BT dot.com/@ Work; Fiat's Drive Up V-Street

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Fiat's Drive Up V-Street

The auto-maker is using the net to go on-line with its vendors. The immediate pay-off: customer satisfaction.

By Radhika Dhawan

Since June, 1999, Enrico Ferrero, Vice-President (Marketing & Sales), Fiat, has been responding in the twinkling of an eye to dealers' requests for cars. That's about a zillion twinkles less than it used to take him 12 months earlier. Weaving the Web, in the meantime, has been his company's e-Biz network, using the Net to create a real-time information pipeline between Fiat, its vendors, and its retailers. Using this virtual infrastructure, the company's 60 dealers get their orders and their invoices-made out after a car has been sold-processed immediately. And the ultimate target is customer satisfaction by providing accurate information on when the car ordered will be ready for delivery.

Being an e-Biz corporation is enabling Fiat to check every individual dealer's credit-limit instantaneously so that the limit is never transgressed. In the automobiles business, this credit-limit is calculated on 2 parameters: the period after the sale of the car, within which the dealer must pay the company; and the maximum amount of money that the dealer can, at any given point of time, owe the organisation.

This complicated computation, which can be done only by factoring in the entire credit history of each dealer, needs information on bank-clearances and other forms of financial transactions to be plugged in as well. All of which demonstrates the dimensions of the task that its e-connections are allowing Fiat to perform. Explains Arnab Dasgupta, 28, Senior Manager, Ernst & Young Consulting, which helped Fiat assemble its e-Biz network: "The entire dealer reconciliation process, which could take between 2 and 3 weeks earlier, is now on-line.''

What Fiat is doing, like thousands of other corporations around the world, and-better believe it-in India, is to use the powerful linkages that the Net allows to create a seamless information network between its own operations and those of its partners on the value-chain, forward and backward. And the startling fact that it is showcasing: e-Commerce, or selling your products on the Web, is not all there is to e-Biz. On the contrary, this model for the New Millennium can be used to capture virtually any of the activities that your company is involved in: gathering customer-information, integrating the supply-chain, testing your advertisements, and, of course, booking sales.

Christened the Dealer Stock Availability System (DSAS), Fiat's e-Biz set-up uses the Net to link its dealers to itself, integrating the information component of the transactions between sales, marketing, and distributors. And those between the company's various departments like dealer-financing, accounts, and outbound logistics.

In effect, that leaves only the physical delivery of cars and cheques out of the process, because everything else-orders, invoices, confirmations et al-is, actually, information in one form or another. Says Gianni Ravina, 50, CEO, Fiat: ''The concept behind the DSAS is that the dealer is our partner in managing the customer.''

At the heart of e-Fiat is a dedicated server: an Intel P-II Web-server with 128 MB RAM and a 4-GB hard disc, which runs Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 (the Web Server), Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 (for database management), Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0 (for database transactions), and Microsoft Active Server Pages (for Web-page development) on a Windows NT platform. This server hosts the Website to which its dealers log in, using dial-up Net access available through commercial ISPs like VSNL.

The requirements at the dealer-end are basic: even a 486 machine with a 16-MB RAM will suffice. Each dealer has a password that allows access to updated information on stock and order positions, reservations, and invoices, with the right to place new orders or modify old ones on-line.

Any data that is entered is immediately transferred by this server to Fiat's sales and marketing department. This interface marks the only manual intervention in the entire DSAS: an individual from the marketing department of Fiat collates orders from all dealers and allots cars depending on the availability of stock and the dealer's credit-rating. This person accesses the data required from the company's ERP solution, which was installed by BaaN in December, 1998, and feeds the allotment details back into it. Therefore, information generated by the ERP from other parts of the organisation is linked to dealer transactions automatically.

Explains Domenico Cipollone, 33, Chief (Infotech), Fiat: ''The dealer can log in and make his reservation any time. The marketing guy can see this reservation on-line and, automatically, link up with the ERP to issue the sales-order.'' As for the sales and marketing people, they too have access to all the information they need on different aspects of this process, and can, thus, take decisions.

Obviously, there is no distortion or delay of the kind that the earlier system of faxed, couriered, or phoned-in orders led to. So, as soon as a dealer places an order through the system, FIDIS-the dealer-financing division of the company-performs an instantaneous credit-check on the dealer, and once the sales and marketing department allots the car, the finance department prints out the invoice for the dealer, and the car is delivered. The time taken for this process has fallen from 8 days to 24 hours. Avers Sanjay Shetty, 27, CEO, DBS Internet Services: ''The Web helps in enabling new systems because of the ease of use and the low cost of ownership.''

Security? That's taken care of through several safeguards. For starters, there is no on-line monetary transaction. Moreover, access is controlled: each dealer is provided with a TCP/IP address and a secure ID code. And a firewall shuts off the DSAS from the rest of the world's Net-surfers, creating, essentially, an extranet-a network that is exclusive to the company, but uses the communication channels of the Net.

An emboldened Fiat is planning to standardise the DSAS to implement it in the new markets that the company is tapping, like China. Says Cipollone: ''It is a light application, ideal to move into a new country. Unlike legacy applications, which are big in infrastructure and cost.'' After all, a Web application does not interfere with the core legacy code of any application.

Where do smart e-Biz corps, like Fiat, start, then? Just about anywhere they want to. With both the technology and the intellectual framework still being created, these organisations are not waiting for a final blueprint. So, it is best to identify 1 or 2 core processes where information can provide a competitive edge. That's why Fiat chose dealer-integration. And it didn't wait to have every aspect covered-it started small and ramped up. That's how your e-Biz should e-xpand too.

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