Oracle Customer Case Study

Siebel CRM Drives Closer Cooperation between

Tata Motors and Dealers to Improve Sales and
Service

“Integrating Siebel Automotive with our dealer management

system ensured that our dealers would immediately see the value
in the solution. This has helped us overcome the usual
resistance to change and gain rapid acceptance from our
Tata Motors
Mumbai, India dealers.”—K. R. Sreenivasan, Head of CRM and DMS Project,
www.tatamotors.com Tata Motors
Industry:
Automotive
Tata Motors is India’s largest integrated automaker, with a line-up
Annual Revenue:
that includes commercial, utility, and passenger vehicles—and
US$3 billion
market shares approaching 60% for commercial vehicles and 20%
of India’s passenger car market. Faced with increasing
Employees:
22,000 competition from abroad, a cyclical business environment, and the
challenge of a widely dispersed dealer network, Tata Motors
Oracle Products & Services: implemented Oracle's Siebel Automotive, a comprehensive
customer relationship management (CRM) solution designed
Siebel CRM
Siebel Automotive specifically for companies in the automotive industry. Seamlessly
Oracle Database integrated with Tata Motors’ dealer management system and SAP
back-office applications, Siebel Automotive has delivered
Key Benefits:
significant benefits across the extended organization, including
Improves demand forecasting,
improved customer satisfaction, increased revenue and
planning, and logistics and
inventory management productivity, and reduced costs.
Offers 360-degree view of Founded in 1945, Tata Motors is India’s largest and only fully
customer and vehicle
integrated automaker, with 22,000 employees; 1 million
information and streamlines
workflow to enhance customer customers; and annual sales of approximately $3 billion in
service and improve efficiency commercial vehicles, utility vehicles, and passenger cars. It is part
Enhances product quality and of the widely diversified Tata Group, which has annual revenues
increases revenues from both of $14 billion, approximately 2.4% of India’s Gross Domestic
vehicle sales and after-sales
parts business
Product (GDP).
Tata Motors holds a 59% share of India’s market for medium and
heavy commercial vehicles, with global sales that rank it among
the top six manufacturers of commercial vehicles worldwide.
Although the company only entered the passenger car

Copyright © 2006 Oracle. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Published June 2006
 Oracle Customer Case Study

“Overall, Siebel business in the late 1990s, it has already captured a 16% share of
Automotive has the passenger market in the country. Helped by economic reforms
transformed our over the past decade, the Indian economy has expanded rapidly
organization and made it and seen dramatic increases in competition. In the automotive
truly customer-centric. sector, all of the largest players worldwide—such as General
Today, our employees Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes Benz—are
and dealers are much competing for a share of the market consisting of more than 950
more responsive and can million consumers. This competition, along with the cyclical
serve customers more nature of demand in India’s automotive industry, has made it
efficiently and more difficult to grow revenue and sustain margins.
effectively—drawing upon
“Globalization has changed the entire business environment for
real-time, centralized
our organization,” says K. R. Sreenivasan, head of the customer
customer and vehicle
relationship management (CRM) and dealer management system
data.”
project at Tata Motors. “We have developed strategies to pursue
K. R. Sreenivasan
our goal of becoming a more global company, while continuing to
Head of CRM
and DMS Project grow domestically.”
Tata Motors
Standardizing Customer-Facing Processes
To address its competitive challenges, Tata Motors began
standardizing its customer-facing business processes
companywide, laying the foundation for stronger dealer
relationships, improved operational efficiency and effectiveness,
and a better customer experience. This has posed numerous
challenges, as it involves working with 250 dealer organizations
and more than 1,600 locations staffed by more than 10,000
salespeople across India.
In conjunction with its reengineering effort, TATA has deployed a
robust technology platform to improve the flow of information
across the enterprise. The platform consists of an innovative
dealer management system, which helps individual dealerships
with everything from inventory management and credit reporting
to calculating commissions, and Siebel Automotive, a
comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM)
solution designed specifically for companies in the automotive
industry.
By tightly integrating Siebel Automotive and its dealer
management system, TATA has streamlined transactions and
ensured that dealers capture customer data as a part of their
normal operations. The solution provides a 360-degree view of
customers to the extended organization, with appropriate visibility
controls to ensure that one dealer is not privy to information from

Copyright © 2006 Oracle. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Published June 2006
 Oracle Customer Case Study

another. To further enlist dealer support, Tata Motors involved

dealers throughout the solution configuration and deployment
process. “Integrating Siebel Automotive with our dealer
management system ensured that our dealers would immediately
see the value in the solution,” Sreenivasan explains. “This has
helped us overcome the usual resistance to change and gain rapid
acceptance from our dealers.”

Deploying Solution in Three Phases

Tata Motors has taken a phased approach to the implementation,
with the goal of achieving success in each phase before moving
forward. Phase 1, currently under way, focuses on capturing
customer and vehicle data and automating routine tasks. Phase 2
will focus on leveraging data to improve customer interactions
and streamline product development and planning. Phase 3 will
focus on tuning the system and delivering additional value-added
services to customers.
Siebel Automotive has been closely integrated with a wide array
of SAP back-office applications, including applications inventory
management, fulfillment, and parts location. Pricing and tax
calculations can be adjusted for each dealer’s requirements. In
addition, comprehensive sales and reporting functionality built
into Siebel Automotive enables TATA to distribute sales targets
to its dealers and roll up sales numbers across the country.

“Siebel’s proven SAP connector was a key factor in our decision-

making,” Sreenivasan remarks. “We needed real-time data flow
between the Siebel front end and SAP back end to be successful.”

Tata Motors also liked the fact that Siebel Automotive provides
multiorganization support, can be deployed easily over the
Internet, and provides robust partner management capabilities—
ideal for Tata Motors with its far-flung dealer network. Further,
the user-friendly interface has simplified the process of training
Tata Motors’ 10,000-plus dealer sales force.

Covering a country with an area of 3.3 million square kilometers

(or about one-third the size of the U.S.) also required an
innovative communications solution. Tata Motors links its 1,600
customer touchpoints with its centralized data center in Mumbai
using a combination of VSATs and high-speed virtual private
networks.

Copyright © 2006 Oracle. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Published June 2006
 Oracle Customer Case Study

Registering Strong Success with Dealers

Siebel Automotive has already begun to deliver benefits for Tata
Motors’ dealers throughout India. “Overall, Siebel Automotive
has transformed our organization and made it truly customer-
centric,” says Sreenivasan. “We’ve overcome the challenges of
relying on disparate sources of information, as well as having
inconsistent business processes. Today, our employees and
dealers are much more responsive and can serve customers more
efficiently and effectively—drawing upon real-time, centralized
customer and vehicle data.
“One of our first dealers to install Siebel Automotive said that his
sales volume doubled in three months without the need for
additional manpower,” he continues. “Another dealer said that for
the first time he was able to view his entire stock of vehicles and
how his inventory was aging, improving his control.”
Siebel Automotive has also helped dealers respond to customer
queries regarding vehicles that aren’t in a dealer’s stock, but
which can be ordered directly from Tata Motors.
“Within the first year of implementing the solution, we are
targeting improvements of 5 to 10% in customer satisfaction,
revenue growth, operating cost reduction, and productivity gains,”
says Sreenivasan. “These numbers should increase considerably
over time.”

He concludes, “Siebel has been very committed to helping us in

all aspects of the project. Combining Siebel Automotive with our
dealer management system is unique, so we have needed quality
support. Siebel has played a major role in getting us to where we
are today.”

Tata Motors provides a wide range of commercial, utility, and passenger vehicles
to customers in India and around the world.

Copyright © 2006 Oracle. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Published June 2006