Stefan Beiermeister
Managing Consultant
“We spend millions on reporting—and still don’t get the answers we need.”
The frustration was unmistakable. The sales director had just reviewed the latest retail performance dashboard. On slide 12, three countries were missing. On slide 18, numbers didn’t match what the field was reporting. And on slide 22, someone had added a footnote:
“Data not validated – for indicative use only.”
The room was quiet.
Then someone asked the real question:
“Why are we still flying blind—despite all the tools, budgets, and manpower invested?”
A Familiar Problem in the Automotive Industry
At many OEMs, reporting landscapes have grown over years—sometimes decades. Tools have been added, interfaces built, analysts hired. Yet the business still struggles to get fast, consistent, and trustworthy answers.
The first impulse:
“It’s the IT platform that hinders us from getting accurate and up to date data from our partners!”
Yes, there are certainly areas where IT is the bottleneck:
- Technology limitations: Outdated reporting tools or monolithic data warehouses that can’t handle modern data volumes and formats.
- Integration patterns: Siloed batch processes instead of real-time, event-driven architectures that would allow for near-instant insights.
- Fragmented IT landscape: A patchwork of legacy systems, regional variations, and multiple vendor solutions that don’t “speak” the same language.
- High technical barriers for external partners: Complex onboarding processes, inconsistent APIs, and lack of support for lightweight integrations with Dealer Management Systems.
- Lack of consistent data models: Different definitions of key data fields across headquarter systems, local market solutions, and dealer systems—leading to confusion and inconsistency.
- Limited scalability: Systems designed for small pilot projects struggle when rolled out across hundreds or thousands of dealers.
We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly across the industry. But often it’s not just a technical problem. The fundamental problem lies with the organization itself.
The core issues include:
- Missing focus on meaningful metrics: Over time, the number of reports explodes. New reports are created and remain, even if barely or never used. Additional data sources are connected without clear rationale. The entire system becomes increasingly complex and expensive to maintain.
- Fragmented responsibilities and missing end-to-end perspectives: Getting data—especially from external partners like dealers—often requires multiple departments and service providers to coordinate. The result is rigid processes that make it difficult to react quickly to changing demands or to address broken data feeds.
- Missing agreements and contracts: Data ownership and usage rights with both internal and external partners are often unclear or undocumented. Each new project must start from scratch to figure out how—and whether—it can access the needed data.
- Uncoordinated communication: It’s often unclear how to approach a change initiative—like implementing new KPIs or introducing a new data domain—that involves multiple stakeholders. Each project reinvents the wheel in terms of who to contact and how to align with partners, leading to inconsistent communication and a damaged reputation.
The consequence? Costs rise, the meaning of KPIs unravels, doubts spread, and even more manual effort is required to make sense of the reports.
What Leading OEMs Do Differently
The turning point comes when OEMs stop treating reporting as a downstream problem and start treating data as a strategic asset.
Throwing the latest buzzwords at the problem—data mesh, data lakes, cloud analytics, machine learning—might sound attractive. But without the right organizational preconditions, these efforts often yield minimal impact—or, worse, create additional complexity.
Successful OEMs do three things:
1. Define a clear governance model:
- Establish roles and responsibilities for data ownership, data stewardship, and reporting processes covering the whole process from source to sink.
- Create a decision-making framework that balances central guidance with local flexibility.
- Ensure that every KPI, report and dashboard has a clear definition, an accountable owner, and a documented lifecycle.
2. Establish a clear and unified communication and documentation procedure:
- Implement standard onboarding processes for external partners.
- Provide clear guidelines on how to request, share, and validate data.
- Maintain a central knowledge base with definitions, interfaces, and usage guidelines to prevent each project from reinventing the wheel.
3. Build a solid, fit-for-purpose technical foundation:
- Use scalable and modular architectures that can handle real-time and batch integrations.
- Leverage standard APIs with consistent data models to make onboarding external partners easier.
- Invest in data quality pipelines, monitoring, and automated testing to ensure reliability.
And crucially: They prioritize value over volume.
They start with the insights that matter most—and scale only what proves its worth.
How Senacor Helps
Senacor has supported major automotive players in transforming their data landscapes—across sales, aftersales, and finance.
Our approach is pragmatic:
- We focus on real business value—not technical overkill.
- We bridge IT and business—with cross-functional teams that translate strategy into reality.
- We deliver in short, manageable iterations—not endless programs that promise everything but deliver little.
And we’ve done it under real-world constraints:
- Limited budgets.
- Tight timelines.
- Complex partner networks.
We call it: value-oriented transformation.
Conclusion: Stop Paying for Reports That Don’t Work
If your reporting is expensive, slow, and unreliable—it’s not just a tooling issue.
It’s a data problem. A process problem. A governance problem.
And it’s solvable.
Senacor can help you rethink your partner integration—from messy inputs to meaningful outcomes.
Let’s make your reporting worth what you’re paying for.
Senacor. From Data Chaos to Business Clarity.
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. Our focus on business-oriented value-add solutions ensures that our clients can navigate challenges while unlocking new revenue streams in the evolving automotive landscape.
Managing Consultant
mobility@senacor.com