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Get to Know the Automotive Industry

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Outline the latest trends in the automotive industry.
  • Explore key industry challenges and requirements.
  • List Automotive Cloud key differentiators.

Digitization, increasing automation, and new business models are constantly shaping the automotive industry. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) seek new solutions to engage with their dealers and customers, grow their margins while investing in new revenue streams, and increase brand loyalty.

The automotive industry landscape is transforming. Several broad trends play a key role in changing expectations about the industry. 

Icons that represent the key trends in the automotive industry.

So, what’s the impact of these industry trends on key stakeholders?

  • Customers want their dealers to really know them and show that service is as important as sales. Customers demand personalized, digital interactions throughout the lifecycle of their vehicle ownership.
  • OEMs must adapt to disruptive technologies, like electric vehicles and connected mobility, and they strive to deepen their collaboration with all stakeholders in the ecosystem.
  • Dealers seek ways to unify customer and vehicle data to help customers at key points in the vehicle-ownership journey.

Changing expectations often lead to major innovations. The industry needs a solution that can keep up with all the latest trends and technologies while allowing companies to scale. Enter Salesforce Automotive Cloud. 

Before you get to know Automotive Cloud, meet the fast-growing automotive company, Neo Motors.

The Story of Neo Motors

Neo Motors is a global automotive OEM with a diverse product portfolio and a well-distributed dealer network. Its vehicles bring joy to customers around the world due to exceptional design, quality, innovation, and user experience.

Neo Motors manufactures a variety of products, ranging from large trucks, sports cars, and luxury cars; car parts and accessories; electric vehicles and self-drive cars. A diverse OEM, the business recently acquired a fleet-management company. In addition, Neo works in deep collaboration with mobility-service and telematics providers.

But like all major organizations, unprecedented growth has thrown some challenges its way. Fragmented sales processes, multiple revenue models, siloed data, and limited visibility into dealer performance are major obstacles. For these reasons, the company plans to revamp its systems and processes.

The company is focusing on four key areas for its digital transformation.

  • Data consolidation: Create consolidated and aggregated views of customer and vehicle data to give each customer interaction context, resolve service queries faster, and measure business key performance indicators (KPIs) consistently.
  • Customer satisfaction: Increase brand loyalty and customer retention by delighting customers with exceptional service and personalized engagement.
  • Stakeholder collaboration: Nurture deeper relationships in the dealer and stakeholder ecosystem by closely monitoring dealer performance, improving the sales process, and giving dealers visibility into customer and vehicle data.
  • Organizational productivity: Improve operational efficiency by tracking inventory, opening up channels of collaboration between dealers and internal teams, and automating complex workflows.

Welcome to Automotive Cloud

Meet Zia Aziz, an implementation consultant at Neo Motors. She’s about to get very busy. Zia’s heard the buzz in the market about the latest Salesforce innovation, Automotive Cloud, and she’s deeply intrigued. She contacts a Salesforce representative to learn more about Automotive Cloud. 

Built on the trusted Salesforce Platform, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud, Automotive Cloud enables manufacturers, dealers, and other stakeholders in the automotive ecosystem to effectively manage the key touch points in the customer and vehicle lifecycles. Automotive Cloud transforms the dealer and stakeholder experience and equips companies to deliver the personalized, proactive service their customers expect.

Here’s a diagram showing Automotive Cloud’s solution architecture.

The architecture of Automotive Cloud.

Automotive Cloud sits on top of the Salesforce Platform, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud. The Automotive Foundation and Automotive Apps & Processes layers add to the industry-specific flavor that’s unique to automotive use cases. Finally, the Flow for Automotive & Automation and Automotive Intelligence & Integration layers empower customers with ready-to-use tools and insights.

Automotive Cloud meets unique industry needs, with data models and workflows based on industry-wide best practices. Neo Motors won’t need to invest time in complex migration or implementation projects because data can flow easily from their existing systems to Automotive Cloud. 

Plus, Automotive Cloud is prebuilt with automation tools, ready-to-use consoles, and standardized workflows, reducing time otherwise spent on routine tasks. These capabilities pave the way for companies to focus on customer experience.

Neo Motors can easily extend Automotive Cloud with other apps and processes in Salesforce. Here are some Salesforce solutions that integrate with Automotive Cloud.

  • Rebate Management: Design and manage incentives across your dealer, agency, and retail ecosystem.
  • Data Cloud: Power near-real-time data orchestration for telematics and remote assistance.
  • Loyalty Management: Drive customer and dealer loyalty with experiential programs and attractive benefits.
  • Marketing Cloud Engagement: Build better customer and partner engagement, and simplify customer ownership journeys.
  • Commerce Cloud: Enable digital commerce and direct-to-consumer selling models for digital marketplaces.
  • Net Zero Cloud: Calculate carbon emissions for your vehicles and more.

But perhaps the biggest draw for Zia is that Automotive Cloud gives all the customer-facing and internal teams in her company a single source of truth for data. The solution unifies vehicle data, customer data, dealer data, and retail data to create a comprehensive picture of the business. This includes data about prospect preferences, customer households, vehicle repairs and warranties, and even parts and accessories. Add to this the key milestones in the customer and vehicle lifetime.

Zia can’t wait to share her knowledge with the team at Neo Motors, but first, she delves deeper into Automotive Cloud.

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