Fast Lube of the Future: 

• Currently, most Fast Lubes services companies are not optimally positioned to leverage the new-age business model due to current landscape limitations with IT agility, non-integrated franchisees, and a lack of unified 360-degree view of the high cost of operations.
• Service stations of the future will need to be more closely aligned with the business objective & strategy to be a destination hub for customers and vehicles while delivering a delightful customer experience and business brilliance in automotive services.
• This will require innovative capabilities, along strategic dimensions and marketing elements of products, services, engagement and offering, network presence, site formats, store operation, and new business models. The speed and nature of disruptive changes across industries will drive greater agility, and newer ways of working to define and realize roadmap initiatives.

The illustration below shows the intersection of business and technology initiatives, required to position firms as market leaders in the segment.

What are the business drivers and value levers?

Retail lubricants business will continue to remain viable, yet extremely competitive in the short to medium term, with the trend moving toward product premiumization, wider services through multi-care, network consolidation, into format-less virtual stores, that are connected as well as ultra-personalized, and a collaborative marketplace ecosystem.

The success of businesses to adapt to these changes will reflect in outcomes like category sales growth, multi-care growth, network ROI, net new customers, growth in fleet sales and overall marketing ROI.

The type of digital solutions that can enhance value growth include Connected Stores with a performance cockpit, Customer Lifecycle Visibility enablement, Product and Services Category Management, and Store in the Cloud.

Business will need to align their vision with growth challenges to position themselves optimally for the future.

How do we stitch it together?

Given our understanding of the business ecosystem and the likely impact of digital drivers, below is a view of capability options across different solution streams with the end goals being Retail POS modernization and Retail expansion to Online Capability and Omni channel interactions. Our experience suggests a recommendation on both ends of the spectrum – a combination of tactical and strategic choices. These considerations and parameters have enabled us to develop a framework by embarking on a 6-step process toward Digital Enablement. 

This approach has led us to explore comparative solution options, with a majority of our customers opting for one of the market leading COTS platforms. These offer the benefit of –

• Alignment to evolving business models
• Retention and growth of customer base
• Growth in IT footprint and greater agility
• Reduction in cost to serve

Conclusion

The lubes retail market is undergoing disruptive change and companies need to adopt competitive strategies at a faster pace while being focused on extending offerings beyond core products. Disruptive forces through uptake of electric vehicles, environmental regulations, and industry alliances threaten to slow down volume growth and thus impact profitability.

Companies will have to act faster to stay ahead of the curve. There are a multitude of value levers that can be utilized to harness growth, with an underpinning of technology-led business transformation, with the goal of increasing the customer engagement experience through improving retail franchisee operational performance. Integral to our digital approach is defining an agile business model that maximizes lifetime value for our customer.

Our experiences from similar transformations indicate significant year-on-year cost savings supported by better agility to align business outcomes, and stronger customer engagement.   

Author

Sandip Bhattacharya is a Practice Partner in the Energy, Natural Resources & Utilities practices, at Wipro Global Consulting Group. He is based in Houston, TX, He can be reached at Sandip.Bhattacharya@wipro.com.

Reviewer

Tomas Romero is a Client Consulting Partner in the Energy, Natural Resources & Utilities practices, at Wipro Global Consulting Group. He is based in London and may be reached at Tomas.Romero@wipro.com.

About Wipro 

Wipro is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 175,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future.

About Wipro Consulting Services

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Leading global analyst firms name us leaders in digital transformation strategy and consulting. And global Fortune 500 companies work with us because we deliver integrated strategy, digital and domain expertise, and apply analytics and insights to help them find hidden value.

With a strong heritage of innovation and entrepreneurship in technology services, we help companies leverage the potential from digital technologies like AI, automation, and Cloud. And because we understand that our clients’ business needs come first, our large global team of consultants work flexibly to deliver results, be it advisory or end-to-end execution.