The task: uniform information system, KPI system and reporting system

BMW Group set its sights high: the Group wanted not only to establish a cross-business area information system for the entire support organisation, they also wanted a standard key performance indicator (KPI) system to measure performance and an end-to-end reporting system in after-service.

On the IT side, the aim was that all field staff and back office employees can access the latest comprehensive data at any time and from anywhere. The functional requirement was: import all the dealers' sales-relevant information from other operational systems or gather this in the new system.

Specifically, this meant: providing a sales platform with interfaces to the many central systems and guaranteeing a complete view of all sales organisations and business relationships between BMW Group and the dealers worldwide – a mammoth task that Cirquent was entrusted with.

The solution: step by step – from VerA to COBIS

The path to a uniform worldwide sales and field staff application – VerA (Vertriebs- und Außendienstanwendung in German) began in 1995 with client-server technology. In 2000, the system was migrated to Web technology and was gradually expanded throughout Europe and other continents. After a re-launch in 2005 with accompanying improved user navigation and more individualisation, VerA became the Corporate Business Information System: Since October 2005, COBIS has been providing regional managers with up-to-date daily information via the Web, which allows online planning for the local dealerships. Specifically, the regional managers can now access the dealers' master data, new and existing orders and information about market segment shares, vehicle flows, potentials and sales promotion campaigns.

All-round view of the entire dealership organisation: The next development stage – integration of Parts Sales & Service – took until November 2006 and included special functions, such as reports about visits to customers, random samples, checklists, warranty inspections, capacity and potential planning and evaluations of the KPIs from a comparison of the dealerships. In this way, COBIS provides all staff in the field with an all-round view of the entire dealership organisation and thus offers effective support for all field staff activities.

Sales portal with hundreds of functions: COBIS now offers more than 300 online dialogue and export functions, such as the dealership Balanced Scorecard, a dealership marketing plan, importers' bonus system, customer satisfaction and monitoring of warranties and goodwill. COBIS also has powerful basic functions, such as multi-language and multi-currency capabilities. Hence, COBIS is not only an application but a sales portal with many integrated sales applications.

The most important modules of COBIS: cross-business area business planning – end-to-end reporting systems in after service – uniform KPI system (KPI Cockpit) – marketing plans – self-tests for dealers to measure their performance – bonus systems for dealer performance.

The benefits: the core for efficient dealer development

More than 5,000 employees in dealerships and 1,500 employees in the field and in the back office currently work with COBIS, generating roughly 15,000 system calls each week. They all now have one single system that maps almost every sales structure and activity. All sales-relevant evaluations that are needed in a standard form can be implemented quickly and effectively. And for their own evaluations users can simply export the data into their Office applications. Last but not least, the high level of user convenience has led to a high degree of acceptance among COBIS users and is responsible for the fact that BMW Group is extremely satisfied with the application and Cirquent's performance.