The Nürburgring, the heart of motorsport history, is the starting point of a successful project by TMD Performance and TecAlliance. At full throttle, the teams have worked together to develop an innovative app that makes pit work easier for TMD’s racing customers. Today, all Order Manager users benefit from the app, which enables them to order replacement parts while on the move.
TMD Friction, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of friction materials, is a founding member and shareholder of TecAlliance. The Certified Data Supplier’s aftermarket brands are listed in the TecDoc Catalogue, while TMD Friction has been using the B2B Order Manager platform for order processing for twenty years. In the course of the cooperation, TMD Friction has r been actively involved in the further development and optimisation of our solutions – for example with the online portal Entry Supply Web, which enables all spare parts suppliers to easily and cost-effectively access the entire Order Manager customer base. This requirement came from TMD Performance, directly from the pit lane, so to speak.
“The most important information about our products is clearly presented in the app, the whole process is very user-friendly”
Sarah Schwarz, Global Business Process & Project Manager, TMD Friction
Pen and paper? Better digitally!
With more than 100 years of experience and countless successes, world championships and race wins, the history of TMD Performance with its PAGID Racing brand brake pads is inextricably linked to racing and rallying. Almost 100 percent of motor sport customers use the Order Manager to order replacement parts.
“Each racing team has its own area in the pit lane. Our colleagues are on site to check with the teams to see which replacement parts they need for the next race”, explains Sarah Schwarz, Global Business Process & Project Manager at TMD Friction. “In the past, a staff member used to go round the teams with pen and paper, note down the parts and later order them on the PC via the Order Manager. There were of course delays and the process was very error-prone: illegible writing, oil or water stains, typing errors when entering article numbers and so on. We thought it would be much more practical to have an app for mobile devices for that”. With this requirement Sarah Schwarz approached Bryan Marschall, who heads the Order Manager business unit as Product Lead at TecAlliance, at the beginning of 2018.
Successful teamwork
“TMD has, so to speak, charged through an open door”, remembers Bryan Marschall. “As smartphones and tablets are being used more and more in the trade sector and workshops, we have already developed several apps for our various solutions in recent years, e.g. for the TecDoc Catalogue. We were immediately enthusiastic about the idea of developing an app for the Order Manager together with TMD”.
After the initial discussions, the requirements were clear. Developers, testers and product owners from TecAlliance worked at high speed on the implementation; employees from TMD and their customers were actively involved time and again. Their feedback was taken into account during development to ensure that the app really met their requirements.
In July 2018 the time had come: The Order Manager App for Android mobile devices was available for free download in the Google Play App Store. A little later the version for iOS-based devices was also available in the App Store.
Reaching the goal faster with a mobile device
Today orders are entered directly during the race with the Order Manager App. The orderer logs in to the Order Manager App with the usual Order Manager login details. The user selects the name of the shopping cart, the organisation and the supplier. He then enters the article number manually or with a barcode scanner. In the last step he transfers the filled shopping cart to his own user account. The next time the Order Manager is accessed via the computer, the shopping basket filled via the app is available in the Shopping Cart Manager. The orderer can check the data again, add further information if necessary and then send it. In this way, nothing needs to be written down and later entered manually. And nothing is forgotten.
“The most important information about our products is clearly presented in the app, the whole process is very user-friendly. Once we have received the order, our service department delivers the required part to the orderer as quickly as possible,” says Sarah Schwarz. She is certain: “It couldn’t be simpler or faster.”
New projects already in planning
“We have been using many TecAlliance solutions for years. Our article data are integrated in the TecDoc Catalogue. All order processes, from the availability request to the electronic invoice, are fully integrated and automated via the Order Manager SAP module”, explains Sarah Schwarz. “We appreciate very much that we have a competent contact person at TecAlliance who advises us on all products and coordinates all projects. This makes our work much easier”, Sarah Schwarz is pleased to say.
“We are already looking forward to our next common projects. For example, we are currently introducing the Order Manager module Warranty & Returns for the automated processing of warranty claims and returns. In addition, we are intensively testing the CMD solution, which allows us to display up-to-date article information such as dimensions, weight, EAN code or successor articles to our customers directly when they are searching for parts during the ordering process. This is also very helpful for the racing sector: if, for example, the desired PAGID racing brake pad is currently not available for the given sprint application, the customer is shown which PAGID Racing friction product can be used as an alternative. The test phase has gone very well so far and we are pleased that we can continue to make our customers’ work easier,” says Sarah Schwarz.
