metrics are stored in a single place instead of throughout the customer’s Law and Public Policy department.
Dataspace continues to work with the customer’s Law and Public Policy business community to define and deliver ad-hoc, operational and analysis reporting solutions to support very complex processes. Past and ongoing successes include:
- Dataspace worked with the Product Litigation team to define a process to automate the initial entry and reporting of several thousand cases per month into the case management system. This process saves in human resource expense that would be required to manually enter these cases into the system as well as to assign and report these cases out to the parties responsible for managing each case. Additionally, because only electronic files are produced and managed there are cost savings associated with eliminating the need to generate and deliver paper documents. This solution was so successful that it was also implemented by the Marketing & Trade team to manage breach of warranty claims.
- Dataspace works with the TREAD team to ensure that governmental reporting requirements are strictly followed. The impact of this work is significant as the misreporting of TREAD data carries a fine of $5,000,000.
- The Law and Public Policy department is currently implementing a new case/matter management system. Dataspace is providing project management and report development expertise.
- Dataspace provides training in the business intelligence toolsets to continuously improve the skills of the end user community.
