Automotive Supplier Sales

Sales processes from the future: How fast are you?

Written by Erik Reiter | Dec 4, 2024 12:48:43 PM

 

In today's rapidly changing automotive industry, suppliers are faced with the challenge of making their sales processes more efficient in order to remain competitive. Digitalization offers enormous potential here, particularly through the implementation of integrated systems such as Digital Automotive. This system makes it possible to automate and optimize various sales processes. In the following, central processes are highlighted and shown how they can be efficiently designed using Digital Automotive.

 

1. Creation of sales performance reports
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Order intake, claim performance and change performance are the most important performance reports in automotive supplier sales. Traditionally, the creation of performance reports requires considerable manual effort, especially when merging data from different sources.
Digital Automotive fully automates this process by seamlessly integrating and updating data in real time. This enables sales managers to instantly access up-to-date performance metrics and make informed decisions.

 

2. Creation of sales steering reports 
Benchmark: 0 sec.

The overview of the strategically planned target projects, the current offer portfolio, the acquisition calendar, the open claims, the over- and underpayments from amortizations, the cash flow from one-time payments are essential management reports to effectively manage sales.
These reports are extracted fully automatically from the sales processes that are already taking place and visualized in real time for management purposes. This ensures that managers are always informed about the current status and can react quickly to changes.

 

3. Preparation of market analysis reports based on the monthly updated S&P Global Mobility data (IHS)
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Up-to-date market data is crucial for strategic decisions. Digital Automotive integrates the latest data from S&P Global Mobility and prepares it automatically. This enables automotive suppliers to recognize market trends at an early stage and adapt their strategies accordingly.

 

4. Determination of market shares
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Get your own market share without any effort. Sounds fantastic - but it works! Based on the S&P Global Mobility data, which covers the entire global automotive market, the company's own booked orders are superimposed and the market shares are determined completely automatically. Visualization is of course included.

 

5. Updating price lists in sales planning 
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Always a huge effort for sales planners. Getting the current prices including future adjustments (LTAs, technical changes) of key accounts in huge Excel files. With Digital automotive, this is possible without any effort. This is because the key accounts do not manage their prices in error-prone Excel lists as they do today, but in Digital Automotive. This means that the prices for sales planning are always available and always up-to-date.

 

6. Updating sales planning on the basis of new S&P Global Mobility figures
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Sales planning must react flexibly to current market data. By integrating the latest S&P Global Mobility figures into Digital Automotive, companies can adjust their sales forecasts in real time and make informed decisions.

 

7. Creation of sales scenarios in which the volumes or prices of 1000 projects change
Benchmark: 15 sec.

Simulating different sales scenarios is complex and time-consuming. Digital Automotive offers tools that can be used to quickly create and analyze such scenarios, making strategic planning faster and easier.

 

8. Creation of a sales variance analysis
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Deviations in sales can be due to various causes. By automatically analyzing these deviations with Digital Automotive, companies can quickly take countermeasures and achieve their goals. Plan/actual comparisons for the entire company, a region, a product or customer group are available at any time. And the analysis can be broken down to project level, showing why actual sales deviate from the plan. Everything is fully automated.

 

9. Updating the price lists of 1000 projects where the raw material index changes
Benchmark: 10 sec.

Fluctuations in raw material prices require quick adjustments to price lists. Digital Automotive makes it possible to update price lists for countless projects simultaneously. Of course, these can be clustered by customer if the raw material adjustment is customer-specific. It couldn't be simpler.

 

10. Execution of calculation and profit determination in change management
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Changes in projects require a reassessment of costs and profits. Digital Automotive automates this process so that companies can quickly recognize the financial impact of changes.

 

11. Updating price lists based on changes from change management
Benchmark: 1 sec.

Automotive suppliers whose products have a large number of customer-driven technical changes are familiar with the problem: the price changes from the individual changes, including the price components (e.g. base price, purchased parts, B price, raw material weight, etc.) must be transferred to the price list. Time-consuming copy & paste in Excel with many errors is still the reality for many suppliers. In Digital Automotive, this can be done with a single click.

 

12. Creation of CBDs (customer cost breakdowns)
Benchmark: 1 sec.

Customers often request detailed cost breakdowns. Digital Automotive generates these automatically, which speeds up the sales process, increases transparency and also avoids costly errors.

 

13. Generation of an acquisition decision template
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Comprehensive information is required for well-founded acquisition decisions. Digital Automotive provides this in the form of city-standardized decision templates that summarize all relevant data. The input required for this is generated in a benchmark acquisition process in a much more efficient process than today's multiple data entries in Excel.

 

14. Finding documents and contracts
Benchmark: 5 sec.

Centralized document management is crucial for efficient workflows. Digital Automotive makes it possible to quickly find the documents you need where you expect to find them. A real game changer compared to the often poorly structured Windows Explorer or SharePoint directories.

 

15. Determination of damage from volume deviations for 1000 projects (claim basis)
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Today, automotive suppliers no longer need to be told what claim management is and what damage is caused by the quantities. The problem is that determining the quantity deviations (contract vs. actual) across a large number of projects is very time-consuming. Digital Automotive not only does this completely automatically, but also provides the damage calculation based on the lost contribution margins at the same time. The input from existing data is used for this.

 

16. Calculation of amortization
Benchmark: 5 sec.

Where do you get the volume figures for the pay-as-you-go period again? And how does the correct interest formula work? In Digital Automotive, this process is fully automated so that it is fast and no errors occur.

17. Updating amortizations in the price lists
Benchmark: 1 sec.

The next step in amortization management. The transfer to the price list with a start and end date. In Excel, this is a real challenge for anyone who has been keeping track of the entries for many years. And of course it takes time. This process also takes just one click in Digital Automotive.

 

18. Determination of over- and underpayments from amortizations for 1000 projects:
Benchmark: 0 sec.

Many automotive suppliers don't do it at all - some do it with a lot of effort: checking the actually delivered quantities of parts price allocations (amortizations) agreed with the customer.
The Amortization Tracker does this without any effort and without any loss of data. Over- or underpayments for all projects are determined and visualized fully automatically.

 

...in Digital Automotive there are many other fields in which automation makes life easier for sales - with fast, simple and error-free processes.

 

 

Are you curious to see how automation works in the leading solution for sales planning and sales management? Make an appointment today for a live demo of Digital Automotive!