Car park application to manage reservations of test drive, demo and sponsored vehicles at Astara

Customer

Astara

Location

Antwerp, Belgium

Industry

Automotive

Technology used

SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP CRM, SAPUI5

About our client

Formerly known as Alcomotive, Astara Western Europe has a strong heritage in the automotive business in Europe. On several occasions, the company played a pioneering role with the launch of new Asian car brands in different European markets. Astara Western Europe has a presence in 6 European Countries. The region headquarters are located near Antwerp, Belgium.

Solution brief

Alcomotive was looking for a web-based application to manage their car parks with vehicles used for demos, test drives and sponsorships for the 6 brands they are distributing in Belgium and Luxembourg. These vehicles are rented to dealerships, journalists and other external parties. The application is used to manage the vehicle reservations and all related logistical activities like preparation, cleaning and transport of the vehicles. The transporter of the vehicles (3rd party) is automatically informed about required transports and can confirm these in the application as soon as they are planned. Transportation and reservations costs are automatically calculated per customer monthly. Also, sponsorship contracts are managed in the application: sponsorship details, vehicles involved, financial information, … Furthermore, the application is used to follow up damages and repairs of the vehicles.

Challenge & scope

The application had to be fully responsive and accessible on desktop, laptop and mobile devices (tablet/smartphone).
It had to support the setup of multiple car parks per brand and per country in a flexible way.
Different authorization roles (managers, coordinators, workshop, parking, …) had to be foreseen to manage allowed user actions/interventions per role and per car park.
Vehicle details had to be imported from Alcomotive’s SAP CRM system.
Renters must be reminded via text message to pick up their reserved vehicles on the eve of the reservation.
Car park managers had to be informed daily about reservations via pushed e-mails.
The application also had to offer reports and a comprehensive work overview for the vehicle workshop with scheduled transports, preparations and repairs.

Solution

The Car Park application was built in UI5 on SAP Business Technology Platform. Application users could log on with their Windows credentials, benefitting from a single-sign-on framework using Active Directory Federated Services. Interfacing between the application and the SAP CRM system was set up via SAP Cloud Connector. Texting and e-mailing functionalities are using 3rd party webservices (MailChimp).

The application allows us to manage our demo and test vehicles in a user-friendly and efficient way; all parties involved work according to an integrated schedule that makes it possible to schedule the preparation and transport of the vehicles “just in time”.

– William Meerschaut, Director Corporate Communications

Business outcome

Benefits

Full visibility on each vehicle’s characteristics, calendar and status by all parties involved (car park coordinators, workshop, parking, car wash, operations)
Direct communication to the external transporter of required transports with confirmation of the scheduled transport in the application itself + automated notifications
Automatic calculation of the monthly costs for each customer
Follow-up of the vehicle’s location in the parking lot

Results (ROI)

Errors reduced significantly
Speed and efficiency of reservations increased drastically
Cost effective: central location to manage the reservations, multiple brands brought into one platform
User-friendly & fully responsive on all devices – high user adoption of the application
Increased customer satisfaction
Increased transparent communication