Well, when talking about Automotive Retail Processes and when asking an Automotive Retailer where he sees his core business, would Financial Accounting be the answer ? Probably not ! Vehicle Sales or Service, Spare Parts or counter-sales.....these will be the answers you will get. But imagine what you will get as the answer when you ask about the major pain-points within the existing IT-Landscape ? I guess 9 out of 10 will answer with "Financial Accounting" or at least "Financial Controlling" .
My experiences within that business shows me every day, that not Financial Accounting or Controlling is the main decision key to invest into a dealer-management-system, but the core processes. Which is ok with me and comprehensive, cause most prospects assume, , even more in Germany, that the Financial Accounting processes are secure and certified and find out after the investment, that they are not and pay their gained TCO within the core process modules into stabilizing their Financial processes.
Not so with SAP DBM (Dealer Business Management), because this SAP-Product has been especially manufactured for Automotive Retail Industry comes with standard SAP FICO in place, one of the most accurate, stable and powerful Full-Suite Financial Accounting and Controlling in the market.
Let me give you some examples to color this:
Example for FI implication:
Every movement of good, vehicles etc, even almost every mouse-click inside the ERP entails a Financial Posting in FI. So when there´s a user-error inside the process chain of the ERP, the problem and error itself reflects directly inside FI. There are two ways now to correct this failure. One is the right one, one is the "easy" one. The "easy" one, and imagine that this is the most taken one, is to correct the failure now inside FI, which has first of all an impact on business side, because once corrected in FI without communication means the error will occur again and again in future and the correction in FI will not be reflected in logistics and might cause problems in business reporting. The right correction would be to re-do the process inside logistics and perform it the right and dealer defined way ! Not many ERP-Systems support this process. SAP DBM supports in re-doing the failed process very smooth and easy, which is the key that the correction will be performed anyway !
Example for benefit of SAP FICO:
Assumed that all dealer defined business processes are reflected inside the system by the users, you can have a real-time information what the net profit of each vehicle is, real-time means here at any time, 24/7. You can even extend this view on the life-cycle of the vehicle itself and combine the view with related service- and shop-activities on the vehicle and customer. That´s a real 360°-degree-view on each vehicle and/or customer. I have never seen this before in any Full-Suite ERP in Automotive Retail.
What do you think ?
Do you have other or same experiences ?
