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Adrian Samareanu
Global CIO & VP, Operational Excellence, Volvo Financial Services
Supernova Award Category:
Technology Optimization
The Company:
Volvo Financial Services (“VFS”) is the global financial services provider for the Volvo Group. The Volvo Group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks, buses, construction equipment, and drive systems for marine and industrial applications. VFS provides a full range of financial services in 45 countries across EMEA, APAC and the Americas.
Adrian Samareanu, Global CIO & VP of operational excellence, drives digital innovation strategies and experiments with new solutions to support the core business. The VFS Process & IT organization is focused on delivering solutions that provide speed to market, operational efficiencies, and enhanced customer value.
The Problem:
Truck financing is a very competitive climate whether the finance is for one truck, a few trucks, or a fleet of 100. Customers reach out to multiple suppliers at once to provide bids, so speed to quote and the right financing rate provides a competitive advantage. If a customer has a need for financing, they want to know as soon as possible how much can be lent and how fast the credit can be approved. A crucial advantage for VFS is to be able to respond to the end customer with an accurate calculation and turn it around very quickly.
The internal originations process in VFS spans quick calculations and simulations on quotations, then a pricing approval process, a credit application process, and a final approval process. The Process & Solutions teams within IT are focused on simplifying and speeding up the customer booking process – from quote origination to credit approval and contract management – and enable its sales team and managers to keep the process going while they are on the road. Business processes that are driving unique customer propositions are mostly embedded in custom built systems. The team needed a solution that could mobile-enable these different legacy systems and address region-specific business needs.
The Solution:
Complex quoting processes are embedded in a variety of systems that VFS is using across the Americas, EMEA and APAC to enhance customer experience. Also, certain markets, such as China, India or Brazil, have specific financing processes that are tailored to create a competitive advantage for those markets. A mobile-enabling solution was needed that could leverage all the processes from the existing systems, localize in multiple languages, and provide a seamless user experience worldwide, regardless of the system. VFS implemented the capriza technology for its ability to work across all systems, ease of use, and best practices knowledge for creating effective mobile Zapps – bite-sized, mobile apps built around a quick one-minute workflow that help speed up business processes from existing applications.
The Results:
The VFS IT Solutions team created mobile apps for the quoting process across all regions. The apps included one that quickly simulates price calculations with accurate interest rates, and one for price authorization to allow the commercial team to instantly approve even if approvers are on the road. The apps look and work the same across regions even though different backend systems are used in different markets.
These apps delivered the desired business impact to VFS almost immediately: with a 60% increase in the speed to market. Authorized quotes are now out in minutes, instead of a couple of days, enabling the VFS sales team to beat out competition. Two other apps in use are a queue manager for viewing pipeline deals and lost deal analysis app to easily review missed opportunities. Also crucial to the success of this initiative was the VFS Process and IT organization's decision to build small, but agile, cross-functional teams to prototype and implement smart solutions. The organization’s leader, Adrian Samareanu, Global CIO & VP, Operational Excellence, believes these types of teams are ideal because they unlock the value of information to innovate business models, products and services by applying technology quickly. Prototypers on his team have no more than 3 months to produce a proof of concept. His team of “ninjas” functioned as a separate business unit and deployed the Capriza apps across the business.
Metrics:
With Capriza, the Process & Solutions originations team was able to simplify and speed up the customer booking process, including quote origination, credit approval and contract initiation. The Capriza Zapps enable its sales team and managers to keep the process going while they are on the road as well. Instead of getting rid of their complex business processes, the IT team was able to continue leveraging their legacy systems and turn them into one-minute mobile experiences that all workforce members could access anytime and anywhere.
Hard ROI metrics:
-60% increase in time to market
-Complex approval process shortened from days to hours
-Same Zapps and UI used across EMEA, APAC and Americas
-The IT team used 0 coding, 0 APIs and 0 development
The Technology:
Capriza’s enterprise mobility platform.
Disruptive Factor:
After the deployment, some members of Adrian’s “ninja” team moved back to the core business unit, bringing with them a new pace and new mentality around innovation. This mentality, paired with the embrace of mobility and process improvement has been crucial to VFS’ overall digital transformation. Adrian believes the crux of Volvo’s digital transformation is all about reducing complexity and modernizing legacy systems to strengthen the core systems, while also focusing on innovation by creating a plug-and-play environment on top of the legacy environment.
Shining Moment:
The shining moment in the Capriza roll-out centered around VFS' decision to build small, but agile cross-functional teams to prototype and implement smart solutions. These teams unlock the value of information to innovate business models, products & services by applying technology quickly. His team of ninjas functioned as a separate business unit and deployed Capriza apps across the business quickly and easily. The results were swift: VFS saw a 60% increase in time to market.