Competition Heats Up
In Pakistan, competition in the automotive industry is heating up. The combination of a multibillion-dollar investment from the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative and a fast-growing middle class means that vehicle sales are predicted to rise fivefold over the coming years. These new opportunities have attracted a flood of international manufacturers to the country, all keen to capitalize on the growing demand for premium vehicles.
For more than two decades, Honda Atlas Cars Pakistan (Honda Pakistan)—a subsidiary of Japanese car maker Honda— has built a strong reputation for delivering high-quality cars to consumers and businesses, backed by an extensive network of 30 dealerships across the country. To help protect and grow its hard-won market share, Honda Pakistan aims to nurture long-term customer loyalty.
Muhammad Ali, general manager IT at Honda Pakistan, says, “We see that the quality and responsiveness of our after-sales services plays a vital role in the overall customer experience. As part of our commitment to offering the best driving experience, we plan to expand our dealership network by adding 20 more locations over the next five years—helping to boost the reach and convenience of our services.”
At-a-Glance
In Pakistan, vehicle sales are predicted to rise fivefold over the coming years. The number of automotive brands on the market has more than doubled, so consumers have more choice than ever. To stay competitive, Honda Pakistan needed to optimize its customer service. The company migrated its existing SAP ERP solutions to next-generation SAP S/4HANA software, running on the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform on IBM Power Systems hardware. The combination of SUSE, IBM and SAP technologies gives Honda Pakistan a reliable, high-performance platform for supporting critical business processes around the clock.
Enhancing After-Sales Experiences
Previously, Honda Pakistan’s dealerships relied heavily on manual workflows to manage key business processes, such as ordering spare parts and handling warranty claims. This approach made it difficult to gain a timely view of inventory levels and orders, creating a risk for locations to run out of stock and increasing the possibility of delayed deliveries to customers.
Muhammad Ali adds, “The number of automotive brands on the market in Pakistan has more than doubled, which means that consumers have more choice than ever. As a result, delivering an exceptional customer experience is crucial, and we set out to enhance our after-sales processes.”
Building on Proven Technology
Like many top companies in the automotive space, Honda Pakistan relies on SAP business systems to coordinate its end-to-end business processes. To achieve its customer experience goals, the company decided to transition from its existing SAP ERP solutions to the next-generation SAP S/4HANA platform. The aim was to use real-time order data from the dealership network to create an automatic planning and replenishment process for spare parts, enabling seamless services and greater customer satisfaction.
Honda Pakistan knew that enabling the new data-driven approach to after-sales services would depend on high compute performance as well as low storage and networking latency for the target SAP S/4HANA environment. Because the new platform would be responsible for mission-critical business processes, the company decided to look for a server platform that could deliver maximum availability for the new SAP solutions without sending management and maintenance costs soaring.
“Through our discussions with IBM, we reached the conclusion that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications would empower us to meet our stringent service-level requirements around end-user application performance, availability and cost-efficiency—maximizing the value of our investment in the new IBM Power Systems platform.”
Selecting an Ultra-reliable Server Platform
Zaman Khan Abdali, deputy manager IT, networks & IT infrastructure at Honda Pakistan, takes up the story, “After reviewing a number of infrastructure options, we decided to engage an expert team from IBM to build a new infrastructure platform for SAP S/4HANA on the latest generation of IBM POWER9-processor-based systems.
“Through our discussions with IBM, we reached the conclusion that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications would empower us to meet our stringent service-level requirements around end-user application performance, availability and cost-efficiency—maximizing the value of our investment in the new IBM Power Systems platform.”
Protecting Critical Services, Containing Costs
By selecting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications as its operating system for SAP S/4HANA, Honda Pakistan is on track to drive significant efficiencies in its management, maintenance and disaster recovery processes.
Imran Khan, assistant manager, SAP BASIS at Honda Pakistan, explains, “We are extremely impressed by the close strategic alliance between IBM, SUSE and SAP, which is one of the the main reasons behind our decision to choose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. Solutions from all three companies are all tightly compatible with one another and include many automated tools to help streamline the management process. For example, with Live Kernel Patching in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, we can apply patches without taking our production systems offline.”
He continues, “Similarly, we see that the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension will make it faster and easier for us to switch between our primary and disaster recovery environments. By using the flexible, policy-driven clustering solution from SUSE, we believe that we will cut our recovery time objective [RTO] from 15 minutes to 10 minutes—a reduction of 33 percent that will help strengthen our business resiliency.”
Ultimately, these technical gains will translate into more reliable and responsive systems, helping Honda Pakistan and its dealers outcompete their rivals on the all-important customer-experience front.
Foundation for Service Innovation
Today, Honda Pakistan is working with IBM, SAP and SUSE to deploy the IT infrastructure for SAP S/4HANA. Once the new platform is live, the company predicts that its data-driven capabilities will equip its dealerships to deliver even higher-quality services to individuals and businesses across the country: nurturing loyalty and helping to protect market share.
“One of our first objectives with the move to SAP S/4HANA is to consolidate the capabilities of SAP ERP, SAP CRM and SAP Business Warehouse into a single platform, which will allow integrated business planning between our dealerships, manufacturing plants and head office,” explains Muhammad Ali. “These real-time data flows will enable us to automatically optimize spare parts inventory across our dealership network—avoiding vehicle servicing delays and minimizing the time vehicles are off the road.”
Naturally, real-time systems create expectations for always-on service from both employees and customers. With features such as built-in high availability and Live Kernel Patching, the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform will help Honda Pakistan ensure that key data and customer-service workflows are always available for use.
Ready for the Road Ahead
With SAP S/4HANA on the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, Honda Pakistan is confident that it will unlock an immediate 15 percent increase in revenues by efficiently moving unsold inventory to where it is needed in its dealership network. Looking further ahead, the company predicts that its new real-time platform will enable more responsive services that promote customer loyalty and help strengthen market share.
“We are confident that our new data-driven after-sales process will make a strong contribution to enhancing the customer experience and fostering long-term loyalty,” concludes Muhammad Ali. “To deliver on our brand promise to customers, it’s vital that our employees and dealership teams have 24/7 access to the digital tools they need to serve customers effectively. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications underpinning our new SAP S/4HANA solution, we have peace of mind that our mission-critical systems will be available around the clock.”