Creating Better Customer Experiences with SUSE, SAP and IBM

Highlights

  • 80% faster planning process for spare parts
  • 33% faster systems recovery forecast
  • 15% increase in dealership revenues forecast by efficiently moving unsold inventory to where it is needed in its dealership network
  • SLES for SAP Applications powers datadriven capabilities that equip dealerships to deliver higher-quality services to customers, nurturing loyalty and helping to protect market share
  • SUSE solutions support integrated business planning between dealerships, manufacturing plants and head office
  • Allows optimization of spare parts inventory across dealership network—avoiding vehicle servicing delays and minimizing the time vehicles are off the road
  • Live Kernel Patching ensures that key data and customer-service workflows are always available for use

Produkte

Competition Heats Up

In Pakistan, competition in the automotive industry is heating up. The combination of a multibillion-dollar investment from the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor ini­tiative and a fast-growing middle class means that vehicle sales are predicted to rise fivefold over the coming years. These new opportunities have attracted a flood of international manufacturers to the country, all keen to capitalize on the growing de­mand for premium vehicles.

For more than two decades, Honda Atlas Cars Pakistan (Honda Pakistan)—a sub­sidiary of Japanese car maker Honda— has built a strong reputation for delivering high-quality cars to consumers and busi­nesses, backed by an extensive network of 30 dealerships across the country. To help protect and grow its hard-won mar­ket share, Honda Pakistan aims to nurture long-term customer loyalty.

Muhammad Ali, general manager IT at Honda Pakistan, says, “We see that the quality and responsiveness of our after-sales services plays a vital role in the overall customer experience. As part of our com­mitment to offering the best driving expe­rience, we plan to expand our dealership network by adding 20 more locations over the next five years—helping to boost the reach and convenience of our services.”

At-a-Glance

In Pakistan, vehicle sales are predicted to rise fivefold over the coming years. The number of automotive brands on the market has more than doubled, so consumers have more choice than ever. To stay competitive, Honda Pakistan needed to optimize its customer service. The company migrated its existing SAP ERP solutions to next-generation SAP S/4HANA software, running on the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform on IBM Power Systems hardware. The combination of SUSE, IBM and SAP technologies gives Honda Pakistan a reliable, high-performance platform for supporting critical business processes around the clock.

Enhancing After-Sales Experiences

Previously, Honda Pakistan’s dealerships relied heavily on manual workflows to manage key business processes, such as ordering spare parts and handling warran­ty claims. This approach made it difficult to gain a timely view of inventory levels and orders, creating a risk for locations to run out of stock and increasing the possibility of delayed deliveries to customers.

Muhammad Ali adds, “The number of au­tomotive brands on the market in Pakistan has more than doubled, which means that consumers have more choice than ever. As a result, delivering an exceptional customer experience is crucial, and we set out to en­hance our after-sales processes.”

Building on Proven Technology

Like many top companies in the automotive space, Honda Pakistan relies on SAP busi­ness systems to coordinate its end-to-end business processes. To achieve its customer experience goals, the company decided to transition from its existing SAP ERP solutions to the next-generation SAP S/4HANA plat­form. The aim was to use real-time order data from the dealership network to create an automatic planning and replenishment process for spare parts, enabling seamless services and greater customer satisfaction.

Honda Pakistan knew that enabling the new data-driven approach to after-sales ser­vices would depend on high compute per­formance as well as low storage and net­working latency for the target SAP S/4HANA environment. Because the new platform would be responsible for mission-critical business processes, the company decided to look for a server platform that could de­liver maximum availability for the new SAP solutions without sending management and maintenance costs soaring.

“Through our discussions with IBM, we reached the conclusion that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications would empower us to meet our stringent service-level requirements around end-user application performance, availability and cost-efficiency—maximizing the value of our investment in the new IBM Power Systems platform.”

Selecting an Ultra-reliable Server Platform

Zaman Khan Abdali, deputy manager IT, networks & IT infrastructure at Honda Paki­stan, takes up the story, “After reviewing a number of infrastructure options, we de­cided to engage an expert team from IBM to build a new infrastructure platform for SAP S/4HANA on the latest generation of IBM POWER9-processor-based systems.

“Through our discussions with IBM, we reached the conclusion that SUSE Linux En­terprise Server for SAP Applications would empower us to meet our stringent service-level requirements around end-user application performance, availability and cost-efficiency—maximizing the value of our investment in the new IBM Power Systems platform.”

Protecting Critical Services, Containing Costs

By selecting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications as its operating system for SAP S/4HANA, Honda Pakistan is on track to drive significant efficiencies in its manage­ment, maintenance and disaster recovery processes.

Imran Khan, assistant manager, SAP BASIS at Honda Pakistan, explains, “We are ex­tremely impressed by the close strategic alliance between IBM, SUSE and SAP, which is one of the the main reasons behind our decision to choose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. Solutions from all three companies are all tightly compat­ible with one another and include many automated tools to help streamline the management process. For example, with Live Kernel Patching in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, we can apply patches without tak­ing our production systems offline.”

He continues, “Similarly, we see that the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Ex­tension will make it faster and easier for us to switch between our primary and disaster recovery environments. By using the flex­ible, policy-driven clustering solution from SUSE, we believe that we will cut our recov­ery time objective [RTO] from 15 minutes to 10 minutes—a reduction of 33 percent that will help strengthen our business resiliency.”

Ultimately, these technical gains will trans­late into more reliable and responsive systems, helping Honda Pakistan and its dealers outcompete their rivals on the all-important customer-experience front.

Foundation for Service Innovation

Today, Honda Pakistan is working with IBM, SAP and SUSE to deploy the IT infrastruc­ture for SAP S/4HANA. Once the new plat­form is live, the company predicts that its data-driven capabilities will equip its deal­erships to deliver even higher-quality ser­vices to individuals and businesses across the country: nurturing loyalty and helping to protect market share.

“One of our first objectives with the move to SAP S/4HANA is to consolidate the capabili­ties of SAP ERP, SAP CRM and SAP Business Warehouse into a single platform, which will allow integrated business planning between our dealerships, manufacturing plants and head office,” explains Muhammad Ali. “These real-time data flows will enable us to auto­matically optimize spare parts inventory across our dealership network—avoiding vehicle servicing delays and minimizing the time vehicles are off the road.”

Naturally, real-time systems create expec­tations for always-on service from both employees and customers. With features such as built-in high availability and Live Kernel Patching, the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform will help Honda Pakistan ensure that key data and customer-service work­flows are always available for use.

Ready for the Road Ahead

With SAP S/4HANA on the SUSE Linux Enter­prise platform, Honda Pakistan is confident that it will unlock an immediate 15 percent increase in revenues by efficiently moving unsold inventory to where it is needed in its dealership network. Looking further ahead, the company predicts that its new real-time platform will enable more responsive services that promote customer loyalty and help strengthen market share.

“We are confident that our new data-driven after-sales process will make a strong con­tribution to enhancing the customer experi­ence and fostering long-term loyalty,” con­cludes Muhammad Ali. “To deliver on our brand promise to customers, it’s vital that our employees and dealership teams have 24/7 access to the digital tools they need to serve customers effectively. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications un­derpinning our new SAP S/4HANA solution, we have peace of mind that our mission-critical systems will be available around the clock.”