Formerly known as Alcomotive, Astara Western Europe has a strong heritage in the automotive business in Europe. On several occasions, the company played a pioneering role with the launch of new Asian car brands in different European markets. Astara Western Europe has a presence in 6 European Countries. The region headquarters are located near Antwerp, Belgium.
Alcomotive was looking for a web-based application to manage their car parks with vehicles used for demos, test drives and sponsorships for the 6 brands they are distributing in Belgium and Luxembourg. These vehicles are rented to dealerships, journalists and other external parties. The application is used to manage the vehicle reservations and all related logistical activities like preparation, cleaning and transport of the vehicles. The transporter of the vehicles (3rd party) is automatically informed about required transports and can confirm these in the application as soon as they are planned. Transportation and reservations costs are automatically calculated per customer monthly. Also, sponsorship contracts are managed in the application: sponsorship details, vehicles involved, financial information, … Furthermore, the application is used to follow up damages and repairs of the vehicles.
The Car Park application was built in UI5 on SAP Business Technology Platform. Application users could log on with their Windows credentials, benefitting from a single-sign-on framework using Active Directory Federated Services. Interfacing between the application and the SAP CRM system was set up via SAP Cloud Connector. Texting and e-mailing functionalities are using 3rd party webservices (MailChimp).
The application allows us to manage our demo and test vehicles in a user-friendly and efficient way; all parties involved work according to an integrated schedule that makes it possible to schedule the preparation and transport of the vehicles “just in time”.