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Ambition
A leading multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in India was using a centralized, monolithic dealer management system (DMS 1.0) to manage its dealerships across over 2,000 locations. A DMS is a dealers’ enterprise resource planning (ERP), enabling dealerships to perform their day-to-day operations by connecting OEMs, distributors, dealers, and customers. Implemented over a decade ago, the system had been instrumental to the company’s growth, but lately high licensing and maintenance costs and limited functionalities (including an outdated user interface and software stack) were preventing the legacy system from keeping up with the company’s ambitions.
The system’s suboptimal scalability, performance and storage were hampering important go-to-market (GTM) efforts. There was also a significant security concerns due to the system’s security upgrades, patching, and infrastructure upkeep being highly manual processes.
The client sought to modernize DMS 1.0 and partnered with Wipro to build a highly scalable multi-channel solution on AWS that would reduce the maintenance cost of the system, enhance its features (e.g., seamless connectivity, API for business continuum, AI-based analytics) and security posture while allowing dealers to manage their entire business from a single platform.
The Solution
Wipro was the strategic partner for this engagement. The client chose to work with Wipro due to Wipro’s decades of experience managing large-scale automotive industry transformations and coordinating complex interactions between technology and business teams.
Wipro and the Wipro FullStride Cloud Studio worked with the client to outline the attributes of the current system, expectations for the new one, and develop a blueprint for the transformation. The blueprint included critical system and architectural requirements but balanced those technical concerns with user experience considerations to ensure that the new cloud-based interface would more than meet the needs of dealerships.
The project required rewriting the client’s existing system and completely modernizing the user experience. The client chose AWS cloud for its flexibility and elasticity to scale individual micro-services up or down based on user demand, thereby optimizing resource utilization and cost efficiency.
Wipro worked with the client to redesign more than 85 business processes across 8 different modules including sales, customer support, service, and parts. The new solution was built on AWS cloud using a plug-and-play model, employing various AWS managed services to reduce costs while increasing the scalability, security, and performance of services like data ingestion, exchange and sync, core services, insights and persistence, orchestration, APIs, encryption and logging, DevOps, and automation.
By breaking the transformation down into manageable microservices, the client was able to accelerate its transition and quickly generate concrete business value through the enhancements.
Ambition Realized
The new dealer management system harnesses the power of the cloud and managed services through AWS to enhance performance and user experience. Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) components, for example, have reduced operational costs through embedded licenses, eliminating the need for separate license procurement. PaaS components have also increased horizontal and vertical scalability.
A data warehouse and auto-archival mechanism now help the client optimize transactional data size based on business requirements, while the managed database (RDS) and object storage (S3) enhance data storage and management. AWS services like load balancer and EKS Fargate, along with automated backup and recovery services, reduce load-related issues and safeguard data in case of disruptions. The solution’s automation and DevOps capabilities have improved agility and GTM speed by automating repetitive tasks such as patching and code rebuilds. The new system also provides enhanced security measures through single sign on (SSO) and identity access management (IAM).
The new system provides a seamless omnichannel experience — including end-to-end visibility of KPIs, services, and sales across dealerships — and supports greater collaboration across departments. Dealerships are now able to access better inventory records in less time, leading to quicker decision-making and improved customer service.
By leveraging the speed, agility, and cost efficiency of cloud, the client has reshaped its relationship with its dealers and is now reaping the benefits.
