Pricing Efficiency

Analyze and Improve Dealership
Profit Margins with SAP DBM and
BusinessObjects

Applies to:

SAP for Automotive. For more information, visit the Automotive BPX Community Pages.

Summary
As the new vehicle sales profit margins are shrinking, dealers are increasingly looking for ways to enhance
their profit margins and new ways to grow their business. They are constantly evaluating tools that will help
them measure and analyze their activities across all of their dealership departments. In this article, learn how
SAP solutions that dealers use to run their day-to-day operations will also help in gathering and analyzing
data to provide actionable intelligence. SAP DBM and BusinessObjects together deliver powerful yet very
user-friendly and easy-to-use tools to capture and analyze the various aspects of dealership operations.
Author: Prathap Paragi
Company: SAP
st
Created on: 1 July 2010

Author Bio
Prathap Paragi has been with the SAP Automotive group since 1996. In his current role as a solution
manger in IBU, his focus is on the SAP Automotive after Sales and Service topics. One of his prime activities
includes leading the Go to Market activities for DBM in Americas.

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK SDN - sdn.sap.com | BPX - bpx.sap.com | BOC - boc.sap.com | UAC - uac.sap.com
© 2010 SAP AG 1

Analyze and Improve Dealership Profit Margins with SAP DBM and BusinessObjects

Table of Contents
Understanding Dealership Performance and Improving Profit Margins ........................................................... 3
Analytics using SAP DBM and BusinessObjects ........................................................................................ 3
Sample Dashboards and Reports .............................................................................................................. 4
Tools for DBM Analytics ................................................................................................................................ 5
Sample Architecture for Analytics using SAP DBM ........................................................................................ 7
Related Content ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Copyright ...................................................................................................................................................... 9

© 2010 SAP AG 2


Understanding Dealership Performance and Improving Profit Margins

Regardless of the size of the dealership during this time of a challenging economy, profitability, utilization
and inventory are the primary concerns for today’s automotive retailers. When revenue drops dealers look for
new and innovative ways to increase their profit margins, SAP Dealer Business Management (DBM)
supports the needs of today’s dealerships in the areas of Vehicle, Parts and Service sales. By supporting
these processes, SAP DBM collects the transactional data of the day-to-day operations of the dealership.
Analytics shed the light into the questions that dealers are asking. Analytics are only possible if there are a
set of extractors which ensures access to transactional data from a BI landscape. For example Vehicle Sales
Orders, Parts Orders, Vehicle Service Technician repair time entries are all included in the covered data
sources.

Analytics using SAP DBM and BusinessObjects
Ranging from a simple report to a complex dashboard, SAP DBM uses the rich tool set of SAP
BusinessObjects to fulfill the needs of any dealership or dealer group. Whether it’s the daily statistical reports
that can be generated using Crystal Reports or the dashboards that can be delivered using Xcelsius, DBM
can meet the needs of dealerships of all sizes. Along with the Crystal Reports and Xcelsius, BusinessObjects
Explorer can also be used to generate ad-hoc reporting on an intuitive unified interface.

Figure 1: Sample Dashboard of Vehicle Inventory

© 2010 SAP AG 3


As depicted in the sample dashboard in Figure 1 above, one can get a snapshot of vehicles in stock by
vehicle model and their valuation -- all of which are displayed in a pinwheel graph while the display of the
Vehicle aging data is in a Bar graph. One can also drill down into more detail from the graphs by placing the
cursor on the appropriate pie in the graphs. In our example it would then highlight the share of the vehicles
data as well as the Unit of Measure, either quantity or stock value. Also, one can further drill down into the
data by individual dealer location for a dealer group or display the data for all dealer groups.

Sample Dashboards and Reports
The flexibility in selectively displaying the data in the dashboards make the graphs more personalized based
on the needs of the user. The next picture illustrates the sample dashboards related to Vehicle Sales,
Vehicle Service and Parts Management.

Figure 2: Overview of DBM Dashboards
For daily reporting, Crystal Reports generates statistical output. The output data can be formatted to meet
individual reporting needs. Figure 3 represents a view of the Crystal report that can be generated on the
data extracts from DBM.

© 2010 SAP AG 4


Figure 3: Sample Crystal report for DBM

Tools for DBM Analytics
SAP delivers extractors which are part of the Logistics Information System (LIS). Combining their usage with
the existing extractors from Vehicle Management System (VMS), one can meet the needs of the Vehicle
Object-based reporting.
During the implementation time one can further enhance and support the needs of the customer by using the
following:
 SAP ETL Layer based on DBM7.0 and standard extractors
 Enterprise Data Warehouse (InfoCubes)
 BEX Queries
 Crystal Reports
 Xcelsius Dashboards.
Profitability for Vehicle Sales, Vehicle Service and Part Sales process can be analyzed using CO-PA. Figure
4 is a sample CO-PA based profitability report. Further CO-PA based drill down reports can be generated
using transaction KE30.

© 2010 SAP AG 5


Figure 4: Sample CO-PA based Profitability report

For more information on the DBM7.0 based extractors or profitability reporting please refer to the help guides
for DBM7.0 or use the following link:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_dbm700/helpdata/en/2f/15882d703f49588019612297e222be/frameset.htm

© 2010 SAP AG 6


Sample Architecture for Analytics using SAP DBM
Robust data presentations can be generated in the form of reporting or dashboards. Figure 5 presents an
example architecture depicting how reports or dashboards can be generated from DBM.

Figure 5: Architecture Overview of DBM using Business Objects
For more information on the SAP BusinessObjects in greater details, please refer to the SAP Business
Objects Community website.

© 2010 SAP AG 7


Related Content
BPX communities:
 Automotive BPX community, visit: Automotive BPX Community
 BusinessObjects BPX community, visit: BusinessObjects BPX community
Blogs related to DBM 7.0:
 DBM7.0 Overview: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/17879
 Customer management: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18085
 Parts Process: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18765

© 2010 SAP AG 8


Copyright
© Copyright 2010 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG.
The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice.
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