Case Study

Data Integration Rollout Optimized for Major OEM

Motive Retail was chosen by a Major US Automaker to manage their global data integration program with its retail partners.

Executive Summary

For more than a decade, Motive Retail has been helping major manufacturers simplify and expedite integrations with their retail partners with the peace of mind that the data exchanged between their systems in production will drive more efficient processes and lay the foundation for accurate and timely business insights.

Motive Retail worked with a major US automaker (OEM) to optimize the global rollout of its data integration program with its retail partners. The program gathers data from the OEM’s global retail operations network to drive business intelligence and inform business processes.  The data is also used to manage incentives, improve customer retention, survey customers, and to share performance metrics across the corporate and dealer network.

Data Integration for OEM optimized
"The global initiative enabled integration of real-time operational data around service, parts, vehicles, and customer information."

Results Driven Partnership

In times of IT convergence and IT demand management, a major US car manufacturer needed a supplier to truly partner with to realize the global data integration it envisioned with its retail network. The OEM chose Motive Retail to leverage its proven, test-driven development approach to systems integration and its world class, SME support staff to ensure the initiative’s success.

The primary goal of the initiative was to integrate all global retail partners to its real-time APIs within a year, which entailed integrating to over 60 diverse dealer management systems (DMS) in more than 20 countries, and to do so without overspending OEM resources.  Key to the success was transparent communication and presentation of all program information – from technical specifications to program implementation expectations. 

The OEM had worked with Motive Retail previously to deliver certified integrations to prior versions of their APIs with approximately 100 service providers (DSPs) globally, and was used to a high level of service, and quality production results. With over 8000 dealers in 59 global markets, the OEM needed a dedicated partner to help maintain systems excellence. 

0
Dealership Management Systems (DMS)
0
Countries
0
Dealer Service Providers (DSP)
0
Dealers
0
Global markets

Challenge

While the OEM had existing integrations with retail partners worldwide, the DSPs were integrated to different releases of the OEM database, which meant data was coming in to the OEM’s systems with varying formats, and in most cases, not in real-time.  That made aggregating, normalizing and drawing useful, timely conclusions from the data a major challenge.  From the integrating DSP perspective, the effort to integrate to the newest version had different requirements depending on whether the DSP was upgrading existing integrations or integrating for the first time.

In Europe, GDPR privacy law forced major unique changes to how consumer data was to be shared across the OEM’s retail ecosystem.

Program Rollout

The OEM released its new interface to update integrated systems to a unified, modern specification, and to upgrade to real-time data transmissions.  Getting 60+ DSP partners integrated within a short target period required a proven process to ensure the specification was published clearly, accommodated any regional legal requirements,  provided knowledgeable support to DSPs across multiple language and time zone barriers, and ultimately, rigorously tested the DSP systems for compliance to the OEM specification.

Using the Motive Integrator Certify platform, Motive Retail helped the OEM cross the barrier.

Program Success

The Motive Integrator Certify platform helped the OEM achieve its rollout goals by providing:

Motive Integrator translated hundreds of pages of PDF specifications into an easy-to-use, dynamic, online knowledge base, complete with use cases, diagrams and version upgrade mapping guides.

Motive Integrator provided mock services and real-time tools to give developers immediate, constructive feedback as they developed. Developers collectively took advantage of 20,000 unit tests.

Motive Integrator processed more than 28,000 test cases. Many were retests, where Motive gave real-time feedback for developers to quickly correct and ultimately prevent errors in production.

Motive Retail support was heralded as having more technical knowledge on the OEM specification than the internal OEM staff. DSPs across the global praised the team’s responsiveness, despite time zone differences. Where the Motive Integrator platform wasn’t able to give automatic feedback, Motive’s team prioritized a 24 hour-or-less response time to ensure no parties were blocked.

Program Management

DSP Integrations

Key to program success was maintaining transparency to program metrics including DSP enrollment, project progress – even down to the status of individual tests, project communication, and project completion. With multiple global OEM stakeholders involved, all of this information was easily accessed and filtered by region within Motive Integrator.

oem-data-integration