CIOIN

Vijay Sethi

CIO, Hero Honda

Executive summary

Hero Honda, the world's largest manufacturer of two-wheelers, and a customer base that's over 20 million and counting., was facing trouble  to afford real time availability of important information. An effective ERP system, a unique SMS- SAP implementation solved the problem of widespread markets for Hero Honda.

If a customer had to lodge a complaint of a defective part for his bike, he would have to walk into a Hero Honda office. His complaint would then be entered into a SAP system; personnel from the office would call the relevant distributor or service engineer and tell them about the defect. It doesn't end there. The distributor or engineer will then check his stock, and revert to the office. The office will check for replacement stock, and then go back to the distributor or customer over the phone. And finally the desired part was sent. The whole process used to take a few days. Hero Honda had to look for a solution to fix this kind of delay.

"The objective was to equip people with information even when they are not in office or where they are not able to access the Internet," says Vijay Sethi, CIO of Hero Honda. Creating a Short Cut The solution, as Sethi and his team discovered, lay in an SMS-SAP implementation that would ensure that the requested information is available in real-time and the speed breakers were eliminated.

The SMS-based solution allows a Hero Honda staffer to share information with the company's servers irrespective of his location. This information is flashed to key personnel's mobile phones nationwide, removing the need of their logging onto the website. This ensured that communication needs were resolved quickly. Says Sethi"Now, the moment the complaint is entered in SAP from anywhere in India, an SMS gets sent directly to the dealer. All the intermediary people have been removed."

Termed a SMS PUSH-PULL service, the solution uses three main core application elements - a SAP Handler, a SMS Handler and a DB Handler. "Basically all the transactions happen on SAP R3, whether it is related to production, sales or anything else. Technically, there is a remote function service, which goes to SAP, picks up the data from SAP, pushes it onto the SMS server and using the SMS gateway, we push it to the individual on his or her mobile phone.," explains Sethi.

Implementing a project of this size was not an easy task, as Hero Honda's sales force and dealer network is spread in almost every city across the country. The process of integrating with SAP and fetching on-line data was not a standard function. However, Sethi says confidently, "The implementation was very smooth.

The biggest benefit from the marketing and sales perspective is that now all the field staff have real time information. Sethi points out, "Now they don't have to return to ask the back office or any other department about the status of dispatch. It has helped us a lot in increasing the productivity."

The solution has helped dealers by assisting them to cull out any information from the database. Another application of the service is intimation across the board to all the employees in case of any difference in planned and actual production.

As a company, there are cost pressures coming into the automobile industry and our mantra would be, given these, how we differentiate ourselves from competitors. This particular technology is really going to play a major role, even in regular operations today, and also for the future not too far away," says Sethi. Hero Honda will be proud of the fact that they chose to ride on a road less travelled. A road that paved the way for innovation.