$14B Multinational Automotive Manufacturer

Business Challenge:

A $14B Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer, confronting a number of business and technical issues in ensuring operational & organizational efficiency, called upon Synaptix Systems to help solve a host of complex inter-related challenges:

• Communication, process & relationship gaps between the client’s information technology (IT) organization and its business unit & dealership ‘customers’
• Ensuring alignment between company strategy for reaching automotive consumers and strategy for managing web portal properties & applications
• A proliferation of disparate and non-integrated portal technologies was causing considerable operational difficulties and ‘less than ideal’ user experiences for the client’s internet user customers

Synaptix Solution:

The Synaptix Systems team worked with client management to define an enterprise web portal management & technology strategy that delivered standardized and robust web portal infrastructure via unification & integration of a series of disparate portal technologies. Synaptix Systems also generated an IT organizational alignment strategy and assisted the client with implementation under a customer-centric program-based service delivery model.

As a follow-on phase, Synaptix resources successfully managed (and helped client management establish governance structure for) several key ongoing programs/projects, including:

• Development and maintenance of consumer-facing web portal properties handling 100M+ page views per month
• Identification, selection and implementation of robust enterprise security ‘gateway’ infrastructure capable of supporting 10,000+ geographically distributed users
• Development and enhancement of a mission-critical corporate extranet web portal providing customer/inventory/sales data and management tools to 200+ dealer entities (internal ‘customers’)
• Engineering and enhancement of a corporate intranet for communicating effectively with the employee workforce (internal ‘customers’)

Results:

Key groups in the $14B Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer’s information technology (IT) organization were restructured for better communication. Internal customers such as dealers, business unit teams and marketing are now more satisfied with the IT organization’s ability to meet internal service level agreements (SLAs) — with dealers seeing steady increases in sales volume.

Synaptix Systems’ work also helped achieve a significant cost savings due to better operational effectiveness, via well-communicated business processes and simplified, easier-to-manage web portal infrastructure. The production system defect rate improved 25% and operating expenses decreased 30% for restructured groups. Furthermore, the client’s internet customer experiences were enhanced, as evidenced by improved portal site ‘stickiness’ metrics.