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Introduction

Audi AG is a German manufacturer of a range of automobiles, from supermini to crossover SUVs  in various body styles and price ranges that are marketed under the Audi brand.
The company is headquartered in Ingolstadt, Germany, and has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Volkswagen AG since 1966.
The Audi emblem of the four rings denotes one of Germany's oldest automobile manufacturers. It symbolizes the merger in 1932 of four previously independent motor vehicle manufacturers: Audi touring cars), DKW (small cars),, Horch (luxury cars) and Wanderer (mid-market vehicles).. These companies are the foundation stones on which the present-day AUDI AG is built.
Audi currently employs around 57,000 people worldwide, including 45,000 in Germany. The brand with the four rings invests more than €2 billion each year in order to sustain the company’s technological lead embodied in its “Vorsprung durch Technik” slogan meaning "Progress through Technology"

Customer Relationship Management

CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way.
For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth.


CRM @ AUDI
In 2002, Audi and the VW Bank have decided to implement mySAP™ Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) enterprise-wide for their future customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives.

SAP is the world’s leading provider of e-business software solutions. Through the mySAP.com® e-business platform, people in businesses around the globe are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies throughout their supply chains.


The 8 Point Takeaway

1. Elevate the customer experience
By using mySAP CRM to collaborate with dealers around rich customer data and manage the customer experience across channels,

2. Enrich brand value
Audi recognizes that providing value to the customer at each interaction point and across channels strongly
influences customer brand perception, satisfaction and future purchase decisions.

3. Recognize the value of retention
By utilizing mySAP CRM to enhance marketing, sales and support capabilities, Audi expects over €3.3 million in revenue contribution related to loyalty increases through 2005.

4. Centralize data first
In 2000, Audi consolidated multiple databases into a central customer source, which currently holds data on over 700,000 customers, 600,000 vehicles and several million interactions.

5. Streamline individual Touch points
Every inbound customer contact at Audi is recorded into mySAP CRM, regardless of channel.

6. Bring product promotion and CRM together
Fueled by customer and prospect insight, Audi is using mySAP CRM to generate highly targeted campaigns and qualified leads.

7. Make customers a core competency
Audi’s Board of Directors instituted CRM as an organizational core competency in 1999.

8. Maximize existing assets
Audi holds a vision of integrated, customer data sharing between the dealer and manufacturer.


Implementation of CRM: Benefits (taking an example of Audi Q7)
The Audi marketing communication and Audi relationship marketing departments jointly began the online portal for their model Q7 to generate international interest and customer care.
Dialog and communication
During the campaign, prospects received newsletters about new features on the online portal and mailings with integrated questionnaires.

Campaign execution
The motto of IT project management is “to transmit the right form of communication at the right time to the right prospects” – a tremendous challenge. The project is multilingual and multinational.

Refining the target groups
Before each communication step, an intended target group of the campaign was redefined and selected with the help of the segment builder tool in mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM).


Refining the target groups
Before each communication step, an intended target group of the campaign was redefined and selected with the help of the segment builder tool in mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM).

Management of prospect data
The prospect program currently uses mySAP CRM, SAP Business Information Warehouse 3.5, and SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (SAP NetWeaver XI) 3.0. Data on prospects enters the database in different ways. Some of it comes from address dealers and is then transmitted to the project team in encrypted form by the national marketing offices.

Attracting new customers
The concept of a centrally managed and integrated prospect program has been proven to offer many benefits for local markets. The high number of registered prospects with high-quality information and a high percentage of new customers – those who had never driven an Audi before – shows that the idea worked as expected.

Performance of Audi with poor CRM
Audi previously did not have a streamlined and consistent process for handling inbound customer service inquiries. When Audi launched its new A-series in the United Kingdom in 1995, sales were spectacular. By 1999, Audi sold 40,000 cars in the United Kingdom; by 2002, more than 65,000 were sold, and 40% were to repeat customers -- a growth rate of almost 60%.
The improvement started in 1996, when Audi’s research uncovered that it ranked dead last among luxury makes in the United Kingdom on traditional measures of owner satisfaction and loyalty.
It developed an ambitious plan to reinvent Audi UK from the ground up. The results have been nothing short of stunning. In fact, Audi’s success offers a model of how to drive growth and engineer a dramatic turnaround by creating a superior customer experience for companies in any industry.

Future Prospect

Audi remains committed to further implementing its customer-based strategy to enhance the premium ownership experience. Immediate next steps include international rollout of the CIC component of mySAP CRM, based on the insights acquired in the pilot rollout in the German market. “Beyond improving processes in the customer care area, we also want to make sure all processes thread together to achieve

Audi plans to add CRM components and integration with existing dealer systems to achieve its ultimate vision.Audi’s collective customer focused efforts strive for the holistic view of the customer that will enable relevant, timely and profitable interactions to keep customers loyal for a lifetime.

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