Global Automotive Technology Supplier Increases Efficiency and Unlocks Team Capacity Through Rapid, Automated Data Exchange

In its role as an industry leader in automotive technology systems, one company required rapid data exchange across design, engineering, logistics, manufacturing, and production systems to support business growth. Furthermore, as a supplier to major automotive brands, the company had to meet client expectations for speedy and efficient processes.

Manual data exchange across the software delivery toolchain at the company had proven error-prone and burdensome for teams and partners. Additionally, point-to-point integrations were not scalable or reliable. The company needed a scalable, standardized integration solution to increase efficiency and delivery speed.

The company selected Planview ® Hub, a high-performance integration solution, to integrate its ALM (application lifecycle management) tools and automate near real-time data exchange across systems, both internal and external.

By implementing smooth and reliable automation, the organization has significantly increased its software delivery efficiency. Team capacity has been unlocked with over 1,870 work hours saved in just over seven months and 3,000 expected by the end of the first year. In addition, the solution has fostered easier collaboration between teams, suppliers, and customers and has accelerated technology innovation.

Sharing up-to-date and accurate information between different teams, tools, customers, and suppliers is essential for effective software development and maintaining compliance in the tightly regulated automotive industry. Delays or errors in data exchange slow down the entire delivery process and increase risk – and workload – for the teams involved.

The company’s IT team was encountering challenges with slow, non-standardized integration solutions that were costly to maintain and lacked scalability. These solutions were causing expensive delays in launching new projects, teams, and partnerships.

“Manual data exchange was time-consuming without any benefit,” the Head of IT explained. “Team members are under high pressure with the large number of change tickets they receive throughout a project, especially at the beginning and the end. It’s time-critical, but unfortunately, there were delays for everyone because data could not be transferred and updated quickly enough.”

To meet the needs of its stakeholders, speed and accuracy were of utmost importance. The company needed an integration solution that was able to automate data exchange synchronization in less than one minute to reduce delays and guarantee that teams had access to accurate, reliable data whenever they needed it. It was critical that the tools being used by the IT team (Codebeamer and Azure DevOps) maintained operational stability during data exchange.

The company also needed a solution that could be standardized. Many projects have tight turnaround times, so having an integration solution that could be quickly applied to new projects and use cases is critical for profitability and customer satisfaction. The IT team was looking to have the new interface running within a week of implementation, making ease of setup and maintenance key factors.

The company knew it would be seeking an off-the-shelf integration solution in order to address its challenges quickly. Teams were already overloaded and working on tight timelines, so finding a vendor with the necessary technology, experience, and expertise was the best decision.

The team selected Planview Hub because it provided high-performance, low-impact connectors with near real-time synchronization, all while maintaining the operational stability of the IT team’s tools. Thanks to its unique model-based integration, Planview Hub had reusable configuration settings that could be scaled with minimal effort.

“We selected Planview Hub because of its ability to sync data in less than one minute and its operational stability and extensibility. Other solutions we evaluated did not meet these requirements. In addition, Planview has the added capability of being able to connect to the specific tools we use,” the Head of IT shared.

Implementing Planview Hub’s model-based integration solution was a quick and smooth experience for the company.

After just over 7 months, the company’s development team has saved an impressive 1,870 hours of work thanks to the implementation of Planview Hub. Fifteen data exchange processes have now been set up across the company.

The integration is leading to faster delivery, higher quality, and a better developer experience.

Teams are now capable of rapid communication and handovers for time-critical issues, as well as smoother collaboration with clients.

The Head of IT explains, “A change request from a customer isn’t a one-off exchange. There are multiple exchanges back-and-forth, as well as ownership handovers.” Planview Hub has enabled these updates to be made quickly and automatically. The company is able to save thousands of hours a year by working seamlessly and reliably in the background.

The company looks forward to leveraging Planview Hub even further in the future and expanding its usage with more teams. Recognizing that the company is only at the beginning of its journey in creating automated data exchanges, the organization intends to explore how to implement more of Planview’s value stream management capabilities.