Digital Omnipresence

The Pneuhage Group operates in the retail sector with Pneuhage Reifendienste, Erhardt Reifen und Autoservice and First Stop, and in the wholesale sector with Interpneu. Founded in 1953 and headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, the company now sells more than four million tires and over 400,000 aluminum rims per year.

On the IT infrastructure side, Seeburger's Business Integration Suite (BIS) acts as the central building block for the group.

"Specifically, as the central data hub for the sale of Pneuhage products, it controls all associated processes across all markets and sales channels. Completely administered internally, BIS handles almost 20 million file processing operations from very different corporate business processes per year."

explains Ralf Brauer, Head of IT and TC at Pneuhage Management, which is also responsible for the IT side of the entire corporate group.

In addition to the classic EDI business, the sales channels include direct sales in branches, independent sales partners, national and international industry portals, and the company's own webshop. Fortunately, with Pneuhage's entry into online wholesale, Interpneu's B2B webshop has developed as the strongest sales channel.

As he goes on record, the stores also use the store. Search engines and comparison portals also multiply sales. They link to the standard range that the group sells via various industry portals.

The entire tire business runs digitally, starting with the strong B2B wholesale business. Interpneu's web store for tires, rims and complete wheels is based on a specially developed wheel configurator. This makes it possible to display and order all matching available combinations of vehicle, tire and rim for so-called complete wheel orders in a matter of seconds.

The configurator is an indispensable tool for the sales partners to offer each customer individual wheels for his specific car at any time. Various plausibility checks catch invalid combinations from over four million "vehicle-rim" mounting combinations, so that no incorrect orders are made.

The allocations are regulated via the Business Integration Suite and are always kept up to date by synchronization with the central SAP system with the FI, CO, HR, MM, SD and WM modules: Material numbers are updated once a day, prices hourly, and inventories every five minutes.

The matching image files are also displayed depending on the selected combination. Resulting orders immediately receive their order confirmation as well as corresponding delivery bills and tracking data afterwards.

The configurator is also the basis for Pneuhage's own webshop, which is accessible to end customers and branches. Pneuhage also lists its range of tires and rims on over 50 national and international industry portals, such as Tyre24. All the necessary information, such as image, price, product and availability, is transferred to these platforms from the same systems via the Business Integration Suite in order to benefit from the strong reach of these portals and to reach new customers, including global ones.

Classic EDI orders from B2B partners are also seamlessly integrated. Pneuhage also connects suppliers conventionally via electronic EDI data transfer. This is based on approximately 700 mappings that regulate the flow of goods to both customers and suppliers. When so many orders and customer data from different touchpoints come together, a stable integration platform is needed to orchestrate, synchronize and update the data. Inventory reconciliation across multiple warehouses in particular plays an important role in terms of product availability and customer satisfaction. It is performed centrally via the Business Integration Suite.

Returns are also checked and processed via the BIS platform. In the case of a returns order, no booking is generated for SAP, but data is forwarded to the connected complaints management system, which manages the returns.

All in all, Pneuhage processes a wide variety of data in different file formats via the central business integration platform BIS: for example, orders, order confirmations, postage files, image files, availability information, shipping notifications, tracking data, outgoing and incoming invoices, purchase orders/order confirmations, freight forwarding data, parcel service data, time recording data and much more.

The customer benefits: No one likes to wait for the right tire. In the event of an accident, damage or wear, a quick tire replacement is necessary to restore the customer's mobility. The regular replacement of summer or winter wheels must also go smoothly in order to remain mobile.

Around October and Easter, business is booming at Pneuhage. Seasonal peaks determine the tire business. The switch to summer or winter tires leads to increased demand and above-average order peaks, which are mastered safely and reliably by the scalable IT integration platform BIS. This ensures the most up-to-date inventory information on all sales channels. This means that no customer has to put up with long delivery times.

Pneuhage also offers customers a wide range of services. With an online appointment booking system integrated by BIS, customers can find branches online to book wheel and tire services around the clock. In addition to wheel changes and tire fitting, these include services such as repair, balancing, washing or storage.

"As a business-critical system, the Business Integration Suite enables us to integrate both our business partners and all relevant business systems on one powerful mature platform," sums up Pneuhage IT and TC manager Brauer.

"With the central platform, we can map all business processes along the entire value chain and omnipresently continuously expand our market position."