By: Dmitri S. Novomeiski, Associate Vice President, LTIMindtree

The automotive industry has evolved rapidly over the past decade with the shift towards electrification, the ubiquity of shared mobility services, and the onset of direct-to-consumer sales. The industry is also re-evaluating the roles and interactions among the key players in the automotive ecosystem: dealers, fleet operators, municipal corporations, buyers, manufacturers, and their captive finance arms.

Ultimately, traditional and new-age automotive need to deliver the experience that their customers have come to expect from their interactions with direct-to-consumer brands.

Salesforce has been at the core of enabling many automotive experiences. Many automotive customers instituted a Salesforce-first strategy that leverages the Salesforce platform to drive the development of customer-centric applications. Salesforce Automotive Cloud enables them to leverage their Salesforce investments further to deliver connected experiences.

At LTIMindtree, we use a maturity model framework that maps the technical capabilities required to create next-gen customer experience spanning across all four stages of the customer lifecycle: customer engagement, sales experience, ownership experience, and customer retention. As part of our co-design partnership with Salesforce, it was great to collaborate on shaping how the new offering enables our shared vision for the automotive industry and empowers the underlying vectors of CX evolution. In parallel, we have been able to start early validation and development of solutions that accelerate and ease the enablement of the platform.

Salesforce Automotive Cloud has the necessary components for accelerating the digitization of the entire value chain. Here are some of the key elements:

1. Bridge the divide through a unified data model
The unified data model that brings together Customer 360°, Dealer 360°, and Vehicle 360° is needed to create highly relevant micro-experiences, regardless of the engagement channel. The data model is STAR (Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail) compliant enabling easy integration with other industry-specific third-party tools.

2. Enable predictable outcomes and improved business performance
The direct outcome of the new data model is better management, deeper insights, and increased visibility for the sales and service organization and dealer networks. As we can structure and manage this information in a unified manner, we are able to create a baseline for leveraging Salesforce AI/ML capabilities to accelerate the purchase lifecycle and enable customer loyalty.

3. Connect deep back-office processes to front-office experience
Modern sales and after-sales experience across new car sales and auto-finance require process orchestration involving multiple disparate applications such as mainframe applications, ERP, inventory and warehouse management systems, multi-tier supply chain management systems, data factories, etc. As part of the Automotive Cloud, Salesforce now enables Digital Process Orchestration [DPA]. DPA takes a process-oriented view and ties these disparate systems spread across multiple teams, allowing different business users to work as a single team.

4. Set the foundation for data monetization
The cohesion of information in a manner that it can be consumed faster, actioned easily, and utilized universally, allows us to start building early-stage capabilities for direct-to-consumer channels and delivery of data monetization opportunities.

5. Empower better collaboration and transparency
Process handoffs can be costly and often lead to errors. Automotive cloud allows bringing all the stakeholders in the customer and vehicle lifecycle in closer contextual collaboration.

Migration to the Salesforce Automotive Cloud can generate efficiencies across the organization, develop foundational data architecture and minimize the level of customization required. The impact and readiness for migration of an individual customer to the new automotive offering from Salesforce need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. However, there is a business case for conducting an impact assessment and incorporating the future CX roadmap to embed the new capabilities.