WebFOCUS Draws the Picture for Ford’s Warranty Business

Customer Ford Motor Company Information Builders is one of the largest independent software companies in the world. We work with over 11,000 customers to ensure their success by putting Profile interactive and actionable information in the hands of everyone in the extended enterprise: employees, partners, suppliers, and customers. Snapshot Thanks to the team headed by Jim Lollar, Ford’s Warranty Systems Design Manager, Organization: more than 5,000 Ford dealers can quickly identify and resolve warranty repairs and Ford Motor Company, manufacturer of the best-selling car and the best- claims problems. selling truck in the world. The Challenge Help over 48,000 employees WebFOCUS Draws the Picture at more than 5,000 dealers, warranty specialists, and warranty for Ford’s Warranty Business consultants quickly identify and resolve problems with warranty repair and claim trends. “Legacy” is a word with a mixed reputation in the information The Strategy Move from print to Web reports by technology industry. To Year 2000 experts, it conjures up lines of converting a mainframe-based code to be scanned and remediated. To Jim Lollar, North American tabular report written in COBOL and Warranty Systems Design Manager for Ford Motor Company, it other critical mainframe-based means, among other things, the 126 Report, which has landed on the reports to Web-based reports. desks of Ford dealerships for the last two decades. It’s a neat, The Results tabular summary of each dealership’s warranty record. Cut more than $25 million a year in costs as a by-product of fast Because a Ford dealer in rural Minnesota and one in urban Miami and accurate delivery of information; will sell a different mix of vehicles and experience different types of enabled dealers to instantly identify warranty anomalies and isolate warranty claims, the 126 Report doesn’t simply compare warranty problems; leveraged 80 percent expenses. Instead, the report tells a dealership how its warranty- of existing code for a quick claiming practices compare to those of other Ford dealers in the implementation of the new system. same region, and identifies worrisome trends. Information Builders Solution The 126 Report is a form of “statistical process they can spot trends more easily, not all control,” says Lollar. It uses the standard dealers have the time or resources to do that. deviation, a way of determining what the Lollar’s crew just made tracking warranty “normal” range of deviation from the average trends a whole lot easier, thanks to an is, to measure the relative performance innovative update of the 126 Report. of dealers. “We needed something that The new version isn’t on one sheet of paper. Ford has defined six statistical standards to could talk to disparate data It’s on the Web. It isn’t rows and rows of tables determine how well a dealer is doing. If a sources…. This really puts in plain text. It’s graphs and charts, big, dealer’s standard deviation exceeds one or us on the cutting edge.” colorful and usable: Click on a graph and you more of those standards, the dealer will “set a can drill down into the data, moving from the condition” and is suggested for entry into average cost of repairs or the number of Ford’s Warranty Counseling Process. For repairs per thousand vehicles, to charts and example: If a dealer is more than three data showing repairs by components, such as standard deviations from average – and 99.7 engines, transmissions, suspensions, or percent of dealers will fall within three electronic systems. standard deviations – a warning condition is set, and shown in the report. Most important, the big picture is clear immediately. If a dealership’s warranty record Since most of the alarms are triggered by is out of line, or even starting to creep out of problems in only a couple of areas of a line, one or more elements of the graph will dealer’s warranty work, fixing a few show up as yellow or red, indicating that the outstanding processes will usually bring a dealer’s warranty record has exceeded dealer’s warranty record back to normal, Lollar acceptable standards. says. If a dealership reads the 126 Report carefully, it can, for example, find out if cars Building on a Legacy are coming back because repairs weren’t done The tool that made this possible is Information right the first time. Maybe, given a high Builders’ WebFOCUS, software with unique incidence of ignition repairs, the shop needs capabilities to deliver what Ford needed. more training on ignition systems. WebFOCUS turbocharged the 126 Report, and yet kept the best parts of Ford’s information Making Information Accessible technology legacy intact. The trouble, says Lollar, is that not everyone reads the printed, tabular report carefully. For example, Ford’s dealer warranty Most dealers have other important business information comprises more than 80 million to worry about, such as selling cars. detailed records, spread across Oracle and Teradata (from NCR) databases stored “A dealer who loses focus on warranty on mainframes. expense control may look at the warranty trend report only when he gets in trouble,” Lollar says sympathetically. “All dealers know how it should run but it’s hard to keep your eyes on all the balls.” Though Ford recommends that dealers graph the data so Customer Profile Ford Motor Company In addition, the diagnostic reports and claims The Unique Powers of WebFOCUS “It’s been quite successful.