Ride Without Operational Hassles Thanks To Digital Transformation

Examine how digital transformation with technologies of rapid application development platform (RADP), unified mobile app and API tools can help automobile manufacturers overcome operational challenges.

- Jinen Dedhia, Co-Founder & MD, DronaHQ

India's automotive sector that contributes seven percent to nation's GDP, exhibited a strong, 14.41 percent annual production volume growth since 2012. Nearly 2.53 crore automobiles were shipped in FY2017, reports IBEF. Amidst such growth, however, the automobile manufacturers have been facing some serious operational challenges. Tackling these by harnessing digital transformation using core technologies of rapid application development platform (RADP), unified mobile app, and API tools may help auto-companies sustain high growth.

An auto manufacturer heavily depends on external entities. While component manufacturing is outsourced to suppliers, sales are driven by dealers. The post-sales support is offered by authorized service partners (ASPs) and sales finance provided by banks and NBFCs. Communicating with multiple external entities is fraught with operational issues. Let's examine these in detail.

Decision-making delays

An automaker receives information about inventory, sales, and delivery from dealers. Banks and NBFCs provide details about customers' loan eligibility and loan disbursal status. The Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) team gives information like invoicing to dealers, manufacturing speed and stocks. Since all this information is sourced from multiple stakeholders, arriving at a single version of truth proves time-consuming. This, in turn, causes delays in timely decisions.

Procurement issues

Auto manufacturers work with several small and medium-sized vendors to procure made-to-order components from. As they engage with a large number of suppliers, supplier visibility and monitoring supply efficiency become challenging. Companies, as a result, suffer from unpredictable delays and procurement inefficiencies.

Discounting and poor sales