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SAP HANA EFFECT
Title: Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA
(Duration: 18:42)
Publish Date: April 27, 2015
Description: Bill Powell from ARI Fleet Management explains how BPC
on HANA works with their non-SAP backend to keep its database
growing and fleets on the move.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL
FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEFF:
Welcome to The HANA Effect. I’m your host, Jeff
Word, from SAP. Each week, we bring listeners the
real stories of how companies are taking advantage
of real-time computing to transform their
organizations and let them share the lessons they’ve
learned along their journey. Welcome to The HANA
Effect. I’m your host, Jeff Word, from SAP, and I’m
joined today with Bill Powell from ARI Fleet
Management. Welcome.
BILL:
Thank you, Jeff.
JEFF:
So, this is a great story we’re happy to share with
everybody today. ARI Fleet Management is a great
SAP customer, but they’re very different than most
of the traditional SAP customers. So, Bill, why don’t
you introduce yourself and a little bit about ARI Fleet
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 1 Management so that everybody can understand what
kind of business you’re in.
BILL:
So, my name’s Bill Powell. I’m the Director of Enterprise
Architecture for ARI. And ARI is a fleet management
company. So, what we do is we manage assets, cars and
trucks and various products for a number of customers
throughout the world. We provide everything from financial
services, so from acquisitions through to disposition of the
vehicle, including fuel management, maintenance
management, license and title, very much like you would
on your own car or truck. We provide an array of services
of roughly 34-35 different services to roughly about 1.2
million vehicles worldwide. We’re the largest privately held
fleet management company in the world. In the last three
years. We’ve been voted by Fortune magazine as one of
the top 100 best companies to work for. We have roughly
2,800 employees working out of North America, the U.K.,
Germany, and Asia. Roughly about $4.5 billion in assets
and about $2.6 billion in annual sales.
JEFF:
Well, that’s great. Tell everybody a little bit about
your kind of SAP footprint, just so they get an idea of
what we’re talking about.
BILL:
As you already mentioned, Jeff, we’re not your typical SAP
customer. Our transactional systems that we have are
primarily Oracle based. So, most of our acquisition,
disposition of the vehicle, and everything in between is
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 2 happening in the Oracle layer. Where SAP comes into play
and also all that various technology that we have with SAP
is around analytics and business intelligence. We have a
HANA system that was put in place roughly at the end of
2010; went into active use in 2011. We’ve been using it
ever since as a new data warehouse for ARI.
So, as our data continues to grow, and our fleets or our
customers become more complex and we also grow
geographically, there was a dire need and there still is a
dire need to handle that data to be able to report back to
our customers the most cost effective way to manage their
fleets. We were really struggling with the care and
architecture and we took a step back, reached out to SAP
for options, and initially we looked at SAP Explorer. That’s
another one of the product that we have, sits on top of
HANA. We’re using SAP Explorer quite effectively in the
customer space. We don’t want to just constantly be in this
mode of generating report after report for our customers.
We wanted to have self-service, where they can come in
and answer an array of questions that they have using the
various technology that we have at hand. It makes things
much more efficient, much more effective. So, we’re using
SAP Explorer in that space. Works fantastic for our
customers, where it’s very intuitive, very quick. They can
come in. They can take a look at their inventory, their
expenses, their fuel, their telematics information. And they
can form analysis based upon that information that we’re
managing for them. As we continue to grow and as we
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 3 continue to roll that product out, we took a long hard look
at the underlying technology and we implemented HANA.
So, now we have Explorer on top of HANA and we’re
starting to use that more internally where we can have our
internal customer service folks, who manage one to many
customers look at all their customers not just one at a
time. And we’re starting to form new analysis based upon
all that information, being able to reach out, not just this
one customer in oil or gas. But what are all of our
customers in oil and gas doing or the rail technologies or
pharma technologies to form new compelling analysis for
our customers?
JEFF:
You said this was primarily started for you guys to
provide reports to your customers. Tell us a little bit
about what the reaction of the customers was when
you started giving them access to all this
information from your internal systems that was
flowing through HANA.
BILL:
It’s a two piece story. So, initially, you’re exactly right was
to provide new capabilities to our customers around the
reporting space, the business intelligence space, to give
them transparency optics into their information that we’re
managing for them. Typically, in the past, we would that
by interacting with the customer, understanding their
needs. That request would come inside into our normal
process and we would generate a report, little back and
forth, and then finally the customer would have their
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 4 information. Still do that quite a bit. It’s very effective. But
it’s not as efficient as it could be and it’s not empowering
the customer. They have a dire need for that information
and if you follow that process I just described, you have
this, I call this data latency or enter information latency,
where by the time we answer that question, most likely
your question already changed. So, we knew we had to
change tactics to keep up with the customer. By putting
that information in front of the customer and putting that
capability in front of the customer, they’re now much more
self-efficient. They can answer those questions by
themselves.
JEFF:
And would you say that that is some kind of a key
competitive advantage or a way to provide even
additional value to your customers to keep them
happier and working with you more closely?
BILL:
And I want to make sure to be clear, it’s not only about
creating reports and going through data and making the
repots run faster. Obviously, that’s a huge byproduct of
this. But the part that really gets me excited about this
and other here it opens up the blinds. Typically, in the
past, what would happen is the customer would have a
request. Let’s just say it’s around maintenance
information. You know, which vehicles are really driving
my costs over the last 2-3 fiscal years? Well, we have
various ways to solve that, various ways that are already
out there. What happens is I’ve seen it time after time is
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 5 that you develop tunnel vision so that you always kind of
solve the problem the same way because you’re used to it.
You already have a process set up. That may be great, but
things change. The markets change. The vehicles change;
conditions change. When you start reaching outside the
normal process, there was always concern around, well I
know if I follow this process, I can get a result in
reasonable amount of time. If I reach outside of that
process, it may take a little bit longer. By introducing
HANA and then the various products and services on top of
it, whether it’s Explorer or Lumira or business intelligence,
or our own custom applications—we right .NET code quite
a bit and that’s all integrated into HANA also and we keep
on doing more and more—it allows you to just fire
questions at the system and get a very quick response.
You’re more adapt to, hey, what if this scenario happened
or this scenario happened? Or, let’s look at it by
geographics or by seasonality or by whatever. It really
opens up the capability to analyze information and to,
again, perform more compelling analysis for our customers
with the sole objective of driving down our total cost of
ownership.
JEFF:
Yeah. That’s one aspect, the lower TCO, but can you
give everybody an idea of what the business benefit
to your company is by providing this extra value to
your customers? Has this resulted in much better
relationship with customers? Has it got more
customers because this is a capability?
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 6 BILL:
Yes on both counts. The relationships are much deeper
with the customers. We’re able to work with them on a
much closer basis. As an example, one of our customers, a
rail customer, reached out to us and asked us to help them
drive down costs even further. And we do this quite often
and we generally, again, try to solve the problem the same
way. By using the HANA technology and by working with
this customer, we developed some reports. We were able
to put those immediately right on the iPad. We went out,
we had a deep conversation not with the customer but
with the vendors that were servicing the customers—the
ones that were actually fixing their vehicles. And we
showed them very transparent information. Here’s your
average price. Here’s what your rate typically is for let’s
just say a brake service or suspension service. And here
are all the other vendors—your competitors—that are
within a 2 ½ - 3 mile proximity of you and these are their
rates. And they’re typically 30-40% lower. It really opens
up the conversation now; changes the dynamics of the
conversations quite a bit to negotiate better rates, better
service on our customers’ behalf.
JEFF:
Yeah. I think that to me is one of the coolest things
about this is you guys are reaching 3-4 layers
outside your company up into the value chain and
the business network and spreading that knowledge
to not only help you, obviously add more value to
your customers, but it helps them save money and
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 7 have better relationships with their other suppliers.
That kind of third/fourth order affect is something
that I don’t think you could’ve ever done without
having such a powerful analytical tool on
everybody’s fingertips that everybody’s singing off
the same song sheet, so to speak, right?
BILL:
Completely agree with you. Absolutely. So, those
conversations are very dynamic by nature. So, you need to
have a tool set or the ability with you to go with the
conversation. So, as the vendor asks questions, and we
may be looking at information from a little different angle
than what they’re used to. In such a case, maybe that
particular vendor can’t service medium or heavy duty
truck. And we’re trying to bring information to bear to
show them that the over vendors in the area can. It’s
really irrelevant to them. It doesn’t really matter. So, we
want to stay in that conversation. We need to be able to
change the dynamics of the conversation right away to
filter out the medium and heavy duty trucks to get down
to the light duty, the commercial vehicles and then level
set everything and then approach them again and say,
alright, well, let’s take a look at the light duty trucks or the
commercial vehicles. And, now, let’s talk about your
average price as compared to your competitors in the
area.
JEFF:
You also mentioned that now you guys have actually
expanded this and you’re using the same system to
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 8 do more internal types of analysis for that data. Give
us a couple of ideas of how that’s actually
transforming the way you guys work internally.
BILL:
In the customer service area, the way we’re set up is we
have customer service representatives that have one to
multiple customers that they manage. It really depends on
the complexity and the size of the customer in terms of
how many they manage. In the past, well, we still do it
quite a bit, is they would use our internal systems to go in
and take a look at that customer and see what was going
on. Let’s just say in the case of a manufacture recall
comes out. Well, they would go in and take a look at that
one particular customer and see how many vehicles
aligned to that particular recall and then start going
through the various dynamics of the information, analyzing
the information to determine the next course of action. But
it’s customer by customer, it’s kind of silo based if you
want to take a step back and look at it like that. With the
technology now, we very easily have the capability to
reach out and look at all the customers, all the makes, all
the models. It doesn’t really matter. The internal staff was
really becoming accustomed to the level of service that
they were given throughout the years. And when you have
that and when you reach outside of that and if you don’t
have the technology to support that, it can be an awful
painful process. So, using the SAP technology, again, using
the HANA technology combined with some internal
applications we developed in addition to business
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 9 intelligence applications that from SAP, we’re able to give
them an array of products and really tailor things to their
needs. We have certain customer areas, let’s say they’re
directly on the front lines of the customers. So, they’re
going to be using the Explorer product. We white label that
and we call it ARI Analytics. They’re going to use the exact
same product that our customers are going to use because
they want to have the same optics as the customers, no
surprises, no calls from the customers saying, “Hey, did
you realize that this expense happened or this event
occurred?” We can’t have any of that for proper customer
service.
Then we have other areas—strategic consulting is one
inside of ARI. It’s a different division of ARI. They are still
on the front lines of the customers, but they’re more
charged with looking at the customer from a broader base.
They’re going to be using tools Lumira, where they can
come in and they can mash different data sets together. In
many cases, they’re going to take information out of our
HANA system that we have and in some cases they may
need information that’s, let’s just say an Excel spreadsheet
that just came in from the customer, that’s not in our
HANA system or information that was never moved over to
our HANA system that’s in our Oracle system. They can
use that capabilities of Lumira and mash that data
together, analyze that and make some quite compelling
analysis on our customers’ behalf.
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 10 In terms of IT efficiencies, HANA really changed it quite a
bit. HANA’s a database when it comes down to it, right? If
you want to compare it to an Oracle or SQL Server or DBII
or whatever at that standpoint, but it’s also very different
when you start digging down a little bit more. Between the
way it aggregates information, the analytic views, the
calculation views. In an Oracle environment instead of
replicating data and storing data two or three times just
because you need to get through it really fast, that
obsolete. You don’t need to do that. You just store it once;
you leverage it multiple times. From a caring and feeding
perspective, from an IT perspective, for our database
administrators that come in and manage that HANA
system, not a lot different from their behalf, which his
good news for us.
So, I have a team in here that’s very adept at managing
SQL Server databases and Oracle databases. A number of
them just raised their hand and say, “Yeah, I would love to
get my hands on this HANA system.” It was a very easy
training and hand off process for them to manage the
HANA system. So, in many cases, I have DBAs that
manage the HANA database and Oracle database and a
SQL Server database. They don’t have to be specialized.
They understand what’s needed.
JEFF:
Well, that’s phenomenal. That internal reduction of
TCO for the IT department combined with the
massive new value and ROI you were guys were
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 11 getting from pushing this information out to your
internal employees and then also multiple levels into
the supply chain to your customers is pretty
phenomenal. So, sounds like you guys have had a
couple of really, really big wins. You’ve been doing
this for a while now. What’s on the horizon for you
guys? Where is this headed from now on?
BILL:
Number of different areas we’re looking at. One of the
major things that’s very interesting now if we take a look
at Lumira. The Lumira is a great product for going in there
for data visualization, for going in and taking a look at a lot
of different data. Being able to mash things up from
different areas. And inform those compelling analysis,
inform those charts and graphs that they can make quick
decisions from. It’s fantastic from that.
On the other spectrum, we develop a lot of software in
here ourselves. In our fleet management space, software’s
not really a commodity. It’s very difficult to go out and buy
what we’re doing. So, we have to develop it ourselves and
we’re always looking for ways to become more efficient.
We sort of did a proof of concept last year with SAP around
Lumira. And, specifically, can we use Lumira or these great
charts and graphs that we’re designing in there, which are
very easy and I can have nine IT people do, can we
leverage that? Can I take that information that they’re
creating, that product and then consume that through our
.NET applications, so that I don’t have the expense of a
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 12 developer creating charting and graphing capability?
They’re doing what they’re designed to do and then let the
people that are closest to the action—not the IT people,
but the people that are in the business—design the
compelling charts and graphs.
We did a proof of concept last year with SAP and it’s
looking very promising right now. We’re in a test phase,
where we have various people in our fleet management
department, our license and title department, our
marketing department, wherever, and they’re using
Lumira to create some of these charts and graphs and then
when it’s posted up into HANA system, our .NET
applications can see that. It’s kind of like a gallery of
products and services that are out there. It just happens to
be charts and graphs. We can pick and choose; say, yep,
we want this one. Put this one inside of our application on
our dashboard and put this one here. And now, we have
the efficiency on the IT side and we also have the
efficiency and effectiveness by having the business be
more engaged and more of a tie-in, so the end product
that’s being delivered to our customers.
JEFF:
You’re doing exactly what we’ve seen with just
about every other customer is they start with
something rather small and kind of focused, but then
that breeds another successful project and an
expansion and another one and another one and you
start layering on these other new things on top of
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 13 that same data set because you have that capability
in HANA to scale it kind of infinitely, right? So,
what’s next beyond Lumira?
BILL:
Well, beyond Lumira we’re developing quite a bit. Our own
.NET applications and internally some of the thing on the
horizon right now that we’re looking at is around
geospatial analysis and really leveraging the capability
inside of HANA with the various products and services from
SAP or our own products and services that we develop.
So, as an example, telematics is a huge product for us in
the fleet management space. What telematics is is like a
transponder on the vehicle. Not every vehicle has one, but
the ones that do, where the customer chose to have that
transponder put in place, we get a lot of information back
from these vehicles. A latitude, a longitude roughly every
two minutes. It also tells us some pretty detailed
information regarding the vehicle. We also have the
maximum speed in the last two minutes; the maximum
amount of idle time in the last two minutes. Some of these
are pretty sophisticated where they have gyro sensors. So,
we can determine how many hard lefts and hard right
turns they make, jack rabbit starts and stops. All that and
when you start to aggregate that information, it really
comes into driver behavior. It’s a big program for us to try
to figure out, how can we again draw down that TCO? You
need to know what’s going on behind the wheel. You need
to get to that driver by looking at those different driver
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 14 patterns, we can really form this analysis to drive down
fuel costs, to slow the vehicles down, slow the fleet down,
so we can help the fleet maybe reduce their insurance
expense, in essence, to drive safer. That’s really what it
comes down to.
JEFF:
And you’re providing all that data back to you
customers, again increasing the value that you
provide through your relationship with the, right?
BILL:
Yes, we are. And this is one of the byproducts of having
the HANA system in place and the business becoming used
to having speed. I keep on talking about the tunnel vision
effect. But it’s amazing when you take a look back and
look at the impact it has on an organization, it’s really
profound, especially when it comes to telematics
information. Because of the sheer volume of this
information, it’s a pretty scary proposition when you sit
there and you want to analyze it and maybe merge it with
what’s happening in the fleet business? What’s happening
in the fuel side of the house? Maybe we want to use it for
audit controls. Was the vehicle fueled? What the vehicle
truly there? Or was the fuel card used for somebody else’s
vehicle? Well, before we were able to mash these data sets
together, you just really didn’t know. Now, we have two
different data points. We have the telematics. We know
where that vehicle was. We also have the touch point of
the fuel transaction; put those two together and now we
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 15 have some pretty profound audit controls that we could
put in place.
Prior to this technology stack, could we do it? Sure, we
could do it, but it was more sharp shooting at that point. It
was really understanding what we wanted to do and sitting
down and spending a lot more time analyzing instead of
doing. And now we just sit down and say, alright, what
else can we do? Ah, try this out. Try this out. Not
everything’s going to work, but we have the ability and the
speed now to try out different methods.
JEFF:
Yeah. And that rapid experimentation and
adaptation to these entirely new types of business
value that you guys are trying to derive is really
groundbreaking and, like I said, I think you guys are
probably one of the farthest along with this stuff, so
really excited to hear those stories. We’ll have you
guys back on the podcast once those go live because
definitely want to hear the reaction and the results
from those types.
So, Bill, I want to thank you so much for sharing
your HANA journey over the past couple years with
us and we’ll check back with you towards the end of
the year to talk more about some of the telematics
and predictive and unstructured data things that
you’re doing right now on projects and see what the
results have been for those amazing innovations.
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 16 So, I want to say thank you again for joining us.
BILL:
Great. Thank you again for your time. I appreciate it.
JEFF:
And with that, we’ll close another episode of The
HANA Effect. Thank you guys for listening and if
you’d like to get The HANA Effect each week, please
subscribe to our channel on SoundCloud or iTunes.
Look forward to hearing a lot of great stuff from ARI
a little bit later in the year. Thanks, a lot.
HANA Effect Episode 15 – ARI Fast on its Fleet with SAP HANA 17