Business Situation
Mercedes-Benz is one of the largest producers of premium cars and the world’s biggest manufacturer of commercial vehicles. When it came to sales processes, it had no standard or centralized system for managing prices and applying product discounts. Employees had to interact with multiple legacy customer relationship management (CRM) systems when working on a particular account.
Moreover, the company’s headquarters had limited visibility into what was being offered across regions, leading to complicated, time-consuming approval and contract management practices and varying prices. It wanted more consistency and efficiency in its operations in order to continue to grow and delight customers.
“For each car, there is only one price for the whole market, for the whole country. The customer now has trust in fair and uniform pricing.”
Solution
Mercedes-Benz turned to Avanade to help it deliver flexible, agile solutions that would meet the company’s goals. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 technology, we helped implement a modern solution for its sales systems. The Pricing Engine (P.EN) is a back office pricing application that standardizes the sales price for all dealers. Additionally, it monitors the various vehicle configurations so the company can identify market behavior and tailor its marketing campaigns and manufacturing decisions to meet customer expectations.
Results
The single, yet powerful, platform can deliver benefits across the business:
- Transparency: More accessible and user-friendly pricing and sales functions
- Mobility: Anytime, anywhere access to tools to satisfy ad hoc requests
- Assurance: Intuitive sales systems to manage accounts and sales with efficiency and speed and standard pricing
- Speed: The time to process deals and contracts has been reduced from four or five days down to an average of two days
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