Transparent Tracking & Forecasting along Vehicle Distribution Routes for Automotive OEMs 

If you are involved in the sales process of a newly manufactured vehicle, you will likely be familiar with the lack of transparency during the finished vehicle’s transportation, unexpected technical hurdles, and high manual effort. This is the reality for a lot of Automotive OEMs, be it passenger cars or commercial vehicles. From factory exit to defined destination, numerous steps may be necessary. And in the case of a commercial vehicle OEM, additional customer-specific modifications at body builders might be required. The organization of delivery responsibilities, often distributed between OEM HQ and local markets, makes comprehensive cargo tracking even more complex. Consequently, it becomes challenging for OEMs to provide accurate and binding delivery and hand-over times for dealers and customers. Along with increased manual labor and unexpected costs, such a scenario also leads to customer dissatisfaction because the user experience suffers significantly. 

All of these challenges not only lead to poor transparency and manual effort to track deliveries but also to efficiency issues like unnecessary delays due to downtime, a high degree of coordination between departments, and obstruction to future-oriented analysis and planning activities, like forecasting. Insufficient alignment between different stakeholders (like the market, third-party logistics, HQ), reinforces these challenges. 

In today’s digital age, this becomes a real problem for European OEMs as private and commercial customers expect and demand such transparency due to their own experiences with ecommerce at home. That would not be such an issue if the transport route were rather simple and be handled by a single transport supplier but due to the often complex transport routes involving all typical transport modes, especially sea, rail and road transport, the portfolio of third-party transport suppliers (3PLs) is rather heterogeneous who differ greatly in terms of their offered tracking data’s quality and quantity. OEMs may look towards their own vehicles they have just produced to track these using the built-in connectivity capabilities but this is not as simple as it sounds due to customer data protection restrictions, among other things. 

As is often the case when there is a complex data issue, OEMs may try to outsource the problem to external companies who promise a simple solution. In this situation, OEMs may look towards so-called Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms (RTTVP). The RTTVP market, however, is quite diverse and RTTVP integration is often refused by 3PLs resulting in no RTTVP supplier being able to offer tracking data from all relevant 3PLs. 

So, as an OEM, what should you do?  

The need for a paradigm shift is clear, especially due to the ever-increasing customer expectation for transparency. A holistic understanding of the entire distribution process is critical for OEMs. In order to develop a strategy for real-time tracking and forecasting that adds value to the OEM and customers, the needs of the respective target groups should be understood first before identifying relevant data sources. Such sources may be internal (e.g. wholesale mgmt. systems) and external, the latter from 3PLs directly as well as relevant RTTVP partners, but also sea tracking data from AIS suppliers. In order to consolidate, link and interpret all of this diverse tracking data, a central ‚Transport Transparency Platform‘ should be introduced. 

Based on the use cases derived from the target group demands, a high-level functional architecture can be used to identify technical solution options. Due to the typically rather OEM-specific business processes, a custom developed platform with a state-of-the-art microservice architecture, using event-sourced persistence to foster real-time data processing and provisioning to deal with the integration and data processing complexity is the recommended choice. 

Looking beyond the data sources, these are the key factors for a successful comprehensive transport transparency transformation:  

• Flexibility in integrating sources and technical consumers with little or no implementation efforts 
• The ability to adapt to changing market circumstances and the possibility for stakeholders to define and manage their respective tracking and forecasting algorithms 
• Enabling dashboard users to create their custom views and selections to meet specific demands is crucial 

This holistic transformation approach should also account for changing user roles and fit seamlessly into the overall IT landscape involved in finished vehicle distribution. 

Ready for Transformation?  

Senacor Technologies can guide you on this transformation journey: 

• Potential Assessment: We start with a ‚Mini Assessment‘ to identify the digital transformation potential in your finished vehicle distribution process. 
• Concept & Delivery: We design, shape, and implement a comprehensive bespoke ‚Transport Transparency Platform’‘ tailored to your specific needs.  
• Comprehensive Transformation: This can be extended even further to guiding the entire transformation journey that incorporates tracking, tracing, and forecasting along the entire process chain, both technically and operationally. 

We’ve successfully guided automotive OEMs through this journey, and we can do the same for you. Don’t get stuck behind outdated processes – let Senacor take the wheel and accelerate your digital transformation. 

About Us 

Within Automotive, Senacor Technologies combines tech competence with in-depth business knowhow in the areas of Automotive marketing & sales, financial services and after sales. We help build and scale new innovative digital ecosystems around the vehicle and maximize value in retail integration. Our focus on business-oriented value-add solutions ensures that our clients can navigate challenges while unlocking new revenue streams in the ever-evolving automotive sales landscape. 

MAX JOACHIM
Partner Automotive

mobility@senacor.com