Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A sought to redesign its dealer business and operating model, processes and tools, and align them to leading industry practices to enhance its operations with dealers and interact with customers in a powerful, dynamic way, through the use of mobile devices. Accenture helped launch the program with an extensive core function assessment and mobilized a team to design, develop, test, implement and roll out a new dealer communication application for Ducati dealers worldwide, with an innovative user experience, leveraging SAP and Siebel technology. With Accenture’s help, Ducati has progressed on its journey to high performance with a global solution that serves more than 5,500 users worldwide in seven languages. By leveraging the new dealer communication system, Ducati is able to capture and consolidate local and global sales activity, spare parts, warranty, and service activity, improving the company’s ability to respond daily to changing consumer demand.

Client backgroundFounded in 1926, Ducati has been producing sport-inspired motorcycles since 1946. Their motorcycles are characterized by “Desmodromic” performance engines, innovative design and ingenious technology. Covering several market segments, Ducati's range of motorcycles are divided into model families which include: Diavel, Hypermotard, Monster, Multistrada, Streetfighter and Superbike.

These authentic icons of “made in Italy” are sold in over 80 countries around the world, with concentration on the European, North American and Asia Pacific markets.

Ducati competes in the World Superbike Championship and, with an official team, and the World MotoGP Championship. In Superbike, Ducati has won 17 Manufacturers' titles and 14 Riders' titles, and in 2011 passed the historic milestone of 300 race victories. Ducati has participated in MotoGP since 2003, and took both the Manufacturers' and Riders' titles in 2007.

Business challengeToday’s challenging economic and competitive environment demands that dealerships in the automotive industry, including motorcycle, offer value-added sales and after-sales services, carry multiple product lines, and manage multiple companies to distribute their products. At the same time, they also need to focus on increasing revenue, improving customer loyalty and decreasing costs. Ducati Motor Holding was well aware of the importance of a leading-edge dealer communication

solution, and made the strategic decision to embark on a transformational journey to redesign its dealer business and operating model, processes and tools, and to align them to leading industry practices. This journey would enable Ducati to enhance its operations with dealers and enable them to interact with customers in a powerful, fast and dynamic way, as well as helping them to optimize sales processes and the management of parts and accessories.

To help drive the transformation journey, Ducati chose to ally with Accenture, an experienced collaborator with innovative yet pragmatic ideas. Accenture offered several key capabilities, including industry knowledge and relevant technical knowledge, as well as its ability to deliver a comprehensive solution, from requirements assessment to new operating model development and global rollout. As a large, global organization, Accenture also

Ducati Dealer Communication System

brought experience in working seamlessly with service providers and mobile operators in the mobility domain.

How Accenture helped Accenture was tasked with leading the transformation journey, and working together with Ducati, launched the program with an extensive core function assessment. Accenture collaborated extensively with Ducati process owners, with a sampling of dealers globally, and with Accenture automotive industry process specialists. Various workshops to evaluate Ducati’s requirements, confirm leading industry practices and benchmark dealer operating models also contributed to this effort.

Within a short span of three months, Accenture and Ducati were able to understand the way Ducati operates with its more than 860 dealers around the world. Specifically, the core function assessment enabled Ducati and Accenture to understand current processes, internal issues and requirements, collect comparative operating model benchmarks and identify leading dealer operations practices. This information was used to define Ducati’s future dealer business model, including the high-level definition of a dealer communication solution designed to address the needs of the business and users.

The future model aligned Ducati to competitor leading business process practices and enabled the Accenture team to design a dealer system solution with one of the most innovative and effective user experiences in the industry— one that was user-friendly, clean, sleek and reinforced Ducati’s brand messaging. The Accenture team also had valuable input to move forward on a design to provide a consistent look and feel, a single point of contact, extensive process coverage, efficiency, and effectiveness. The final steps of this phase included the development of a cost-benefit analysis and high-level implementation plan.

Ducati turned to Accenture to design, develop, test and implement the new dealer communication application for mobile devices called DCS, or Ducati Communication System, an SAP-based interface that lets dealers easily find, send, and receive all the information they need to place orders and track them through production and delivery.

As a company keenly focused on creating a highly interactive experience with customers, Ducati also wanted to enable dealers and allow customers to custom configure their motorcycles.

The solution provided more robust functionality for dealers over the company’s existing systems, and also needed to become the single point of access to Ducati’s original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and back-end systems. To this end, the solution was designed to include new functionalities, which spanned sales, parts and accessories, service, and marketing/customer relationship management and would make the system easier for Ducati dealers to use with customers around the world. These new functionalities included: improved order collection and management, sales and service performance, parts performance, recall and more. To help position Ducati as an innovative industry leader, Accenture proposed implementing the solution on a tablet in addition to a desktop computer. Ducati liked the idea, and chose the iPad as its preferred tablet.

An important activity during the design phase was shaping the user experience for both the desktop computer and the iPad. Accenture developed the visual and user experience to be the same for both devices so that dealers could navigate and interact with the system in the same way, making the solution easy and intuitive to use. Dealers from Europe and the United States were involved in testing the application to better understand their approach in using it and to tailor usability to their needs.

During the development phase, a key challenge that Accenture addressed was systems integration. The solution entailed integrating the front-end of any online device, such as a workstation, laptop, tablet and mobile phone, with Ducati’s back-end SAP, Siebel solutions, and third-party systems, such as the new electronic catalog and the dealer communication system (DCS). A notable aspect of this integration is that it works in real-time, enabling the dealer solution to be quick, effective and efficient.

After completing the development effort in an impressive six-month time frame, Accenture deployed the new dealer communication system to 88 countries across four continents. As part of this deployment, Accenture developed a change management program to help dealers transition smoothly from the old solution to the new one. The new dealer communication system was

quickly embraced by Ducati dealers, who responded with positive feedback such as, “it’s a game changer,” “great time saver,” and “works perfect, I’m in love with the new system already.” The innovation of the application was also highlighted by Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, who displayed the Ducati application on the iPad during Apple’s iPhone 5 event in September 2012.

High performance delivered With Accenture’s help, Ducati has progressed on its journey to high performance with a global solution that serves more than 5,500 users worldwide in seven languages. By leveraging the new dealer communication system, Ducati is able to capture and consolidate local and global sales activity, spare parts, warranty, and service activity, improving the company’s ability to respond daily to changing consumer demand.

Dealers use the new solution to run all parts of their business and have a robust tool that provides them with a wide range of capabilities to execute their operational, growth and customer objectives. The solution is enabling them to respond more quickly to changing customer demands and marketplace conditions, and improving their efficiency—making each dealership easier for customers to do business with. Moreover, dealers are now equipped with leading practices for their processes to help them better serve customers in a simple, streamlined fashion.

The deployment of the new dealer communication system supports Ducati’s path to high performance by helping to deliver concrete business value in terms of increased revenue, dealer-focused functionality, improved customer service and decreased costs.

About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 275,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2013. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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