SAP selected as strategic technological partner to accelerate Inchcape’s move to the Cloud
LONDON, UK — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Inchcape, a global automotive distribution business, has selected RISE with SAP on Google Cloud to carry out the digital transformation of its business as it evolves to meet changing customer needs.
Founded over 150 years ago, Inchcape works with automotive manufacturers in more than 35 countries to run its entire operations. In recent years, the appetite among car buyers has shifted towards an omnichannel experience where customers want the flexibility to carry out part or all of the buying journey online.
With the pandemic accelerating this trend, Inchcape needed to ensure that the service it was providing was in line with these evolving customer expectations for a seamless digital experience and that it had the tools to stay ahead of data trends.
Having already partnered with SAP for a number of years, Inchcape selected RISE with SAP to drive its move to the cloud in partnership with Google Cloud, expanding its SAP services to include global cloud human experience management (HXM) solution SAP SuccessFactors. Inchcape can now continuously analyse how its business processes are performing, benchmarking them against industry standards and able to easily adapt them to new requirements and customer demands.
Internally, SAP SuccessFactors will help Inchcape to provide employees with experiences that recognise their individual value and consistently motivate them to achieve peak performance levels. Using the data insights gathered from the solution, Inchcape will be able to make more informed decisions to attract and inspire people of all ages, create a culture of well-being and sustainability, and address priorities like diversity, inclusion, health, economic growth, and gender equality.
“The way people buy cars has fundamentally changed over the last 18 months, so it’s key that we’re evolving in line with consumer expectations”, said Mark Dearnley, Chief Digital Officer at Inchcape. “Globally car manufacturers rely on us to understand what cars people are buying and how they buy them, and at the heart of responding to that is data. Being able to harness RISE with SAP to capture these insights, build our cloud capability, improve employee experience, and deliver a service that is in line with what buyers want is absolutely crucial.”
Michiel Verhoeven, Managing Director SAP UK & Ireland, added: “Given the rapidly changing economic environment, businesses need to optimise business and operational models and innovate to be successful in the future. The automotive market is at an important crossroads as it is primed to take advantage of the digitalisation that is happening across industries. Inchcape is setting off on an exciting cloud journey, one where it can expect to significantly reduce tech infrastructure maintenance and operating costs, and improve financial efficiency and employee experience, globally. SAP is the right partner to support Inchcape’s mission to move to the cloud.”
Dominik Wee, Managing Director Global Automotive, Manufacturing and Energy at Google Cloud, said: “The global pandemic has accelerated the digital transformations of many businesses. To remain a leader in the automotive market, Inchcape is accelerating the migration of SAP workloads to the cloud to gain greater agility, elasticity, uptime, and benefits from greater data insight and analytics capabilities. Technical services from RISE, as well as migration services from Google Cloud and our partners, will help to eliminate technical barriers to cloud migration providing Inchcape with a foundation to digitally transform services. We’re committed to providing a smooth path to the cloud for SAP and RISE customers, and we will continue to invest in infrastructure capabilities and services for them.”
Listen to our SAP UK Podcast to hear from Inchcape Chief Digital Officer, Mark Dearnley, discuss the project in more detail.
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