Enabling Interoperability in the Area of Multi-Brand Vehicle Configuration

Abstract

With the change of EU regulations in the automotive market in 2002, multi-brand car dealers became possible. Despite the high economical expectations connected with them, the existing IT infrastructure does not provide satisfying support for these changes as it had been developed independently by each brand for many years. Thus in this paper, we sketch solutions for two of their most important problems: (1) the systems of the manufacturers have to be accessed separately and in a proprietary manner which aggravates a product finding process across brands and (2) the status of the customer is not explicit because of a technological gap between car configuration and CRM system. Our solution is based on research results and tools from the EU project ATHENA³, especially the SAP tool suite for cross- organizational business processes which is presented in more detail. We conclude the paper by explaining the lessons we learned from a technical and research transfer point of view.

The work published in this paper is (partly) funded by the E.C. through the ATHENA IP. It does not represent the view of E.C. or the ATHENA consortium, and authors are solely responsible for the paper’s content.

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