Cox Automotive drives cost savings and efficiencies

Driving value and efficiencies
Cox Automotive is the world’s largest automotive services business. In fact, this global powerhouse is more than 25 businesses in one, all industry-leading brands, specialists in delivering the diverse services that drive the dynamic $2 trillion auto industry.

Cox Automotive makes buying, selling, owning, and using vehicles easier for everyone. Its comprehensive range of services and innovative digital solutions drive value and efficiencies for manufacturers, fleet owners, and dealerships at every stage of a vehicle’s lifecycle.

Part of the Cox Enterprises global media, communications, and automotive group, the Cox Automotive division delivers award-winning services to 40,000 vehicle dealerships across five continents, generating annual revenues of $6.5 billion.

Global cover
Cox Automotive operates some of the industry’s most respected brands, such as Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and Manheim.

With each delivering bespoke services to meet diverse needs–such as sales and marketing, finance, maintenance, and logistics–the division’s IT ecosystem is huge, dispersed, and complex, with disparate systems in use.

This level of complexity motivated the need for a single, division-wide technology platform where accurate management information was easily accessible to avoid unnecessary costs around potentially significant claims resulting from software vendor audits.

A solution for the long haul
“We knew that we had to change gears and move from a reactive to a proactive stance. We needed an enterprise-wide platform that would give us the visibility into our software estate and provide the data we needed to manage the ecosystem effectively,” explains Software Compliance Manager, Sam Morrison.

“We selected ServiceNow because it’s very modular and customizable for very specific requirements; it has a CMDB built in, which is a key differentiator for us. And the Software Asset Management product connects nicely with complementary systems like our procurement and contracts database.

“It’s a cloud-based, agent-less, turnkey solution that you can set up in no time, and its integrated workflows are far superior to other platforms. We knew that this was the solution we needed for the journey ahead.”

Maximizing investment value
By customizing just one ServiceNow module to access software data, Cox Automotive moved from zero to over 70% visibility of its assets with additional data centers being scanned at a normalization rate of 97%, a huge improvement in its strategic position.

The platform enabled the business to maximize the value of its investment by ensuring that all software that it was entitled to was being utilized.

It also secured licensing and consumption data for its top six vendors including Microsoft and Oracle. Cox Automotive is able to manage these vendors going forward in a more convenient format, automating processes, saving vital time and money.

Huge impact
“Having one centralized platform is huge for us,” says Sam Morrison. “We can accurately map usage data to all our individual businesses—what we own, what we’re consuming, and accurately calculate our costs.

“By addressing specific issues or anomalies, such as unnecessary duplicate licenses, significant savings and efficiencies can be made.

“Analyzing consumption and licensing data saved $150,000 in the first year of implementation with a single vendor by removing unused licenses at renewal—apply that principle across the business, to each of our major vendors over the long-term, and the potential impact is huge.

“We have a phenomenal partnership with ServiceNow, they are on the journey with us—when we identify enhancements that we need, they are very responsive and committed to us.

“It’s great to have the tools and the data to be able to clearly demonstrate the progress we have made to our senior leaders. ServiceNow is an integral part of our SAM solution set.”

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