Dealer collaboration: Transforming the value chain through integration and relationships

The retail and aftermarket in most value chains is highly segmented and can include dealers, distributors, resellers, independent repair shops, parts suppliers, specialized accessory retail stores and content providers. In the automotive industry, the aftermarket value chain is quite large and fragmented. OEMs need to transform the way they do business in order to obtain a share of this aftermarket revenue and provide better quality of service for handling critical product failures. Crucial failure symptom information is lost between the end consumers of products and the manufacturers due to lack of proper collaboration with dealerships and intermediaries offering independent service. Currently, this results in increased increased warranty costs for manufacturers and customer defection. In this paper, we present a novel IBM software solution for Automotive Dealer Collaboration, which enhances the OEM-Dealer relationship through contextual collaboration, information integration and transparent process management. The solution is based on open standards such as web services, J2EE, J2ME, Struts and others.