|
YES ... Sign me up for the ebXML Forum Newsletter
Email Address:
ebXML Forum does NOT send unsolicitied e-mail.
More ebXML Forum
|
ebXML gets behind the wheel for North American auto dealers
For many business transactions, ebXML provides the e-business infrastructure between growing numbers of auto manufacturers and dealers in the USA and Canada.
Perhaps no type of business has accumulated as much folklore as the retail auto dealer, at least in North America. This fixture of local business has for decades handled the consumer sales of new and used cars, as well as financing, repair service, and parts. While the Web has opened new sources of information on car buying and financing, the local dealer remains the single most important party with which the consumer interacts.
But like most other enterprises, the old ways of doing business are being challenged. Consumers have much more information on makes, models, options, and most importantly, costs. Many consumers come to the showroom with print outs from their Web browsing, having visited the manufacturers sites, and from reading up on dealer margins, and financing choices. As a results, consumers have become more demanding and more fickle.
Dealing with higher costs and thinner margins
Auto dealers like all enterprises need to become more productive and efficient, and as a result, they are becoming major uses of e-business. Like other businesses, dealers must deal with increasing costs and tighter margins. And they need to control inventories and coordinate their marketing, financial, and maintenance services with their suppliers, particularly the manufacturers and financial institutions. Much of the communications traffic between auto dealer and trading partners use the telephone and fax machine, with predictable and problematic outcomes. This industry like so many others saw the need for standards, in terms of industry semantics, but also a common infrastructure for the conduct of electronic business.
Both the auto dealers and the manufacturers recognize the value of e-business in improving their business processes and their industry associations have developed specifications for use throughout their supply chains. A consortium of the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA), auto manufacturers, and technology providers established the Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail or STAR in 2001. STAR has developed a set of 24 transactions based on the Open Applications Group XML standards, using that group's Business Object Documents or BODs. The STAR specifications cover a wide range of processes among dealers, financing companies and manufacturers (see box).
|
STAR Business Object Documents
BOD Confirm
Credit Application
Credit Contract
Credit Contract Response
Credit Decision
Financial Statement
Labor Operations
Model Codes
Parts Invoice
Parts Locator
Parts Order
Parts Pick List
Parts Return
Parts Shipment
Repair Order
Retail Delivery Reporting
Sales Lead
Service Advisory Receipt Acknowledgment
Service Appointment
Service Processing Advisory
Standard Codes
Vehicle Inventory
Vehicle Invoice
Vehicle Service History
More details about STAR standards
|
The messages exchanged among the parties are based on the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS), with an individual schema assigned to each process, and specific messages identified within each process. Three other processes cover exchanges of codes and confirmation of BOD processing.
For message transport STAR recommends using either ebXML Messaging Service (ebMS) v 2.0 or a collection of non-ebXML Web services, to provide the high levels of security and reliability needed for the industry's business messages. The Web services specifications include SOAP 1.1, WS-Security 1.0, WS-Reliable Messaging, and WS-Addressing. STAR's transport specifications note that many of the Web services specifications are not yet full standards, nor has WS-I developed interoperability profiles for all of them.
Working with ebMS, STAR also recommends the ebXML Collaboration Partner Protocol and Agreement (CPPA) specification to establish reliability levels, determine synchronous or asynchronous message patterns, and agree on details such as time-out limits, numbers of retries, time intervals between retries, and handling out-of-sequence messages. STAR plans to establish similar specifications for WS-Policy at some future time.
Connecting parts makers, sellers, and buyers
The automotive industry is one of the pioneers in using e-business for tighter supply chain integration, and integrating dealer networks into the overall manufacturing supply chain is a key industry objective. The industry benefits from this integration in the handling of after-market retail parts orders by dealers. These business processes connect the parts suppliers (who normally transact business with the manufacturers) with the individual dealers.
At the 2003 Auto-Tech conference, the industry's annual technology showcase, a group of technology vendors showed a number of business processes connecting dealers, manufacturers, and parts suppliers. The scenarios included the more traditional supply-chain interactions, as well as more complex logistics transactions involving cross-border shipments. Many American auto manufacturers use parts made in Canada or Mexico that require extra documentation.
In the demo, the ebXML BPSS defined the processes, including the parties involved in the processes and the messages they exchanged. The ebXML CPPA specs defined the technical capabilities of the parties and their bilateral configurations. A registry cataloged the process models, vocabularies, message assembly templates, and partner profiles. The actual messages, in most cases BODs from the Open Applications Group, used ebMS for transport. But the demo also used for some interactions traditional EDI message formats, as well as IBM's MQ Series and Web services for transport, to show how ebXML can work alongside other technologies.
One of the first manufacturers to make extensive use of the STAR standards is Volkswagen of America. Earlier in April 2004, Cyclone Commerce announced that Volkswagen of America would use a Cyclone Commerce system to implement the STAR standards with ebXML transport for transactions with its VW and Audi dealers.
In March 2004 Information Week magazine quoted an Audi/BMW dealer in Lansing, Michigan who planned to implement the standards as part of the Volkswagen of America dealer network. Wayne Williams, the owner of the dealership said he expected the new network to cut his data communications costs in half. That's a cash-back offer even a car dealer can love.
|