Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A sought to redesign its dealer business and operating model, processes and tools, and align them to leading industry practices to enhance its operations with dealers and interact with customers in a powerful, dynamic way, through the use of mobile devices.

1. Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A sought to
redesign its dealer business and operating
model, processes and tools, and align them
to leading industry practices to enhance
its operations with dealers and interact
with customers in a powerful, dynamic
way, through the use of mobile devices.
Accenture helped launch the program with
an extensive core function assessment
and mobilized a team to design, develop,
test, implement and roll out a new dealer
communication application for Ducati
dealers worldwide, with an innovative
user experience, leveraging SAP and Siebel
technology. With Accenture’s help, Ducati
has progressed on its journey to high
performance with a global solution that
serves more than 5,500 users worldwide
in seven languages. By leveraging the
new dealer communication system, Ducati
is able to capture and consolidate local
and global sales activity, spare parts,
warranty, and service activity, improving
the company’s ability to respond daily to
changing consumer demand.
Client background
Founded in 1926, Ducati has been
producing sport-inspired motorcycles since
1946. Their motorcycles are characterized
by “Desmodromic” performance engines,
innovative design and ingenious technology.
Covering several market segments, Ducati's
range of motorcycles are divided into
model families which include: Diavel,
Hypermotard, Monster, Multistrada,
Streetfighter and Superbike.
These authentic icons of “made in Italy”
are sold in over 80 countries around the
world, with concentration on the European,
North American and Asia Pacific markets.
Ducati competes in the World Superbike
Championship and, with an official team,
and the World MotoGP Championship. In
Superbike, Ducati has won 17 Manufacturers'
titles and 14 Riders' titles, and in 2011
passed the historic milestone of 300
race victories. Ducati has participated in
MotoGP since 2003, and took both the
Manufacturers' and Riders' titles in 2007.
Business challenge
Today’s challenging economic and
competitive environment demands that
dealerships in the automotive industry,
including motorcycle, offer value-added
sales and after-sales services, carry multiple
product lines, and manage multiple
companies to distribute their products. At
the same time, they also need to focus on
increasing revenue, improving customer
loyalty and decreasing costs. Ducati Motor
Holding was well aware of the importance
of a leading-edge dealer communication
solution, and made the strategic decision
to embark on a transformational journey to
redesign its dealer business and operating
model, processes and tools, and to align
them to leading industry practices. This
journey would enable Ducati to enhance its
operations with dealers and enable them
to interact with customers in a powerful,
fast and dynamic way, as well as helping
them to optimize sales processes and the
management of parts and accessories.
To help drive the transformation journey,
Ducati chose to ally with Accenture, an
experienced collaborator with innovative
yet pragmatic ideas. Accenture offered
several key capabilities, including industry
knowledge and relevant technical
knowledge, as well as its ability to
deliver a comprehensive solution, from
requirements assessment to new operating
model development and global rollout. As
a large, global organization, Accenture also
Ducati Dealer
Communication System

2. brought experience in working seamlessly
with service providers and mobile operators
in the mobility domain.
How Accenture helped
Accenture was tasked with leading the
transformation journey, and working together
with Ducati, launched the program with
an extensive core function assessment.
Accenture collaborated extensively with
Ducati process owners, with a sampling
of dealers globally, and with Accenture
automotive industry process specialists.
Various workshops to evaluate Ducati’s
requirements, confirm leading industry
practices and benchmark dealer operating
models also contributed to this effort.
Within a short span of three months,
Accenture and Ducati were able to
understand the way Ducati operates with
its more than 860 dealers around the world.
Specifically, the core function assessment
enabled Ducati and Accenture to understand
current processes, internal issues and
requirements, collect comparative operating
model benchmarks and identify leading
dealer operations practices. This information
was used to define Ducati’s future dealer
business model, including the high-level
definition of a dealer communication solution
designed to address the needs of the business
and users.
The future model aligned Ducati to
competitor leading business process practices
and enabled the Accenture team to design a
dealer system solution with one of the most
innovative and effective user experiences in
the industry— one that was user-friendly,
clean, sleek and reinforced Ducati’s brand
messaging. The Accenture team also had
valuable input to move forward on a design
to provide a consistent look and feel, a single
point of contact, extensive process coverage,
efficiency, and effectiveness. The final steps
of this phase included the development
of a cost-benefit analysis and high-level
implementation plan.
Ducati turned to Accenture to design,
develop, test and implement the new dealer
communication application for mobile
devices called DCS, or Ducati Communication
System, an SAP-based interface that lets
dealers easily find, send, and receive all the
information they need to place orders and
track them through production and delivery.
As a company keenly focused on creating a
highly interactive experience with customers,
Ducati also wanted to enable dealers and
allow customers to custom configure their
motorcycles.
The solution provided more robust
functionality for dealers over the company’s
existing systems, and also needed to become
the single point of access to Ducati’s original
equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and back-
end systems. To this end, the solution was
designed to include new functionalities,
which spanned sales, parts and accessories,
service, and marketing/customer relationship
management and would make the system
easier for Ducati dealers to use with
customers around the world. These new
functionalities included: improved order
collection and management, sales and
service performance, parts performance,
recall and more. To help position Ducati
as an innovative industry leader, Accenture
proposed implementing the solution on a
tablet in addition to a desktop computer.
Ducati liked the idea, and chose the iPad as
its preferred tablet.
An important activity during the design phase
was shaping the user experience for both the
desktop computer and the iPad. Accenture
developed the visual and user experience to
be the same for both devices so that dealers
could navigate and interact with the system
in the same way, making the solution easy
and intuitive to use. Dealers from Europe and
the United States were involved in testing
the application to better understand their
approach in using it and to tailor usability to
their needs.
During the development phase, a key
challenge that Accenture addressed was
systems integration. The solution entailed
integrating the front-end of any online
device, such as a workstation, laptop, tablet
and mobile phone, with Ducati’s back-
end SAP, Siebel solutions, and third-party
systems, such as the new electronic catalog
and the dealer communication system (DCS).
A notable aspect of this integration is that
it works in real-time, enabling the dealer
solution to be quick, effective and efficient.
After completing the development effort
in an impressive six-month time frame,
Accenture deployed the new dealer
communication system to 88 countries across
four continents. As part of this deployment,
Accenture developed a change management
program to help dealers transition smoothly
from the old solution to the new one. The
new dealer communication system was
quickly embraced by Ducati dealers, who
responded with positive feedback such as,
“it’s a game changer,” “great time saver,”
and “works perfect, I’m in love with the
new system already.” The innovation of the
application was also highlighted by Apple’s
CEO, Tim Cook, who displayed the Ducati
application on the iPad during Apple’s
iPhone 5 event in September 2012.
High performance delivered
With Accenture’s help, Ducati has
progressed on its journey to high
performance with a global solution that
serves more than 5,500 users worldwide
in seven languages. By leveraging the new
dealer communication system, Ducati is able
to capture and consolidate local and global
sales activity, spare parts, warranty, and
service activity, improving the company’s
ability to respond daily to changing
consumer demand.
Dealers use the new solution to run all
parts of their business and have a robust
tool that provides them with a wide range
of capabilities to execute their operational,
growth and customer objectives. The
solution is enabling them to respond more
quickly to changing customer demands
and marketplace conditions, and improving
their efficiency—making each dealership
easier for customers to do business with.
Moreover, dealers are now equipped with
leading practices for their processes to help
them better serve customers in a simple,
streamlined fashion.
The deployment of the new dealer
communication system supports Ducati’s
path to high performance by helping to
deliver concrete business value in terms
of increased revenue, dealer-focused
functionality, improved customer service and
decreased costs.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with more than
275,000 people serving clients in more
than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive capabilities
across all industries and business functions,
and extensive research on the world’s
most successful companies, Accenture
collaborates with clients to help them
become high-performance businesses and
governments. The company generated net
revenues of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal
year ended August 31, 2013. Its home page
is www.accenture.com.
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