Over the past few years, the automotive industry has needed to adapt quickly to various market disruptions. In 2020, sales across China, Europe, and the US significantly decreased from a drop in demand, stemming from the global pandemic. But after this initial drop, demand increased sharply, and automakers accelerated production levels worldwide.
Pressures like changing demand in the automotive industry require companies to pivot quickly, starting with understanding their supply chain constraints. Concerns that the pandemic, geopolitical tensions, and microchip shortages might disrupt automotive industry operations rose. However, according to McKinsey, supply chain challenges have improved with increased insight into inventories and processes being tracked across the supply chain teams.
How automotive organizations can cut costs and boost performance
As a leader in the automotive industry, Mazda Motor Corporation successfully established a technology strategy that has helped scale its business rapidly. Established in 1920 in Japan, Mazda Motor Corporation now sells approximately 1.5 million cars annually in 130 countries.
As part of their commitment to meeting the post-sale demands of customers, Mazda maintains 250,000 repair parts and accessories for vehicles, creating the need for a scalable system and a strategy that enables efficiency to meet their long-term global growth initiatives.
Many of Mazda’s transactions were processed with their on-premises server and storage infrastructure. Inventory was difficult to manage across various business functions, workloads were heavy, and demand forecasting became cumbersome. Mazda also needed to expand its analysis data to account for demand forecasting by country, region, and across the globe. The cloud-based platform enables greater collaboration using critical systems to better suit business needs. With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Mazda cut costs by 50% and boosted performance by 70%, leading to a reduction in the five-year total cost of ownership.
Scaling business demand
On-demand forecasting can help simplify inventory management and improve analytics, ultimately providing more confidence in your operational flexibility. The flexibility and scalability of OCI helped Mazda address the challenges that they previously faced when trying to scale to keep up with business demand.
With OCI, Mazda can run daily forecasts instead of monthly and move production up or down with its demand. For example, based on the three-month proof of concept, Mazda captured a better return on investment with OCI.
Improving customer experience
Another key priority for Mazda is maintaining consistent branding across operations of Mazda branches, spanning 30 European countries. Faced with new technology trends and media landscapes, Mazda faced the challenge of engaging with customers directly to create a more personalized buying experience. With Oracle’s marketing automation solution, Mazda can support its B2B and B2C marketing launches to generate more activity and create a user-friendly experience for customers.
Centralized tools like Oracle’s Eloqua Marketing Automation allow Mazda to engage with their customers directly and gain access to real-time data that helps optimize their marketing strategy and align goals. With Oracle, the marketing team tracked a 90% increase in email open rates for campaigns.
“We save time and gain efficiency,” said Sandy Klama, manager of customer interaction management for Mazda Motor Europe. “All markets are on one instance and can see what the other ones are doing. These are the key benefits of using Oracle Eloqua. We have complete transparency. If one campaign is performing well, we reach out and share best practices.”
Innovating with cloud
Automotive companies have had to continuously innovate to stay connected to sustain their operations in a changing ecosystem. With Oracle’s support, Mazda adopted a software solution that works across their entire global organization with the flexibility and easy access to on-demand analytics.
Want to know more about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? Read the top 10 reasons to adopt oracle cloud.
Product Marketing Manager, Analytics
