DeltaMaster drives the spare parts business of Daimler AG

Daimler AG manages its entire service and spare parts business with the help of DeltaMaster. The key is bundling and analyzing vast amounts of information.

The Global Service & Parts division manages the entire spare parts business of Daimler in 160 markets through 5,700 service outlets. The department is also responsible for maintenance, repairs, and 24-hour breakdown services.

Bundling and analyzing vast amounts of information is essential for man­ag­ing the group‘s after-sales business. Daimler is interested in revenue de­vel­op­ment, individual customer groups, warranty shares, and installation rates. To help determine the production requirements for current models and plan for the following year, the company uses parts lists as well as regular and sporadic acquistion from external and internal data sources. Since the data is as plentiful as it is complex, the division had long list of requirements for its Business Intelligence solution. The first task at hand was to create transparency.

Therefore, it was necessary to improve data access and integration, to make existing reports and analys approaches more comprehensible, and to de­vel­op new target reports and standardized analysis schemes. These tasks were carried out by Star Cooperation, a Stuttgart consultancy specializing in after-sales pricing strategies and Business Intelligence. The primary objective, how­ev­er, was to derive concrete goals and sales-push campaigns from this wealth of information.

DeltaMaster helped the division drastically reduce the number of required reports. Prior to the project, users had to create 70 reports from different systems on a regular basis. At the end of the project, only 15 reports re­mained. This was possible due to the clean data structures, new standards for reporting, and a clear user concept in DeltaMaster.

Duplicate work and inconsistent results due to different data pools were soon history as well. „And it was no major IT project,“ emphasized Oliver Kissel, Sales Manager, with reference to the fast implementation.

DeltaMaster is used for various tasks at Daimler. Over 80 people work with the software as users, power users, or experts based on the functionality that they need. DeltaMaster supports all of them from a common user in­ter­face. Its levels build on each other to provide more and more func­tion­al­ity. The software, therefore, offers the scope of func­tion­al­ity that each person needs and can handle.

In this application, basic users are the people who consume standard reports. From thes e reports, they can compare budget figures with actuals and identify potential problems or opportunities in sales management. Standard reports are automatically generated and distributed through DeltaMaster ReportServer.

Power users, in contrast, create dynamic ad hoc reports with DeltaMaster to answer more specific analytic questions. They can also delve into a detailed analysis on part-number levels or run cross-market comparisons directly from these reports.

Experts add data mining analyses to the portfolio of analysis applications at Daimler. Correlation analyses, for example, help identify hidden potential and determine which spare parts people frequently buy together for a certain series. Managers can use this information to derive tangible cause-and-effect relationships and even plan the demand for the following year.

Oliver Kissel knows the advantages of DeltaMaster. „With a few clicks, we can get to the bottom of substantial matters,“ he explained. „We can question anything and pinpoint the causes.“ In addition to the technical aspects of the solution, Kissel was also impressed by the functionality of the user interface. „DeltaMaster offers many different analysis methods, and we can calculate all important performance indicators,“ he added.

• Standards for KPI, nomenclature, and reports
• Reducing piles of reports
• High implementation speed
• Role-based access and functions (e.g. users, power users, experts)
• Business data mining, correlation analysis
• Ad hoc analysis, cross-market potential
• ReportServer for automated generation and distribution

• One of the largest suppliers of premium cars and global manufacturer of utility vehicles
• Internationally focussed Group of companies with approx. 290.000 emp­loyees
• Total turnover of about EUR 160 billion