Case Studies > Volvo Sees Significant Cost Savings and Visibility with e2open®

Volvo Sees Significant Cost Savings and Visibility with e2open®

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America
Asia
Europe

Country

Belgium
China
Sweden
United States

Product

e2open Transportation Management

Tech Stack

Cloud-based Architecture
SaaS Model
EDI Integration

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Transportation Management Systems (TMS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms

Applicable Industries

Automotive

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Use Cases

Fleet Management
Supply Chain Visibility
Track & Trace of Assets

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Headquartered in Göteborg, Sweden, and under the ownership of the Zhejiang Geely Holding (Geely Holding) of China since 2010, Volvo Cars is one of the most respected car brands in the world. The company was founded in 1927 and has approximately 29,000 employees worldwide. In 2015, Volvo sold more than half a million vehicles in 100 different countries.

The Challenge

Volvo needed to improve visibility and business efficiencies across global operations. The company looked to design and deploy a new transportation management system (TMS) that could serve as the backbone of its vehicle distribution network by planning, optimizing, and tracking shipments of all finished vehicles from its four global factories to 2,300 dealerships worldwide. Volvo recently expanded its footprint to include a new factory in the U.S., which will also use the technology, including rail capabilities. Volvo established a list of goals for a TMS: bring consistency and efficiency to time-consuming, costly business processes, increase visibility across global operations, and improve agility and the ability to respond quickly to changing business dynamics.

The Solution

Volvo approached eight companies seeking a sophisticated global TMS that could be ready to go in 150 days. After a competitive RFP process, Volvo chose e2open to tackle the challenge of setting up a TMS that could integrate with 26 existing IT systems and handle 35,000 routes to market, 120 new EDI messages, and 30 existing carriers. The cloud-based architecture of e2open Transportation Management allowed Volvo to meet its aggressive timeline and have a new TMS fully deployed within five months without experiencing any disruption to its supply chain. With a traditional system, months would need to be spent just on discussing the architectural guidelines. Most of those types of challenges during a new software implementation are covered by the SaaS model. No other system could have gone live in less than five months.

Operational Impact

Following the extremely fast global deployment, Volvo gained better visibility into its logistics, achieving improved efficiency and significant cost savings.
Performance increased while service issues decreased.
Transportation Management has delivered a significant improvement in performance, with dealerships reporting just a fraction of the issues compared to when Volvo was using a logistics service provider to handle its transportation needs.

Quantitative Benefit