In an industry characterized by cost pressure, complexity and international division of labor, claim management is one of the key levers for the economic success of automotive suppliers. Nevertheless, this process is still mapped in many companies using Excel spreadsheets - a tool that was designed for everything but professional process management.
The consequences: A lack of transparency, undiscovered claim potential and unnecessarily high overheads. If you don't approach your claim management systematically, you are wasting money - on a regular basis.
Whether it's delivery deviations, technical changes, quantity or price differences - claims arise constantly in day-to-day business. Managed correctly, they are an opportunity to recover lost margins and safeguard the profitability of a project. Managed incorrectly, they fall by the wayside or lead to protracted, ineffective negotiations with a low success rate.
In short: good claim management makes the difference between projects with a positive or negative EBIT impact.
Many companies still rely on Excel for claim management. What seems practicable in theory - after all, Excel is flexible, widespread and easy to use - turns out to be a costly weakness in practice.
1. Lack of transparency:
If relevant data is spread across many files, versions and departments, important claims are lost or recognized too late. Without a central overview, it is almost impossible to systematically identify potential, set priorities and negotiate in a targeted manner.
2. Waste of resources:
A lot of time is invested in manual maintenance, coordination and tracking - time that the sales and project teams lack in the actual negotiation. Excel generates overheads that put pressure on your margins.
A modern claim management solution must do more than just store data. It must manage processes, create transparency and communicate seamlessly with other systems. This is exactly what Digital Automotive offers - a platform developed by and for automotive suppliers.
Digital Automotive enables fully integrated claim management: from the automated detection of deviations (e.g. in delivery quantities, prices, materials) to systematic tracking and evaluation.
The entire process is clearly structured:
Detection: Automated detection of deviations based on real-time data
Capture: Structured input masks for fast and complete claim creation
Negotiate: Support through historical data, argumentation aids and calculation bases
Evaluate: Claim success is measured and reported - transparently and comprehensibly
The result: Every relevant case is systematically checked, tracked and evaluated.
Claim management depends on up-to-date and consistent data. Digital Automotive is designed to connect seamlessly with existing ERP and other systems. For example, actual quantities can be automatically transferred from the ERP in order to precisely calculate quantity deviations.
This significantly reduces manual effort and minimizes sources of error due to duplicate or outdated data maintenance.
The platform automatically creates meaningful reports - for example on:
Claim potentials: Where are there still untapped opportunities for renegotiation?
Open claims: Which cases are being processed, what is the status?
Claim performance: What successes have been achieved - by customer, project or team?
With this information, claim management can be controlled in a targeted manner - based on data, objectively and efficiently.
In international organizations, claim management must function across national and location boundaries. With Digital Automotive, access to all relevant information and processes is possible at any time and from anywhere - via a modern, cloud-based architecture.
For example, a sales team in Mexico can enter a claim from Germany and the head office in Europe takes over the negotiation. The system provides all the necessary data in real time.
The time for improvised solutions is over. If you want to survive in international competition today, you have to manage your claims professionally. Excel does not offer the necessary process reliability, transparency or scalability.
Digital Automotive provides a specialized solution that:
maps the entire process,
can be seamlessly integrated,
creates transparency and
enables measurable success in claim management.
This turns an often neglected area into a strategic lever for improving results - and effort into real added value.
Interested in a live demo?
Experience what professional claim management looks like today - simple, transparent and effective.
👉 digital-automotive-supplier.com